Decomposing

dreamscape
of fallen trees
a silent vigil held
by mosses and lichens in your
honor

The Hurt You Cannot See

...they asked her to tell what happened only to discount her memory... (Lorna Simpson, "Waterbearer," 1986)

Fractured
in places hard
to imagine. X-rays
only show a fraction of what's 
broken.

“All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”

― Nikola Tesla

For Ken:

Blueprints

In your

childhood pictures --

the gaze of one whose mind

is on the verge of inventing

something.

Cindy Tebo

Welcome to Memphis

rainy
Fourth of July
just outside of Graceland
no Elvis but the thunder keeps
clapping

Editor's Choice, Sol Magazine, 2003

(Link no longer available)

     Ringing In The New Year

bird chirps echo throughout the morning as if to say this is the here and the hear after

“Science doesn't tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is.” 

~ Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

~ Author Unknown

(Attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne, but according to Quote Investigator this saying appeared in a newspaper written by someone with the initial "L". More details available on this site.)

Migration 

(originally untitled)

monarch
trains heading south
into the trackless air
dew on the engines that push them
onward

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master."  ~ Ernest Hemingway

To Ernest Hemingway:

Sunset

papa has gone

his limelight, a green flash

     of tequila going down in

  Key West

Madonna

as seen
on potatoes,
the woman of grottoes
and stained glass--when other visions
have failed

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol. 3, No 2.

Electrolux vs The Grim Sweeper

Death does
not always knock
like a salesman selling
vacuums. It can rob you without
a sound.

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2.

Damn Physics

today
when an acorn
fell on my head I cursed
the Newton in nature and all
that drops

___________

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol 1, No. 2. 

Mo Says

Taum Sauk*
you're a bit short
for a mountain but you're
within my reach and easy to
talk to


________

*highest point in Missouri

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2. 

Battle of Fort Davidson

into
wild blue yonder
soldiers hit by grenades
how can a war ever be called
civil


_________

Also known as, "The Battle of Pilot Knob." 

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2.

The Shape I'm In

sometimes
  the moon is out
    of touch with the phase I'm
    in--slipping past waxing--into
    waning

What Ponce de Leon Overlooked

hummers
where time can be
clocked flower by flower
they never stay and they never
get old


______________

Originally published in Amaze Vol. 4, No. 2 

Depression

fall leaves
the loneliness
the thoughts that everything
we felt attached to will somehow
be lost

In the Next Life

I will
be the cedar
that slows the wind along
fences and welcomes back the birds
each spring. 

_____________________

I am going to open this blog with a cinquain that won the March 2002 WHC Shortverses Cinquain Contest. The contest theme was "spring." 

Published in Amaze Vol. 1, No. 1 Spring & Summer 2002 

Links to the Amaze Online Journal are no longer available.