Best Cycle Poems
Dearest young leaf,
Why so melancholy?
Thy emerald sheath has not borne Time's folly.
Think not of Autumn's deathly brilliance,
Of colors rich and flaky grounds,
For Thou wilt weep every moment hence,
While Springtime's youth still bounds.
Greet Thy greenness with glee,
For thy root to the Oak remains strong,
Aeolus' fury on Thee has no effect till Summertime gone.
So worry not of what is to come,
Enjoy Thy existence, little one.
By the early years of that ancient decade, the 70's,
I'd tired of my obstreperous tomboyish games:
kickball with the neighbor kids, sledding in the winter,
desecrating the peacefulness of our street's grave yard
with our bike races, tag, and hide-n-seek.
And I tired too of the pastimes of my season preferred:
chasing siblings with a hose, giggling and gleeful,
swimming at Weed Park,
and my perpetual swinging through those long, sweet sunshiny days
longed for during classes in my school.
Old friends grew up.
Boredom anon crept upon the remnant of my childhood.
At times - through infancy and beyond -
I'd been beset by a feeling of loss
over something not yet sought.
It was something kin to loneliness, but no. . .not that.
More a sense of gloom - a sorrowing for what?
I still don't really know.
Despite the days of inexplicable forlornness,
I grew more and more cavalier
throughout the days that came
between those odd forlorn days
because my old timidity, in fact, had waned. . .
Another face, fairer, appeared.
It waxed and glowed - assured -
until those “days - in- between”
had finally surpassed the melancholy ones.
I learned to stifle monotony and squelch the blues.
I became a "doer" of too many things to name
as I went gliding through with the Gibbous moon.
Soon enough, a fullness had arrived.
And now it must disseminate.
In the years to come, I'll be wondering this. . .
Will the shining face I show the world wane too,
and will my youth's strange darkness re-emerge,
eclipsing what light remains as I drift,
having come full-cycle,
into my final
crescent phase?
5/21/14
Submitted 3/30/16 to PD's Any Poem # 38 Poetry Contest
II. Nature's Cyclical Dance
End is not death. Changing into something new is good.
A leaf falls, then goes back into the dark soil.
Next year's flowers sleep under winter's quiet.
We fear the end, but nature shows us it's not bad.
Death is a new start.
My Anishinaabe mentor Little Deer laughed at my wide eyes.
That first forest walk, as he plucked a bright trillium —
"Cherish her fleeting beauty, but mourn her not, my friend.
This flower's death will birth a thousand more to come."
His people know life dances on; death is rebirth.
I hear them now. Those ancient voices riding wind's breath.
They speak through birch and pine... calling me back to the way —
Honoring and not fearing, the seasons' turning tides.
Each dawn's first birdsong and each brook's gentle murmuring
Echoing the rhythm pulsing through this wild...
and wondrous earth.
Let me join this cycle, rooted but free.
I'll welcome death and the return of life.
Like the forest floor, decay and new growth mix.
With every breath, I'll connect with the source.
This cycle of life, death, and being born again is a gift.
----
"The Sacred Forest, a Nurturing Mother, never lets life die, / But reclaims, recycles, and rebirths in her eternal lullaby." - Daniel Henry Rodgers
A LIFE CYCLE
Ejected
Dislocated
Passive
Activated
investigative
Never stop
Driven
T’ward the top
Content
Paternal
Fulfilment
Feel eternal
Perceive mortality
Free
Just a memory
Geoffrey Brewer
September 2018
taciturn springs rising
from within the quarry
of deep earth's wisdom
urging lyrical waters to transpose
while held like singing seas of living reveries
of history and infinity
misting to meld with rainfall dreams
Falling like ancient messages
into the orchard of molecular landscapes
drawn to penetrate its legacy
embedded in the rockeries and rills
blanketing the groves of dirt and ferns
teeming in the arcadian oasis
feeding feast or famine
flourishing the solicitude of springtime
in spider spun dreams
of longings in ancient oaks
merging with the ebb of shedding sycamores
in salted seas teeming and exalting
the rhetoric of existence
in musing opaque vapors
mingling into pervasive clouds
bleeding life
cached in the creche
of pastoral beginnings
of everlasting eddies
watering the garden of dreams
April 22, 2020
Rewritten: October 3, 2020
Your Best Free Verse 2020
Sponsored by John Hamilton
Just twenty days. The mystical
Libra will turn rosette boughs into
fading auburn… nights combing
the breeze colder and quite somber ,
as if women on bare hilltops await
the arrival of men in some far oceans
when bleached summer gives way
to icicles of endurance so patient
and wives, lovers tremble in this anticipation
swaying
back and forth, balancing the cold
clutches of afternoon’s light and
destitute clouds wearing mufflers
for near or far elegies of snow.
It is grippingly delicate: I mean, watching
the changing hint of a breeze growing
paler.
Yet wiser is October rising to chip the
glow of studded stars, bit by bit, dying
in the gray of grayest sleet to bear
the tunes of venial woes. Yet, it is the cycle
when courage bides its time for amiable joy.
It is the cycle when her adolescent stage
transforms ladies into maids-in-waiting...
how much longer must the women endure
to find an armada of loved ones back home?
And the weight of contentment drips, drips
in a season fulfilling its own quest.
There are
no answers; only reflective surrender.
Contest: Waiting
Sponsor: james rogers
9/10/2015
Come,
Let us chase the sun.
I know
It is better said than done,
To make life sappy and meaningful-
To keep time, word and money
Is vital.
The steady sun
With the broad smile all
In summer, winter
Bright and duty bound it is
Amid clouds
Black or blue
May be spring or fall.
See the flowers that bloom
The petals that unfold
The pollens that vitalise
The dew drops in morning do glisten
In time the animals so breed
On the dot does the cock too alarm.
To be a salmon I yearn
Leaving some heirs to glow the age
To give up life
In the scheduled place of origin.
As
Points all are as equal
To begin and complete a circle.
I haven’t been here in a while
At this point in my life that is.
The point where something great becomes misconstrued
more filled with angst instead of jovialness.
Shot through the heart:
Bang.
It hurts me to be here, hurts me to say this
But I would rather kill it, dissipate it
Then let it continue; I know I’d hate it.
I’d rather be preemptive, stay ahead.
To avoid the potentially hurtful aftermath
It’s the type to grip you by your soul and
make you want to O.D during a bubble bath.
This is just to let you know how hard it is.
It’s hard because there’s so much invested
If any shots come my way I understand;
As it seems to hardships I no longer feel the need to contest it;
It’s a love hate type of thing.
I hate that you may think the love was not all it could’ve been,
Yet we both know through hardships we made it, but this is now and that-
That was then.
No need for animosity we’ve agreed to drink in friendship responsibly
And if the time comes again where everything is lined up for both of us
Then I guess I won’t need the help of E-harmony.
This is not to say by any stretch that it is expected
or that you owe me anything by any means
but our present time is past, that’s the way the future makes it seem.
This is a divorce of sorts as are all relationships
No one courtship is perfect and this one’s included in that statistic
So despite what everyone around you might say
(Those opinionated idiots)
And even despite what your anger may make you think
We sailed on love, hurdled every obstacle, made impossible possible
But to perpetuate, a lack of being affectionate, is highly illogical.
Mix in the emotions we both possess and things become highly volatile.
We just need to get back to the basics, start anew,
With our eyes on the future with pens not pencils
There won’t be a need to erase it.
The Long Count Calendar, Cycle One Ends
December twenty-first, two thousand and twelve –
The Mayan long count calendar sets sights on that year.
Are there ecological and cosmic questions to delve?
Is it time for modern man to panic and fear?
The reckoning at hand, according to Mayans,
Began with the creation of the world.
Then, the sky still lay on the primordial sea, black
And the long count calendar began time’s whirl.
Man has traveled a long way on life’s stage.
Throughout time to beyond the information age,
Amazing discoveries have and will come to man
Since before and after the scientific method began.
End of the world theories run rampant these days.
Promulgated by televisions entertaining ways.
History Channel’s “Decoding the Past”
Brought on many doomsday sequels…and fast.
Did the galactic alignment of nineteen, ninety, eight
Begin the wake of a super-massive black hole fate?
Or will a geomagnetic reversal mark earth’s end?
Can we know when the apocalypse will begin?
The Holy Bible says no one knows when.
Upon that premise, hope over fear may win.
Have faith and see what NASA has to say
About that previously predicted calendar day.
Polarity change takes thousands of years.
And it doesn’t affect planetary alignments
There is no huge planet heading for earth.
So, predictions need realignment.
Be faithful; and with Christ live a thousand years.
Even if the apocalypse does start, put fears on shelve.
What will really happen in two thousand and twelve?
Cycle two of the Mayan long count calendar will begin.
© August 26, 2010
Dane Smith-Johnsen
RELEVANT SHORT VIDEO: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=876
Spring will forever be the time for renewals when brisk fresh air invigorates our drowsy muse. Tickling every inner child, beckoning them to come out for a playdate. And ever so gleefully we crack open the treasure chest of possibilities, dust it off to see what gems we can uncover.
dawn of
fresh beginnings
old shoes new paths
AP: 2nd place 2025, Honorable Mention 2025
Submitted on March 7, 2021 for contest SPRINGTIME HAIBUN sponsored by M.L. KAISER - RANKED 1ST
The Cycle of Life
I walk this golden path in fall’s cool breeze
as autumn afternoon’s warm setting sun
is shining brightly through the crimson trees,
but growing shadows signal day is done.
A bright array of leaves the autumn paints,
her palette filled with amber, rust and red;
she paints the vivid colors sans constraints
throughout the hills and forests so widespread.
And though the season’s colors bring us cheer,
the falling leaves an omen for us all
that old man winter surely must be near;
upon these barren branches snow will fall.
And thus the cycle of our lives proceeds
and moves ahead till springtime sprouts her seeds.
November 24, 2019
Rudeness at places of work is a terminal cancer
That reduces and kills productivity
Promoting the dancer
Who feels her rudeness proclivity
Resembles a godsend in her way of thinking
Equating its futility to putting in a full day’s shift without any proof
That rudeness despite its inkling and tinkering
Adds to long faces among colleagues whose home roof
Undergoes strain victims of rudeness export home where their rudeness
Hurts family members who in turn unleash
Their reverse rudeness to kill at home happiness
Inspiring butts of rudeness to dish
Out the taste of the rude message
To new victims enlarging the cycle by tit for tat
Until time passage
Widens the rudeness culture making it so fat
It recruits new rude members
Consolidating and spreading the rudeness epidemic
Insulating no one, hurting everyone to fan embers
That burn, burn, burn and burn so that rudeness no comic
Spares. Then, people wonder why so much rudeness flies about
Crashing good manners, killing decorum
Until a wisecracker reminds the person who in the first instance thought her rudeness clout
Despite a dose of rum
Contaminates and hurts more and more
Unless everybody makes it their business
To observe good manners and tenets of politeness in folklore
Then and only then can a rude-free society exist, pouring boundless happiness bereft of rudeness.
a life so quickly passes
one blink and we can barely comprehend
~ the cycle in perpetual motion
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
A spider carefully plans and schemes
the pattern for its life and quest.
It spends its hours weaving dreams
until it creates its sticky best.
Its web is tatted small and refined
or brocaded in heavy tapestry.
Soon prey finds itself entwined,
entombed within this basketry.
The spider calmly enswathes it,
a gesture quick yet fatal.
To paralyze this tasty tidbit,
its single bite is detrimental.
To live, to spin, to weave, to eat,
is spider’s deadly task’s cycle.
Web mastery, a cunning feat,
ensures the spider’s survival.
If there’s a separation now
Take heart,
Because first
there was a union;
If there’s darkness now
Forbear,
Because first
there was light;
If there’s sorrow now
Be patient,
Because first
there was happiness;
If there’s despair now
Rejoice,
Because first
there was hope;
If there’s death now
Celebrate,
Because first
there was life!
~Brian Strand 265 contest