Best Retraced Poems

I was a skilled, dedicated CIA agent, helping to preserve national security,
By searching for and garnering information, as silvery rain ensures purity.

Days were spent perusing foreign material, or viewing international news,
Like walking a maze of crooked, green paths, in a pair of fancy red shoes.

I...

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When all the lines you crossed but didn't see
Grow darker by the day upon your face
Your rosy blush of youth has been erased
And cheeks are drawn where dimples used to be

Your train of thought fueled by a memory
Runs tracks of time that don't lead anyplace
The...

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During a bad storm one night I turned on my television
Grey and black flickering lines appeared, obscuring my vision
I went outside and saw the aerial had bent over but it would have to wait
Tomorrow I'd get up on the roof and try and put it...

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It is the winter of 1980.
I’m twenty-eight years young, 
Driving a red Mustang with glass T-tops,
Feeling all of my awesome sassiness, from toe
To Afro, when I notice the cards driving ahead of me
Are all slowing way down. A wreck? Can’t be because nobody stops.
I’m a...

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My grandma was a steeple jack, 
Of heights she had no fear.
The crowds would gather round to watch.
They came from far and near, 
 
To see her swing and pirouette, 
Doff her hat and wave.
And gasped and cheered each time she feigned
A slip and then...

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I remember that place
in green pastures called home.
But where are you now
“Union Yard, Britton Holm”
Deep in reams of memories
indelible you lay,
reposed at the helm
of a life rushing by.

Guess i’ve played life’s
generation game,
yet somehow you appeared the same!
Misguided my mind
in local pursuit,
when reminded
one does not belong,
the...

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I carried it on my lap all the way to you,
    The bus ride was so long, so long, Mom;
Lost in old memories of you and me, together, 
             ...

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It is an important cake that I had to bake with out a rake so that it would be 
real   It has a special filling that the groom himself requested and has not been 
tested  a flavor that is also a favorite...

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Without fencing, she tended her vegetable garden.
An openness rested in an unknown place.
A fragrant, floral scent rendered her pardon,
as well as a monarch butterfly's chase.

His wings so free, a challenge for seizing,
her legs took off beyond the unexplored.
He held a flower for a moment, self...

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Tides pull you into waters clear,
cupping both hands, she tastes
your pain. 

Her lustrous foam draws briny tears;
waves sigh in seas retraced,
then wane.


By Rhonda Johnson-Saunders, 3/10/15
for Nette's Memento of Waters Contest
visual #4...

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My heart hit the wall like graffiti spray.
Shakespeare could have cast you 
just as you had cast me.
Playtime was rushed to sleep with resistance, 
as cinderblock thoughts tossed and turned 
until drifting became corroding numbness 
like the rusting rain refrain.
Each drop held my eyes then...

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Something's changed, I don't recall this door.
The mat that once read 'welcome'...now gone. 
Am I lost in the night, or had I forgotten some slight..
had my address been quelled by another time?

The new curtains in the bay window seem nice,
though..not the deep blue highlighted sash...

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I'd long planned for this journey,
back to where we first had met,
and to the promises we made
that I could not forget.

I walked the streets in search of that
enchanted time we knew,
when all the world was young and it
revolved around we two.

The streets had turns I...

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I was forever losing things, and my laughing friends called me a klutz,
Like darker skies misplace buttery sun, when a severe storm develops.

I had once lost the keys to my house, and waited locked out all night,
As mistakes of our older yesterdays, solicit tomorrow to...

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Prostrated to such vastness,
unable to speak
I turned away
leaving fear standing
where I had come,
and the immense river entered
into those boundaries I had raised.

I watched the pale colors
wash away and disappear
as the water moved and swelled
and flooded all that was,
then the bells rang
the world awoke
with its insatiable...

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