Best Sloughs Poems

Tell me of your peace. 
Let it tell your story now
Of trials and tribulations, a tale not of dreams
Weary from a journey of self-discovery
My child, know the comfort in your peace
You feel hope in this familiar place 
As it gently sloughs the pain away 
Tell...

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Dawn's
Stillness
Invites me
Vermillion hills
Clouds' engulfing tangerine stillness crests
Tension sloughs, blows away like old snakeskin 
Desert rain scent
Cleansing me
Pedal
Flow
Smile
Conceals
Morning’s ride
Heart's treasure trove
Work’s gray walls can't touch my bright turquoise glow

7/18/16
© by Author
Contest: Triple Tetractys 2
Sponsor: Eve Roper
Syllable count confirmed at howmanysyllables.com...

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It was a long lonely night at the lumber mill
Just listening to a whippoorwill 
In the dark beside a logging road.
I’ve got fifteen cars of timber on my load.
The yard stinks of bleeding sap and cut pine.
Roll on, roll on down the line.

I’ll be on...

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It is not a fall,
A python sloughs its old skin and wears new look;
It is never a fall,
A snail finds splinter in its shell and changes its house;
Not a fall,
Wing-locust sheds its wing and becomes a queen;
A fall?
A child loses her cheese cutter for permanent...

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*Inspired by Cheryl Hoffman’s “The Skin We’re In”  — Go read it!

On a turkey it's called a wattle
on a moose, "the bell," (not “the bottle”)
Those batlike things?
(too small - see wings)
dewlaps*, odd appendages we coddle

We're prisoners of the skin we’re in
some have it thick,...

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In the misty morning amid the elm and maple trees 
The whiteness delicately floats above the ponds waterline
The night hunters abandon their night search for food
As the early morning rays peek through the woodland.

The morning brings the forest  teeming to life
The occupants ready to...

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Wind’s Life

Thundering wind is on its way,
The beat of sleet 
Rhythmical, crackling on panes,

Wind is a being.
Touching spring with a kiss,
Then turning macho man
On a dime.

Mr. Blow sloughs on desert sands
Sand billowing from the unseen.
Rolling purple, golden sunsets
Change at his bidding, soundless.

Where does he come...

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He was a common-place stranger,
Occupying the corner table every night,
And every day, alone but never lonely,
In a tropical beach bar, with thatched roof and no walls.

He sat facing the ocean, with a beer in his hand,
And glassy eyes that looked to a distant place,
Wearing tattered...

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Why are the sea gulls shopping here, if not
for "White Stag, "No Boundaries." or "Faded Glory?"
Is there some other story?  Coffee, Tea or You,
or just practicing beach and gray-sky calls
over concrete, carts, and Handicapped Blue?
This turf is for blackbirds of the piercing cry, haughty
strut...

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I met an old veteran the other day.
How old he was I really couldn't say,
But I could tell by his shuffling gait,
That, alas, he was nearing Saint Peter's gate.

In the park with him I wanted to walk.
"No, son," he said, "lets just sit and talk,
And...

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The issue's not yet signed and sealed.
Three cogent answers hold the field,
and no-one knows which is the best.
I'll set them out before you, lest
the question go a-begging.
                  ...

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Should I, mere a rabbit of sand, shiny hair,
sport a shock of fur mired in clay,
they from gofer mounds, propped on to peer, would sound warning
through the sun glades and sleep grotto shades.

“A pall fellow lights whereupon we here graze.
See ye lithely to him yield...

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No No No it says
a little momento of a soul
with which I imagine I identify
 
I can see her there
crouched in the stall
armed with her key
scratching deep without restraint
blowing away the cloud
of the chalky wall
which sloughs off like snow
 
I can see her there
trying to...

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to dream, to lie, in sweet repose
and drink the thoughts of those who rose
from dark eternal slumber bleak,
to steal the voice of those who speak

see as i lie awake at night,
my effervescent dreams alight
upon a mirror in the dark,
to see embittered souls embark
towards the center...

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“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

~William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act V, Scene I

I weep by a stardust shore where the seraphs sing
Tangerine tears rain despair 'neath a velveteen veil  
My melancholic...

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