I sit alone on cold winter nights, thinking of how my life became dreary
Is it something that I had just realised? or is it just another theory?
Am I content with what I have in life? And is life my only query?
There isn’t a year that goes by, without my body slowly growing weary
With age strength is hard to come by, but you do tend to become briery
It is on these pitch black nights, that my thoughts become leery
Even the stars are absent from the skies tonight, so is the moon who is so deary
I do yearn my younger days, but my eyes quickly become teary
Nothing but the good in life counts, the rest is to your soul smeary
Only when day light breaks again, does my mood finally become cheery
Saleh Ben Saleh
Hedgehog, O hedgehog
dear spiny, meek and mousy poppet.
In England
where the tickly grass grows
greener
we galumph in our rubber boots
up to your little
Hobbit nests
beneath the thorny bushes
were you rests.
We the ever scampy
nippers
fill tin cups with wriggly worms
leave then there
by your dinky
mossy dells.
All the pricky hogs
come from near and nearer,
to snuff and gobble
by the brittle briery
and eat their wormy mush.
Our mucky paws clap
in gay and giggly glee
to see that munchy feast,
their piddly
licky
muzzles
chomping -
quite charming.
Adults say, 'we will catch a flea'
from their pin pointy pelts.
yet we shrug
our never minds, and
our don't cares,
even bring
one tiddly tyke home,
smuggling it up the stairs
to coddle
while we playtime
with some jolly good
fun....
Except for the snow, it’s a monochromatic scene
The pond is frozen to a reflecting mirror finish,
In the fields there is not a speck of green to behold
Overall, the countryside is bleak in winter’s cold,
With clumps of sage punctuating the near pasture
The trees have given up their leaves in past autumn,
While a trickle of smoke is creeping up to a hazy sky
Onto the briery bushes an inch of snow has settled.
I can imagine the family gathered around a fireplace
The only vestige of warmth in the entire painting.
Livestock are locked securely inside a barn on the hill
All is serene in this landscape, though it elicits a chill.
written January 17, 2022
Walking the journey, we must be careful not to trip
Over the fallen dead wood strewn along our path,
Careful to step high, look high, relishing adventure
Journey is taking up every rewarding, useful venture,
Discovering and cultivating hope ‘til journey’s end
Meanwhile cultivating a wealth of beautiful friends.
Walking the journey, we must step over the stones
Look beyond the weeds to enjoy yonder flowers,
And when we reach them caress them to our face
Journey means looking for messages to embrace,
Sharing with hearts of those around us blessings
For they, too, are walking the briery, stony paths.
written September 11, 2021
especially for "J" Poetry, Old or New" Contest
sponsored by Constance La France
The dark red
berries of a single tree
in Autumn
burst within
the enchanting leaves of gold.,
like the fronds
of a rose
at Dusk, meek and sleepy,
in the ebb
of a sun-
set.The soft briery pluck
of a tenor
ukulele
played beside the noble tree
is a prayer,
shyly hushed
by the dying leaves, the birthing
drupelets.
Claws step over ear bones,
tap on the tin roof. The cabin
creaks like an ark.
All day winding along
a Kentucky ridge line,
to lodge a night
in a bow-beamed shack.
I fry bacon and bread
on a smoke-licked skillet
as black as a fossil;
then settle down to listen
to April starlight
sweeping timbers.
Dark pelts pace moon trails.
Night birds hunt;
sloe washed wings flick shadows
through briery pines.
I sip an amber glass of bourbon
eavesdrop,
on my sleep-walking soul.
For twenty years,
Tears in-between,
Rain and rust
And gray-beard dust.
A flooded flagon,
Empty-dry. Laid aside.
A spook to his wolf,
savior to the squirrels.
A languid man snores
While robins lay eggs
In his briery beard.
Blue and yellow eyes
Startle awake.
Oh what trouble
To sleep all night!
The Kaatskills mock,
In torment
Of bygone years,
This stinking man and
his tangled long beard.
Dame Van Winkle’s
Not dead from grief,
But from restless lips
Of donnybrook.
Like all ages, past to future,
Politics ticks and tocks.
Rip hangs upon the pendulum,
Not knowing which side he’s on.
His daughter’s his savior.
His namesake’s his doppelgänger.
The old man rises from the hills,
Baffled and half-moon shy.
Kim Rodrigues © 2017
This might amuse those who know the story of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving.
Momma says I've got a poet's heartache
that I dally
among the gardens of malady
where briery thorns
nip at their own flimsy petals
and all the virile plants want to heal me,
but I'm saving myself
for some wild haired rose
who's only going to tear
my flowering heart........................apart
Daddy says I'm a rare bloom
with tender palms
and a golden stem,
in poetry I search for words
to bury my core within,
a tough little root
who beholds a mystical pen
that drips love for a man
she believes exists
somewhere between the lines
of her own making
But my loves,
I'm just a lonely pot
trying to fill blank space
with a poetic soil
so these veins will grow
into a substantial blossom
worth savoring
by thou gardeners
who give sun to thy soul
and a pause in time
worth reflecting
off the ground
of God's jaw dropping scenery
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