(5-21-26 For "Snapshots of a Night Scene" Contest Sponsor - Nette Onclaud)
Dusk slowly approaches, as their energy finally begins to wane. Half flat soccer balls
speedily sent down a grassless, asphalt field by crooked, knobby sticks.
Stubby chunks of chalk - pink, yellow, blue, white. Hopscotch squares already fading
Frayed jump ropes swinging up, around, and down,
their satisfying soft smacks on the ground, keeping rhythm.
Delighted squeals of joy, laughter, calling out of names to friends, classmates, neighbors, siblings...
Somehow, this view left me remembering
my days of young, pondering the timeless satisfactions and yearnings of youth.
Gentle raindrops begin to splat red and orange leaves, partially painted the weed-lined pavement
Small shadows scatter and go wherever it is they go when the night sets in.
In a dream, I was on a mission.
A mission to rescue a nation.
A nation in a quagmire.
A quagmire not as usual.
A high mountain, I had to climb.
Climb it, in its nakedness.
Nakedness and grassless up to the crest.
Up to the crest, it was slippery.
Up I looked. It was all stiff nature.
Nature hindered me reach the peak.
But the peak was my target.
Target to reach and take a rest.
Middle way, odd winds blew me back.
Back, I snubbed to go rancid.
Go rancid or move up, I decided.
I decided to climb up.
Up, I failed to progress. Down, I sat.
In my laps, my head I buried to think.
Think as new energy I gather.
Never, up I shall give.
Poem by Mugisho N Theophile
They reach away from our reality
as if we are a momentary blur.
Here by the ice-gnawed stones,
my mind is a broken-jaw,
bones rattle in fissures of time.
Menhir, dolmens and megaliths,
under the blunt teeth of ageless winds
the stones raise their wilderness questions
while the ancient moors and heaths
crack open new earth from old dust.
Sheep graze around these planted rocks,
but none enter its grassless circle.
If I were a sheepdog
I would bark at all these
stone wraiths also.
i've
given up
i've loaded
my trucks with
lots
of love
but now
they
sit in
and are
parked
in a yard
where they
will
remain
but a bit
rusty
for no one
wants to creep
around this
grassless
yard
Spirit Wind>
I welcome you
breeze gently by
visit me scattered memories
answer my senses
with sweet morose
from a parallel time
picture me a story
every life's year
of a family's happiness
sway me with sound
voices to recall
from all seasons
flowers on each grave
guaranteed still live
in dry grassless clay
touch each plot
oh kind wind
and bless as best you can
THE GAME
We would gather slowly
“toss” the bat, choose sides,
use the “least battered” ball,
the only bat we had.
The girls played too,
chosen because they
could play….often before
some of us boys. We
knew they were better
so it wasn’t taken personal.
The kid who wore the
Sears and Roebuck “Husky”
jeans played right field.
He was slow, he didn’t
get one of the treasured
gloves. He batted fourth,
cleanup hitter.
He could really hit.
The “infielders” got gloves.
The infield was an almost
grassless, rock strewn field.
The bases were scratched
into the dirt with the bat.
The “game” lasted forever.
As kids were called away,
“substitutes” would take
their place. Younger,
less experienced little brothers
and sisters, earning their time,
learning the game, touching
the heartbeat of summer.
The game would “pause”
for lunch, be put on hold
at supper, would be thought about,
talked about, dreamt about,
until …….
2/11/2017
submitted to – THE NATIONAL PASTIME – poetry contest
If you were here
The sheets would rustle now
Like whispers in the night
The wind would come
With jasmine breath
And your eyes would be
The candle of delight
If you were here
Your veins would murmur like a stream
And my ear would catch
The syllables of your dream
While pillowed between the hills
Of grassless mounds of flesh
Sleeping
In the warmth of fragile joy
Seems you never knew
That this patriot
Heard the bugle of many lands
But never led their wars
Or spoke from far parliaments
The loyalty that alone was yours
They resented that
And I am happy have treaty with them
My love shall be of peace.
If you were here
Like the rise and fall of the sea
Its soft chest heaving
I would hear you breathing
The same wet delicious song
And while my loins with passion throngs
I should be still
As her salt tongue
Quivers at the roots
Of a spurting hill ...
Where the nectared trees are laden still
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