Long Leafed Poems
Long Leafed Poems. Below are the most popular long Leafed by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Leafed poems by poem length and keyword.
Between the reaching shades of tall trees
copper-leafed hillocks’ catch fire,
ghost flames
burnish the slow stealth of evening.
A translucent straw-light
seen only through the thumb hole
of a painter’s pallet,
or in that late sunlit wash, that blooms
so openly that eyes miss it.
Redolent are the long shadows
dipped as they are in rich earthy scents.
The flaxen hay is layered between
timbered silhouettes,
where gossamer ribbons of vapor
hazes-over honeyed acers.
Softly a lambent buoyancy of evening
blends amber and russet wisps
with hues of sorrel and orange.
A mellowing sky drapes over the fields
a chiffon fan of muted rays.
The tawny straws turn slowly,
all unclear to daylight eyes,
but by this eventide
we will view this ebbing day
through a golden glass.
The detritus of a household of smokers was a joy to the young child, stifled in a family he believed he had outgrown. Matchsticks, by the score, he used to build magical castles with towers to climb or Spanish Galleons to sail away to places far. A live match found was a rare treasure, a pregnant opportunity to destroy--a secret power. The best were the small cardboard matchboxes with their slide-out tray, which he arranged like a chest of a hundred tiny drawers. Each drawer contained a precious item, a pebble, a penny, a bloodstained band-aid, a tooth, four-leafed clover, a tear-stained note, a lock of hair. . .
weaving
a smaller web
spider in a box
Like A Child Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Regina McIntosh
Date wrote: 4th July 2022
“Look deep into nature and you’ll understand everything better.”
Albert Einstein
I stood on the sloped path near the waterfall.
Mesmerised by the sound of falling water.
All around grew green-leafed ferns,
While tall poplars and redwoods provided
Ample shade that covered the running stream.
Tall purple pickerel plants, scarlet cardinal plants,
Everything contributed to a sublime, picturesque sight.
A symphony of sounds emanated completely around.
Frogs croaked in great abundance, jumping in and out,
Of the clear stream where fish swam toward the sea.
And all around, busy bees fluttered over exotic flowers,
Where nectar provided them with such sweet nourishment.
Placed 1
Bestow on me an incorrect
3 leafed clover ephigy of
buttercup due early spring May
With I meandering through a maze
of cotton wool field lost
Trying best to avert the gaze of
the virile bull's with Horn's poised
Whilst listening to the joy of piercing
ringing mandolin string's and trooping
drum's in both left and right ear's on
my head
Eminating from the Yee Grand Old
Antebellum Plantation guard house
Adorned with a lushious overhanging
archway on either side of it's giant's
causeway
If you dare imagine with Jacaranda Blue
and Cherry blossom infused on a sunset
pink hue nude muse
Instantaneously ushering forth a vision
of Scarlett O'Hara vivacious locks
Gone with the wind like a kite upon a
hazy shimmering warm summer up draft
Augusta Georgia R.E.M night-swimming
aftermath
I picked up Grandma’s recipe book the other day…the one she made just for me…written in her own hand and filled with my favorite recipes.
On the first page of my cookbook…these words…always waiting for me…
‘It’s easy to be a good cook’ she wrote, ‘just follow the recipe!’
As I leafed through the pages in Grandma’s recipe book…hopping from recipe to recipe…I realized I was also leafing through pages of my memory.
I feel blessed to have Grandma’s recipes…blessed she taught me how to cook…
and blessed for the one recipe…she didn’t have write down in my book.
It was her recipe for living…this one I know by heart…
so I will never leave out an ingredient…never forget a part…
Find some moments every day…she taught…to enjoy this life you’re living…
discover the pleasures in a smile and the comfort of forgiving.
Take a walk in silence…you don’t have to travel very far…
to witness the beauty of the trees…or the wonder of the stars.
Laugh and play and work with your heart…your soul…your mind…
and never miss an opportunity to be gentle…to be kind
Stop and smell the flowers…play with babies…marvel at rainbows in the sky…
and always save room after every meal…for a cookie…or some pie.
I’ve memorized her recipe for living…it’s the road in life I took…
and when I’m hungry for a cookie or a pie…no problem…
I have Grandma’s recipe book.
Knowing how to live and what to cook have always been easy for me…
all I have to do is follow Grandma’s recipe.
In waiting for you, my love, the seasons have snowed in black and white,
The landscape of our time together has been painted in trenches of lingering silences,
And every moment without your voice, an eternity crystallized in waxen clocks,
The autumns have passed with winds that leafed through memories like pages rare.
Since I've been waiting for you, my love, so many years have slipped by...
The long road of your absence has been sprinkled with shooting stars,
The weeping celestials, in the night of my soul, are the lighthouses of an abandoned edifice,
The city of my heart is in mourning, and its streets bare and numbed.
And the mournful sunsets of violet purples,
Are faded lipstick marks on the rim of a forgotten glass,
Yesteryear's dreams have become cobwebbed in untamed thoughts,
Where are you, love lost in the fields of lavender of unshared evenings?
I waited for you at the crossroads of roads, a spider's web stretched between yesterday and today,
Where vows of love were carved in wind and promises of smoke,
Like shadows that dimmed beneath the flicker of candles nibbled by oblivion,
The springs have faded, the celebrated red chestnuts have rusted, in a leaden festivity.
Yet no one passed by there, no echo, just absence as a heavy cloak,
The gate to you seems locked with a thousand padlocks of steadfast memories,
By the sea I dream of you, a foam statue waiting in silence,
Only the waves, prompt in mysteries, confide to me the secret of the parted.
The ocean of my soul waves its unseen wings,
In the close murmurs of hidden shells on endless shores,
I wonder what solemn horizons, what illuminated passages have you walked since you left?
The waves respond with froth of cold regrets and with untouched, uncreated prints.
And this evening, again, the violins cry beneath my window,
Soothing their longing in faint voices piercing the amber sky's infinity,
It's the autumn of a soul that submerges under time, under yearning, under an unconsoling sky,
In a lamentable dance to the notes of romance, which fall away like leaves in the wind, wandering without end.
Little Santa Helpers
Santa has outsourced his services to child labourers from Bangladesh they
fit zero-sized through chimneys much easier and the leaner they are the
better they share full of joy in the globalised feast of winter communion
Detached they are from ‘wrongful’ beliefs and so much happier for their distant
faithful relation to Christmas plus they are used to half naked toil with
loin cloths draped in native design and fig-leafed in the wider scheme of migrant
extortion minimum wage wasted on them but they might get some
tips from little children on other sides of divides if those can catch them in glee
But then there are milk ‘Ho Ho Beer’ and biscuits by the fireplace laced with
incense and Prozac not licensed for young ones maybe but the booze as willing
sign of cross-culturalization is surely inclusive and a Peace offering sponsored by
‘Alcohol Without Borders’ while the odd trace of Ritalin keeps ordered control
Santa is not really burnt out but neo-liberal delegation is the vogue of the month
and post traumatic stress drones and hoovers on his sick note nevertheless
as his bonuses and shares float on Panamanian waters and now he needs a lungi
as well instead of the red coat extra large without doubt as he burps in the sand
The Bangladeshis meanwhile chirp in silent frost bitten nights but at least there
are soot and ashes no sunburn sometimes carrots with broom sticks thereafter
almost a year of ‘social’ benefits homely rest recuperation free time for Mohamed
They scrub brush and sand their dehydrated skins by the Ganges until they come
to accept the ‘Terms of their Trade’ bow to diversity’s splendour and discern what
is dirt and what their skin colour and it’s the latter that keeps them employed
28th November 2016
The Maple tree has gone,
the storm broke it,
then it was chopped to pieces.
For decades it stood
as a gold-leafed palace that graced
our commonplace cull-de-sac,
now it has been carried away
upon overladen truck-beds.
Late in this graying October
a few curling leaves linger
around its bosky stump.
A burnished copper, a tawny russet,
and a powdering of old gold
have leached out
from its deep-set roots.
A slow pyre of Fall colors
has emerged there
where no fire flickers.
yet it forms a last memorial
autumnal wreath.
Gradually, teacups of illumination
seep from a darkening horizon,
a sinking light now rakes only mist,
yet occasionally at sunset,
a maple palace for a moment shimmers,
a gold glittering
to greet our colorless eyes.
The morning calls hour
has come, as daily it does...
ahead of dawn -
The whistles, the chirps,
the lilts and caws
have come
and filled the empty air;
the air so empty all light has fallen out;
perhaps through the sieve of stars.
Holes of light leaking sight
away into the other next,
or first,
or last.
The clouds drift past;
an ever-offering Eastern sky
dribbles endless puffs of white-stuff
which drift overhead.
Heading toward the light.
Unseen streams of air
both draw and push these yet-to-rains
from beyond the skyline
to beyond the treeline.
A huff-chuffing squirrel is overhead
cavorting and exhorting
in the mulberry-leafed maple
with
leaves so big and profligate
so
as to hide every branch.
There’s an urgency to its gutturality
as it chatter-clambers through the
density of burgundy tree.
I’m in hot water again.
Soaking in the hot wet.
Writing tools all here -
Keyboard.
Tea.
Time...
The cat, important, though not a
tool.
Still, though - pressed into use,
as it were.
But the thoughts do not come.
Unlike the clouds, which we’re taught
are thoughts. Or, is it, “...unlike the thoughts,
which are like the clouds.”?
But I don't have the thoughts, undercloud
(under dark cloud)
though I am.
Only these thoughts
which I very
very do not
like.
A lone goose now.
Also undercloud.
Also, aiming East.
To light. To life.
To next. To new.
Thoughtless.
And not unclouded.
So unlike my thoughts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Every Thursday, the smell of ink
and newsprint smudged my fingers
as I leafed through the Green Stamp catalog
feverish with want~
not Barbie’s dreamhouse, not a bike,
but Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls,
two hundred stamps, crisp as lettuce,
which I didn’t have.
All summer I worked in the neighborhood:
hung Mother’s laundry outside to dry;
ironed Mrs. Thacker’s shirts till my wrists ached;
fed the Schroeder’s smelly basset hound;
scrubbed Mrs. Struck’s bathtub till it shined;
and ran errands to the grocery store for Mrs. Coyne.
Payment came in emerald rectangles,
licked and pressed into rows~
a fragile ladder toward the dream
of being a girl in an apron, frosting a cake.
December gnawed at me.
The stamps in my cigar box sighed~
not enough, not quite enough.
Christmas Eve, I curled by the tree,
counting them again,
spread like sad confetti on my bedspread.
Then Dad, grease still under his nails,
tossed an envelope in my lap.
Got these when I filled up the truck at Texaco, he muttered.
Inside—a cataract of green stamps,
enough to fill my heart with Christmas joy.
The day after Christmas, I woke early~
Dad drove me through slush to the redemption center,
Green Stamp book clutched to my chest.
By noon, flour was blooming in my hair.
you may read the related memoir vignette at: poetrysoup.com/short_stories/the_eskimo_igloo_cake_13654