Barking. Off, away
By Frank Daub
She is UNAWARE that she cannot stay – too long.
Her time is limited to short intensiveness,
so, she doesn’t hold back, but plays
and zooms in circles through every room
open to her padded paws.
Stopping suddenly short –
she remembers the love we share
and she pads back to sit looking up at me.
That is when I pray that pups are part of Heaven.
I stand where the earth is green and wide,
Under a clouded, dreaming sky.
The paddy whispers, row by row,
Of days that pass, and rivers that flow.
No buildings touch this quiet land,
Only wind and rain by nature's hand.
And in this green, so calm, so deep,
I sow the dreams I want to keep.
Days will pass, pages will fill,
Ten, twelve books, by sheer will.
If after all this suffering, I never gave up,
Why will you?
If I can, you can too.
It is love that persists,
love that refuses the dark,
love that remembers itself
even when we cannot.
The world remembers
every footstep laid upon it.
Even the quiet ones.
Even the ones made by people
who thought they were small.
It remembers the way
a single voice
can turn a season,
how a single kindness
can outlive the person
who offered it.
It remembers the storms
that tried to break us,
and the hands
that held us upright
when the sky forgot
how to be gentle.
And somewhere,
beneath all the noise,
the world remembers you.
Not for perfection,
not for glory,
but for the simple fact
that you stayed
when leaving
would have been easier.
That is how legends begin.
Quietly.
One brave breath at a time.
(Weekly Magnetic Poetry Challenge • July 13–19, 2026)
Beneath my feet, dust writes what memory cannot say,
Every fallen thing is time refusing to walk away.
The air remembers.
It remembers the weight of cedar pollen, the long green exhale of forests that stood where highways now glitter like rivers of metal.
It remembers lungs that filled without fear.
My grandfather inhaled and tasted rain. I inhale and taste warning labels.
Yet every spring the lilacs persist, opening their small purple mouths against statistics, against forecasts, against the arithmetic of ruin.
The air remembers.
The question is whether we will.
Faint sunlight sifts through time,
dust drifting in quiet spirals,
holding the hush of yesterday.
Old letters breathe again,
edges curled like tired sighs,
holding the hush of yesterday.
“. . .” My mouth tried to say
what had happened to my body
Why hadn't the words
come out of my mouth?
“Hey I need to tell you something”
I said that to my friend
“What is it?”
They replied to me.
“I-I can't remember. . .”
my voice started to shake
“Why can't I remember!”
I yelled
thinking someone. . .
anyone
would know the answer
Months go by. . .
No one can hear me.
Because. . .
I stitched away the mouth
Who couldn't remember
Even if my body could.
Where heather hums in Atlantic rain,
old stones remember names;
the wind through gorse like whispered pain
keens low the exile’s flames.
A curlew cries above the bog,
its call a silver thread;
it stitches sky to sodden fog
where silent feet have bled.
O Sídhe stir beneath the hill,
in twilight’s hollow breath;
their music bends the human will
to dance with time and death.
Yet green endures through grief and
I look for beauty in sunsets,
in strangers passing by,
in the way light rests on everything it touches.
Everywhere except the mirror.
The mirror is honest.
It doesn’t blur the lines
or soften the stories
written into my skin.
It remembers the nights I don’t talk about.
The battles no one saw me win.
There are marks on me that once felt like endings.
Now they are quiet reminders that I stayed.
And still,
I stand there searching for something soft,
something lovely —
As if survival isn’t already a kind of beauty.
Maybe one day
I’ll look at my reflection
and see not the hurt,
not the history —
but the strength it took to still be here.
With haunted looks, in the mind
Lives one yet more secure
Than in the moment. When to it
Exposed, coldheartedly
Makes numb, blows inwardly.
Timid spectre, back and forth
Time's corridor skulks.
Daily retreat of re-living
A past kindness. Through acts
Love, quieter, contacts.
The body remembers...
What the mind politely forgets.
How rain once meant survival
How cold once meant fear.
How being held
Was once the only gold that mattered.
The Wind, Remembers My Name
and carries it like Dust, carries it like a Wyld Sage
carries it from the Earth to the Sun
to Flow, to Uphold, to Become
When we sit and reflect on the blessings we have
And take time to appreciate the gifts in life,
When we feel inwardly soothed by the comfort he offers,
He remembers it all.
He remembers our thoughts, our love and our works.
He remembers the context of our growth and being.
He remembers our fight to do what is right.
Jehovah remembers it all.
When we demonstrate kindness to those in need.
When we care for our family and friends.
When we acknowledge our strength is not always our own,
These things he will recall.
When we error or deviate from the course.
When we vent rage and grief through "wild talk",
When our conscience bleeds guilt and we feel ashamed,
He tenderly remembers we all fall.
He remembers our human need for hope.
He sees how much we condemn ourselves.
He won't let our trials extend beyond our limits.
He remembers this promise of his and all.
Because he remembers who we truly are,
He values the good that resides in our hearts.
He raises us up and directs our steps.
For about us, Jehovah knows all.
[Hebrews 6:10; Psalm 103:14; 1Corinthians 10:13]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trapdoor groans—not ghosts,
but hinges shedding rust like snake skins,
old wood sighs beneath the weight of years,
a dry cough of timber settling into itself.
Sunlight, thick as poured honey,
warms the spines of leather-bound scrapbooks
where ink bleeds into yellowed pages.
Grandad’s trunk yawns open:
Inside, a woolen uniform, stiff as frozen fish,
still guards its stripes.
A cracked leather suitcase spills sepia photos—
a bride squinting in the Missouri sun,
her lace gloves chewed by silverfish.
Under the dormer window sits
a hobbyhorse missing an eye,
its rockers having scarred the floorboards.
In the corner, discarded Easter baskets
melt into wicker tumors filled with
fossilized foil-wrapped chocolate eggs.
The beams hum with termite hymns—
tiny jaws dissolving joists
into sacred dust.
But open the window~
catch the updraft of cut grass
from the yard below.
It wrestles with the gloom,
this breath of living things,
and for a moment,
the attic remembers the world.
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