the bucket's cold aura
blooms in white,
though planted seeds,
already read your eyes.
one day's rain
trips out of her rust,
and holds sun,
or a northern hand;
becoming the light
for the ground, made wide
God's weeping
returns weeping —
full like water filling up steel;
pain...now a lily.
The year, 1491
just ahead of 1492
The year before Columbus
sailed the ocean blue
Imagine a world before
America was known
One year before stodgy loyal royals
encountered the planet’s first freedom zone
July 25, 2026
Entry in 1491 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Brian Strand
I saw you for the first time today as a lady.
You were sitting in the sand in the late day sun,
Your face framed by the broad-brimmed hat.
You smiled so beautifully under that,
That even your father could see the lady inside.
I saw you for the first time on your birth day.
And I thought I’d never seen a song til then.
But angels whispered and parents prayed
So fervently that angst was stayed.
And the Father blessed the lady inside.
I saw you for the first time as a woman.
It had somehow not occurred to me til then.
That you could have a life apart from me
Or anything other than this family.
But even fathers, someday, must see the lady inside.
I met with Him
Before we were nothing forever.
I did not speak of feelings;
The strength of my words
Could not be measured.
It was enough that I was with him.
As the sun is with the air,
As day mingles with night
in the twilight and in the dawn;
Two Oceans overlapping,
Caressing every shore.
In every moment we shared
I absorbed him.
He will remain in me
Long after I am gone.
I will carry him with me
Until I reach my end.
And He will know,
Forever:
That He was Loved.
I saw you again today.
On your way to a train stop somewhere on my route home.
Just like how I saw you yesterday, actually.
About two roads down,
you passed by me while I was driving around just to roam.
I saw your face as I sat to eat with my darling partner.
You would love to meet them.
I see you a lot recently, actually,
It's an epidemic the way I see you but never say hey.
But I always found it odd.
How you cut contact with the world and moved down to the same routes I take now.
Your last words to me were something like —
“Im sorry you won’t ever see my face again.”
And sent me a selfie.
A cruel cosmic joke told by the best comedian I knew.
They say when your friend commits suicide, they’ll stay in your life forever.
I always called it stupid,
They won’t be there forever, they died and you never saw them in person.
But I saw you today.
On a bus ride to nowhere.
You turned to look at me and I could almost swear…
You smiled.
I saw you seated by the flame,
You outshone in frame and name.
This hand for faint a line I blame,
That has not painted you too well.
I searched you in the jostling crowd.
Your being when I saw set my core aloud.
Such face as yours is not behind the Cloud
As nature still has painted you too well.
Lest I give you o’erwhelming praise,
The doubting Thomas would think me crazed.
They would not credit what my poor tongue says,
Yet well they know my tongue is not a useless Swell.
She stood beside my desk one day,
her voice a calm, encouraging sway,
and whispered hope in her own way~
she saw the light in me.
Her chalk-stained hands drew worlds so wide,
inviting me to step inside,
to trust the words I tried to hide~
she saw the light in me.
When doubt pressed hard against my chest,
she named the strengths I’d not confessed,
and urged me gently toward my best~
she saw the light in me.
Now, when I start to write,
her presence is with me, warm and bright,
the teacher who first named my light~
she saw the light in me.
I saw a wild daisy, and it made me think of you.
Standing tall and strong, out of rocky soil it grew.
A sadness crept over me like none I ever knew.
I missed the nearness of you.
Your smile, our chats, holding your hand.
When I saw that flower defiantly stand,
sunny face upturned towards the sky
I am reminded that death is not goodbye;
perhaps this is you come to say hi.
she came across quickly
in a fleeting zip
my husband asked if I had seen her
I had not
I thought he was seeing things
because he was
he kept pointing to something I could not see
until I was ready
she was not a ghoul, merely a spirit
ghost might be a word for her
she moved silently through the room
and disappeared
I kept my mouth shut
pretending I saw nothing
The woman pondered
If what shwe has seen
Of the empty raft
Was it really there?
Where did the person go?
As far as she knew
No one was missing
Yet the raft was empty
What happened here?
She has returned back
To the river bank
Trying to figure out
What had happened here
She was looking closer
The raft was empty
No clues were seen there
She went on the land
Searching for clues
She spotted a jacket
The other shoe not found
She spotted a jacket
All found on the ground
There was no shelter
With no campfire
There were many clues
That did not make sense
No one was there to be seen
What happened here?
Clues told her nothing
What happened here?
Where is the missing per4son?
No one reported missing
How did the shoe and jacket
get there?
A mystery unsolved
I stand on the shore.
Sand tumbles upward
through my hair and the
wind cradles me like a cast.
I crane my neck and follow
the breath, impossible angles
forming along the faults
in my spine,
and gaze at the sky.
Fireflies dance there
in that impossible black
and they touch the sand
and it is glass.
I open my hands to catch them
but nothing ever comes.
They swell with radiance,
and smile as they float away.
I saw my mom in a dream,
but it was not a dream at all.
It was a shadow stitched from silence,
a nightmare draped in the shape of her.
Each step I took, she drifted further,
a ghost tethered to my heartbeat.
Her lips moved, calling my name—
“Neo,”
but the sound dissolved in the air,
vanishing before it could reach me.
The floor beneath me was water,
and the walls around me bled light.
I ran, I reached, I stumbled—
but she was always away,
always a breath ahead,
always a memory I could not touch.
And I woke,
with her echo still clinging to my chest,
a whisper I could not escape,
a dream that did not end,
a nightmare that followed me
into the quiet of my own room.
As i saw the world fall apart
I saw the flowers lose their
Spark i saw the water take
Over the flowers fall i saw
The world fall apart the
World lost it Spark
I heard cries
saw swarms of fist
crack heavens walls
I knew at a ripped age, how
and how not to be.
Nights, I held these ears closed
in hopes to drown this house
that shook like an earthquake.
I learned to pick up clouds of
body parts that lingered from
stormy rains
I wiped mirrors clean with bleeding
hearts, stuck in sunken repeat.
Thorns pricked these tiny fingers
as I placed mishaps of I Love Yous
in glass jars.
I saw my mothers pinched face in a
constant contortion of why's, masked
by pleasing smiles to ease the thunderstorm
I was nine picking up shattered formalities
calling dysfunction normal
I remained quiet, hid in cupboards that
were dollhouses
But, the floods that consumed her washed ashore
and these ears were now home to roars that once
echoed in her room
A woman went walking
On the river trail
On a sunny day
Someone went rafting
Along a river
When she got closer
On the river trail
She noticed a raft
The raft was floating
No was on it
She thought it was strange
That no one was there
She looked all around
To see anyone
On the ground or hurt
There was no one there
She pondered a thought
Maybe someone drowned
Yet she thought
Maybe they got saved
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