Short Stragglers Poems

27
Stragglers 
Behind
Up for
Rewind
Maybe
This time
She will
Kiss me
Without
Speaking...

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stragglers in the group
assist as reflex response
lest dreams turn to dust

10-February-2022...

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Green patches
of lawn
surrounded by
flurries of leaves
demarcation lines
peace zones
Occasional puffs of wind
light, easy, unhurried
scatter a few stragglers --
swept along
a couple or three meters
then still
at rest again
they await last rites......

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there
it
stood 
tall
majestic
solemn
facing outward
piercing the night
scrutinizing the horizon
looking out
for stragglers
lost desperate souls
drifting at sea
to guide them home



AP" 2nd place 2020
Submitted on December 21, 2018 for contest LIGHTHOUSE sponsored by EVE ROPER...

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It is late autumn with windswept trees,
Now stripped of leaves
Once vibrant with colorful hues,
Now dull, lacking brilliance, or
Windswept and leafless.

Oak trees, deeply rooted, now
Russet and muted
Stragglers, rarely leafless til spring.
Setting the mood bleak,
It is late autumn with windswept trees....

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Steam from fresh ground coffee
Mixes with smoke from cigarettes.
Syrup mixes with butter.
Eggs mix with toast.
Clinks of forks on plates
Mix with clanks of spatulas on the grill.
Last minute bar stragglers
Mix with early morning risers.
Morning crew coming in
Mixes with night crew getting off.
It's shift change at the diner.
Time for me to mix with my bed....

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A bloodied sword
  found on the battlefield
Corpses strewn about 
  in the dark and dirt
The fallen lie on consecrated ground 
  Their eyes blank, their limbs cut
  Stragglers walk on this field
Their memories of peace 
  dying with each step 
So the wicked winds of mortality 
have come to claim their own 
They thought they were.......
But reality came forward 
Snuffing out that candle...

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The ground is thawing,

Winter's demise draws near.

Eagerly I await the first buds of spring.

Snowdrops so tentative

Have raised their faces to the light.

The first green shoots

Have appeared on lilac bushes.

While the sun shines brightly

A handful of wayward flakes

Make their way earthward.

The last stragglers of the season.

As if swept from Heaven's floor

To land at our feet....

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I see the small flashes of the last remaining fireflies in the dark September sky. A couple of stragglers, unaware that even in the warm night, that summer is drawing to an end. Apparently they had not received the memo the rest of their brothers had. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one aimlessly flying around, clueless to the enviable change. Goodnight lost little fireflies. Goodnight kindred spirits of the warm September night......

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.


As a judge in a poetry contest 
elimination,
Look carefully before jumping 
into a conclusion.

Printed words may look like black 
ants in batallion formation
Or squads of stunned stragglers 
crawling out without direction.

Oftentimes they appear as chunks 
or slices of random thoughts
Strewn haphazardly on the pages
 like burnt wings of moths.

In them you may not see creative 
spark or inspiration,
But behind haphazardness may be 
imagination!

....

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FIRST - ACT I

                 stragglers,
                 mad of
                 pandemic...
                 introverts,
                 suffocated and
                 masked...
                 we livef
                 our neuroses
                 paralyzing...
                 no antidotes
                 no shelters...
                 only poetry in us
                 comforts like hypnosis
                 the body and soul
                 in symbiosis......

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