I miss the haven of my youth long past
when melancholy melted in the mirth
of sharing time with siblings. What a blast
we used to have. No memories are worth
as much as those when life was still carefree.
If there were worries, they were shouldered by
two parents who looked after family
and did their best to make sure to supply
their kids with the necessities to thrive.
We were not rich, but we were clothed and fed,
and from our parents, we learned how to strive
to meet our goals in future lives we led.
No home is perfect, but I can be glad
as havens go, a great one I sure had!
Is our true love was going anywhere?
After traditional local fun fair
Nothing does compare, with the teasing scare
Where we share, our mature teen age affair
Passing written notes, from pens we borrow
Wonder about future, unknown horror
Sunny blue skies? After we say goodbye?
Studying college courses are new try
Meeting new friends, saying, he’s a nice guy
Semester we wander getting credit
Attend class confessing "should have read it"
Or the other excuse, “I don’t get it”
Compass directs one to the campus bar
Healing wounds from the bloody mark grade scar
Is our true love was going anywhere?
After traditional local fun fair
Nothing does compare, with the teasing scare
Where we share, our mature teen age affair
Passing written notes, from pens we borrow
Wonder about future, unknown horror
Sunny blue skies? After we say goodbye?
Studying college courses are new try
Meeting new friends, saying, he’s a nice guy
Semester we wander getting credit
Attend class confessing "should have read it"
Or the other excuse, “I don’t get it”
Compass directs one to the campus bar
Healing wounds from the bloody mark grade scar
And making out with a long neck lone star
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." ~ Shakespeare, from Hamlet
Demons and monsters, from woodwork, teeming -
tenacious beasts, attack with insistence.
In desperation, it's sadly seeming
they will forever plague my existence.
If I could find a safe sanctuary,
a place to unwind in comfort and peace,
I'd click heels for a godmother fairy,
that my suffering would finally cease.
Yet, perhaps, in a place within my head,
devils are created and amplified,
and the remedy that I need instead -
a new perspective that I've not yet tried.
My mind, no horror chamber and no hell
will be a haven and a home to dwell.
The late-summer track runs blue with deep shade,
While cicadas rasp in sun-whitened trees;
And ask what secret lives inside the breeze,
You clasp my hand where sandy gullies fade.
I show the compass, by the years decayed,
Whose faithful needle leans, and never flees;
We watch the foam that feathers on the seas,
While on the shore our wandering steps are made.
You ask where north goes, in your small voice calm,
As though the world was just this morning born;
You spy a blue-tounged skink beneath a thorn,
And hold a broken shell within your palm.
The compass points its north through dusk and foam;
Your wondering hand points farther still—to home.
Unfold the threads that braved the storm and sun,
The frayed and faded red, the starlight blue,
Its watch is kept, its noble duty done,
Returned from distant seas where freedom grew.
No longer raised to catch the morning air,
Nor guard the quiet dark with loyal keep,
We gently fold the seams with silent care,
And yield the cloth to honorable sleep.
Let gentle embers take the sacred weave,
As burning threads ascend in quiet grace;
No cause for bitter tears or hearts to grieve,
For honor leaves an everlasting trace.
Though vanished from the halyard to the sky,
Its spirit lives in dreams and that never die.
I wander on a journey that may fail
The compass heading points me to true blue
Late Summer is the time I know so well
Accentuated by my thoughts of you
I wonder as I wander through the maze
What separated us as years sped by?
My love for you displaced by cruel malaise
Still on the journey asking myself why
Acceptance is the price I have to pay
I’ll try my best to take the good with bad
Accepting our relationship’s decay
Your absence from my life makes me so sad
To make the best of life remains the goal
My thoughts of you are balsam for my soul
When love's chalice brims with passion's pain
from crooked hands now clenched within your mind
its wormwood draught is less the bile that stains
you spilled to cleanse the earthen floor of time
the rapture of this life now cleans my soul
as it bleeds deep in darker realms of shade
you drove the knife that cut the rose once whole
release my suffering heart as death persuades
this flower keeps no breath within its bloom
now drifting dark beneath the setting sun
flee from this world whose shadows I consume
as my heart dies, its death already done
a crumbled love lies dead inside my heart
buried beneath the lies as you depart
The winter storm rolled in with iron skies,
yet through its roar a pulse of hope stayed bright.
Green leaves, long fallen, seemed again to rise
as wind revived their memory in flight.
I held my life like currency in hand~
each choice a coin I’d saved against the cold.
The storm swept through, reshaping what I planned,
yet left behind a worth I’d never told.
Snow hammered fields, but still a faint green glow
clung to the edges where the frost gave way.
It whispered that the heart can overflow
even when storms turn daylight into gray.
And so, through winter’s rage, I learned to see
how hope can rise—my richest currency.
Written: September 15, 2026, for week's Poetry Challenge:
Autumn Memory
The leaves came loose like letters from the trees,
and skittered silver-gold along the lane;
the wind went whispering through russet peas,
then curled its cool refrain around the rain.
I still recall the harvest's amber light,
the scent of apples crushed beneath our feet;
your laughter lingered, low, against the night,
while woodsmoke made the dark seem warm and sweet.
The pumpkins burned like lanterns by the door,
and dusk drew lilac veils across the field;
we spoke of things we had not voiced before,
as if the year itself had paused to yield.
Now autumn comes, and all the old winds start—
the leaves fall, but they cannot take your heart.
Born then drawn on your birth certificate
A full legal name and identity.
Some simple, short or long and intricate
It follows us always and plain to see.
We learn early on how to write our name
In simple letters or cursive styling
Our name travels with us as plain or vain
Through academia, records, filings.
What of streets, buildings or on monuments
Or long-faded through time and forgotten?
In directories high, like parliaments
Or lineage with children begotten?
In the end, but one written name alights
Is it written in the Lamb's Book of Life?
I wandered out beneath late-summer skies,
a blue so wide it felt like open thought.
The road before me stretched in quiet sighs,
inviting me toward places wonder sought.
A compass rested lightly in my hand,
its needle trembling as if it could feel
the pull of distant paths across the land~
those whispered routes the heart keeps half-concealed.
I followed where it pointed, mile by mile,
past fields still holding sunlight in their seams,
each turn a question, each new step a smile
that rose like wind through half-remembered dreams.
And when the day leaned softly into night,
my wandering felt shaped by blue-tinged light.
COMPASS POINTS
I wander
into the blue
the height
of late summer
Fall's journey around
the corner
I sit & wonder
'Tis another sunrise, bright and yellow.
Yet the world that holds me feels so hollow.
My ev'ry breath is but an empty cask.
Yet ev'ry step I take bears a full flask.
Ev'ry thought that I hold makes the ground quake.
Ev'ry conviction makes the wide sky break.
The path I chose remained a cracked tankard.
Yet my journey is a brimming tankard.
All certainty dissolved, and naught remains.
Each thought gives birth to thought in endless chains.
My life is but a bottle with no hole.
I am the sot who wholly lacks control.
Who am I now to stay here, bound in doubt?
To drink, to think—and still to go without?
Petrichor is a complete vernal scent,
an ache so feral it’s filled with lightning.
Waiting for new plans to make a descent
the past seems to leave the future biting.
Plans slowly unfurl and then start to run,
a hit to the soul spiking bone marrow.
With no need to outsource to anyone,
you’re in control of your own tomorrow.
That urge to defenestrate the outgrown,
when you impel it’s a breath of fresh air.
Nervously investing in the unknown
feels a bit like that initial jump scare.
Choking on such cloying efflorescence
vestige broke in exposing my pretense.
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