Tumbleweeds traverse silent plains,
Their journey shaped by wind and longing,
Unbound by roots, always moving,
They carry the stories of deserts,
A dance of freedom across sunbaked earth,
Each turn a testament to resilience,
No home, yet everywhere belongs to them,
They rise, tumble, and embrace uncertainty,
Strength found in the motion of winds,
Nature’s wanderers, never defeated,
They teach us to let go and trust the journey,
To find beauty in unfamiliar places,
To discover ourselves within the vast unknown,
And celebrate the courage to keep rolling forward.
In defense of a poet who didn't deserve harsh words.
You know the saying... 'If you have nothing nice to say..."
I'll not write a reprimand for two rolling bumblers
that stumbled over themselves in the last two days.
Some people live in a haze, throwing shade at others,
I won't throw hot coals on their heads.
They'll just keep rolling, rolling, rolling,
hopefully into oblivion.
Another reminiscence of West Texas. There have been many times in my life when I have felt very much like...
Tumbleweeds,
Lonely searching souls
Adrift on ever-shifting sandy seas,
Roll blindly by.
Spindly, prickly fingers
Rasping, grasping,
Scraping, scratching,
Trailing skeletal ribbons
Behind them in their wake,
Ephemeral reminders
Of their sad, brief passing
And their desperate,
Vain attempt
To reconnect with earth,
And life,
And each other.
In a brutal landscape of arid desolation,
Under a relentless and unforgiving sun,
Tumbleweeds,
Unwilling vagabonds composed, perhaps,
Of memories of where they've been,
Tumble onward,
Forever impelled by an also searching,
And equally lonely,
But coldly impartial desert breeze.
Lies, like tumbleweeds,
Blow, rootless, across
A mindless landscape.
Detached from reality,
One rolls into another,
Collecting, growing
Into a formidable
Tangle of deceptions.
Far and wide they travel,
Dispersing along their way
Their dormant seeds --
Rumors and half-truths,
Alternative “facts” --
And they tumble on,
But the deed is done.
The seeds that fall on
Fallow land
Will take root there
And flourish,
Spreading and growing
Until their “truths”
Become “facts”,
And they crowd out Truth,
Left behind in the dust.
A sight that no one really needs
Is piles and piles of tumbleweeds
But that is what I do believe
Was seen out west on New Year's Eve.
Along a stretch of highway there
Were tumbleweeds beyond compare.
The road was closed for 20 miles,
The drivers stuck not sporting smiles.
It took the crews 10 hours or more
To make the highway like before.
Though New York City has its faults,
Our weeds do not do somersaults!
The wind, careless in its airy freedom,
Feverishly furrows the prairie grass.
With a cry like a lost spirit, it winds
And wails through leafless trees and toothless fence
To vent its eager force upon the boards
Of a lonely, weather-beaten farmhouse.
Afternoon sun shines ashen and mottled,
In slim slanting shafts, through a smoky pane,
Opaquely painting a penumbral room.
Dust motes dance before an empty stone hearth.
A man, like a silent sentinel, sits
Dreamless, and loveless, between the bare walls.
Wearily wringing his wrinkled thin hands,
He sloughs his solitary years away,
Staring sleeplike out an open screen door
Where stands a windmill, in still-life, framed.
Tumbleweeds pile against the west house wall;
And a plough lies broken in drifted sand.
Oh my beloved skeleton boy
You filled my heart with so much joy
Your hands so nimble in their sockets
Your heartless chest- set off my rockets
My pulse did race with each new scare
like when you looked down at me …from the stair
a ghostly aberration seen
wafting behind your cool death screen
But my skeleton boy… at this pace
we will only find happiness... in graves embrace!
Please lift the shroud that covers your face
let me know more of your ethereal grace
No flesh of skin nor plush armed capture
is needed to enlist my rapture
I was yours and yours alone
from that first night you toppled …from your throne
You sauntered over to my dimensional space
and asked me grinningly ...to dance in place
you offered up a ghostly ride
how was I to know ...t'was a tsunami tide
that would quickly ..............take me out to sea
and rock me forever
.....like a tumbleweed
Tumbling Tumbleweeds
God saw fit to give unto them birth,
no beauty in its display while upon the earth.
Quickly the wind throws them about to wander
there are no need of boots to travel over yonder.
Along the countryside not rare,
In due season cast aside their seed to share.
A plant in pursuit of it’s purpose or fate,
existing in harsh or arid soil with no debate.
In the eye of the beholder a work of art.
With a little work or spray paint to start.
It takes a few trinkets, bows, maybe a star or two.
Let your imagination fly high for it’s up to you.
Like the tumbleweeds that blow in the wind,
God yearns for all to have purpose and find.
Without it, we are like the tumbling tumbleweeds,
if you do not seek the wisdom of the Bible and read.
By tiptoe
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