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Peggy Brightman Poem
When Poets Shop
Finding a robin on the freeway
is not more startling than encountering
a poet in the condiments aisle
at the market. When worlds collide!
His tall red-bandana'd figure
strides past the packaged nuts
and dried fruits. Warning to customers: he may
declaim at any moment!
Let's make a poem from
the salad dressing shelves--
let the Goddess dressing
humble the Ranch and Italian;
they fall to their knees
before her glory!
Lingering in the produce aisle now,
where the cilantro pretends to be parsley,
luring us to build a hut of scented
greenery, with a roof of leeks
and lemon grass! Forget the
bee-loud glade-- there is an aisle-full
of air fresheners nearby!
Checking out with the cheerful gray-haired
COOP workers, our bags now carry food, fuel in
colorful packaging; our minds
tuck away seeds for future poems.
Peggy Brightman
(c) June 2018
Copyright © Peggy Brightman | Year Posted 2018
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Peggy Brightman Poem
Primavera Comes
Lightly she descends--
her feet move toward us,
over the crest of the Vermont hills.
In her footsteps
spring vernal pools;
in her hair are golden
willow twigs,
tangled goldfinches
with black-barred wings
fluttering.
As she passes,
her breath breathes early violets
and crushed grass, mixed
with notes of woodsmoke and diesel.
She skirts the dusty tractor
tilting down by the brook;
the hem of her garment trails
tin cans and gum wrappers.
At night the peepers sing her coming
in diminishing chorus
Harmonizing with a faint police siren
from the next valley.
Stars are her sprinkled diadem,
Milky Way flowing slow as time,
through black cutouts of trees;
outshown by streetlights.
Tattered, rain-blown, discouraged,
still she comes to us,
Arms scattering lilacs.
-- Peggy Brightman (c) 2016
Copyright © Peggy Brightman | Year Posted 2018
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Peggy Brightman Poem
Dame Gravity
As a dear friend battles
nocturnal EMT home invasions,
fainting spells, falls, forgetfulness,
fading like a plucked peony
my health guilt increases--
what right have I to two legs
that hold me (today)
while others fold under the impact
of an invisible wrecking ball,
collapsing into rubble?
Treachery beneath innocent snow
hid black ice last March,
when my darling slipped, fell backwards.
Knifing pain trapped him for a month in the recliner,
unable to get in or out of a bed.
The therapy pool holds
our motley shimmering wreckage--
aging apples bobbing up
and down; watery reflections quiver,
distort all we were and are.
In the weekly T'ai Chi class
we breathe, spread our “White Crane” wings,
aspiring to float over the carpeted pond;
after class, I push through the underbrush of jackets,
take up my pink cane to exit,
remembering how once I soared
so high that earth seemed distant,
and small below.
Dame Gravity has her say;
she rules all, save imagining;
our bodies bow, obey.
--Peggy Brightman
(c) June 2018
Copyright © Peggy Brightman | Year Posted 2018
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Peggy Brightman Poem
Huge Dreaming Body
This huge dreaming body, spanning two
continents, clothed in rags of prairie grasses,
cloaked in folded ranges, chained in mega malls,
this huge body our America has stumbled,
fallen to her knees in mud and water,
caustic chemicals and filth. Where salmon
once swam, she flounders in shallows.
Where is solid ground? Levies have failed,
dams have collapsed, floods drown all sense.
Her huge body half asleep, lulled by electronic
buzzing in her ears, will she awaken,
doll glass eyes snap open, struggle
to pull her sorry self out of the mire?
Crawling on her belly, she faintly hears fragments
of birdsong, inhales a memory of how she,
America, once stood crowned in clouds,
buffeted by sea winds. Once dared
to be humble and tall.
Peggy Brightman
(c) 10/30/17
Copyright © Peggy Brightman | Year Posted 2018
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Peggy Brightman Poem
Art is Long; Time is...
Art is longer than a heart-beat,
time is shorter than a hand-shake.
David's maker, Michelangelo, made
him taller than a mortal man—
stretching out proportions,
choosing marble of heroic flaw
before his chisel ever
made a mark.
The chosen youth so calm and
self-contained; his fingers gently
cup the stone arrested
by his hip.
Constructed with less care from
common clay, we who gather close to
David's knee, gaze upward at the
sky-crowned youth, his snowy
mute perfection frozen.
Our tiny cameras freeze the stone
forever poised to throw
toward fated death.
Returning here again to Florence
stones, aged by many summers more,
David's stone remains unthrown.
its arc a future still postponed.
Peggy Brightman (c) 2017
Copyright © Peggy Brightman | Year Posted 2018
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Peggy Brightman Poem
A Poem is Not
a lifeline to grab
when your foot slips
near the summit
and the heavens suddenly lurch and loom;
nor a salve for knifing rib pain
when your beloved falls on black ice,
and has to sleep for a month in the
living room recliner;
nor a miracle cure
for a friend's fainting, falling,
repeated midnight rescues,
his paper white face propped on hospital pillows;
nor a school of miracle fishes to
feed unexpected company
at your door; the cupboard bare,
a few crumbs wiped off the table;
but after the lifeline holds, the funeral is postponed,
words may offer up, jostle themselves together--
forming a ladder to climb, a spoon for a warming chowder,
a bridge to somewhere with a slightly different view.
--Peggy Brightman
(c) June, 2018
Copyright © Peggy Brightman | Year Posted 2018
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