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Best Poems Written by Sherry Asbury

Below are the all-time best Sherry Asbury poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Garden of Graces

Growing older is a garden of graces . . .
disgraces, wild goose chases, closed in places.
It is an imperceptible tottering of time on a
conveyer belt, where at the end time drops
into the slipstream and becomes the mobius .

Growing older is wanting to be older when
you are young and younger when you are old.
You wish away the days, never dreaming that
you would give a king’s ransom to have them 
back once again, treasured, appreciated.

In our youth, we squander time, kick it to the curb.
In our older years, we try to tie it to ourselves.
Age sneaks around when we aren’t looking, spreads
its poison pollen and is gone without our seeing.

The business of living distracts us from noticing
until it is too late, when we look into a mirror,
only to behold the ruthless signs smothering us.
It is realizing men no longer turn and whistle.
You have become invisible, crayoned out until
some young man says, “Grandma, the time?”

Growing older is smelling of Icy Hot instead of
Beautiful by Estee Lauder, seeing people sniff.
It is keeping L`Oreal in business long past the time
you want to stop, but can’t bear those gray hairs
that are the mute testimony to the inexorable decay

Growing older is breaking the shackles of propriety
Wearing that purple, and at least four sweaters.
It is joyously realizing you don’t care a fig what
people think or say about you or anything else.
You can laugh at the absurdity of fashion, style.
It is the delicious capability to say anything
you want, vent your opinions, disagree.
You say the most outrageous things freely,
and are forgiven, because you are getting
more than a little fey and just a little dotty.
And, oh, growing old is the sweetest blessing,
for you no longer are frozen in fear at death
and it's coming soon, for your years have
worn you out and everything changes so much
there is scarcely anything left of your world

What does it matter what god you worshipped
This earth has been hell enough for an eternity
and if there be heaven, it is icing on the cake

Details | Sherry Asbury Poem

Dandelions and Roses

Of Dandelions and Roses

Among the bricks and stones
dandelions persist, finding
any smallest egress to pop 
through.

My Irish Grammie called me
her "Rose so sweet"
Truth is - I am a dandelion

Life tried its best to quell my growth
Circumstances played jacks with my life
Always, some persistent genetic inner seed
grew to maturity and became a will of iron
wielding a mace most fierce

Like a child's paddle ball, I bounced back,
no matter how many smacks came my way
Life paved me over, but, determined,
I broke the pavement again and again

Roses are sweet and elegant and fragile
Dandelions are pugnacious warriors

Rose are clipped and put in pretty vases,
dandelions force themselves toward sunshine

I am a dandelion

Details | Sherry Asbury Poem

Crone

Nothing savored Nothing cherished
Chewing wood, spitting silk 
Hating every creeping moment
till darkness lowers and laps at my toes
Blessed darkness gives me a cave 
where I may retreat from all hateful, glossy life -
oblivion with eyes wide open 
Monumental sorrow grinds my guts to dust
Hopelessness, a perversion that licks my ear
and whispers obscene melodies.
An ache to take out the tools 
used to mark my hatred on myself
Hope is a lie believed by fools and sinners 
That baked desert called my mind spits dust on dreams.
Trapped by iron bars bleeding despair 
my face is a pale moon of desolation 
peering out on savage scenes of normalcy.
Fingers tremble on the keyboard 
longing to smash its plastic against my head.
Some say how sweet and gentle I am
I can’t wait to escape and laugh at their gullibility. . . 
had I an ax I would chop off my haunting countenance
and hide the pieces in brown paper bags
flung into back yards around the town
Am I sweet and gentle as they say 
but refuse the treacle of the words
Or have I acted upon the stage so well
I have become what I loathe to be

Details | Sherry Asbury Poem

Red Heart Balloons

Sitting on a bench one day
looking up at an azure sky
I did see red heart balloons
as they slowly drifted by

Crimson kisses among 
clouds like cotton candy 
Bouncing over green trees
and beaches golden sandy

Dipping down in the wind
they danced atop lilac trees,
then rose again in splendor,
blown by a gentle breeze

What hand had loosed
this treasure into the day
Some lover who wanted
to give his heart away?

I longed to gather them,
return each and every one
they were beyond my reach
as they soared toward the sun

Details | Sherry Asbury Poem

Wind Song

In my chair near the window
I can hear the wind howl through
the brick, and echo off concrete
as it passes its rumors fro and to.

The whisper of the wind calls my
name as sweetly as a lover might.
I shiver at the nip of its sharp teeth,
pull my old blanket round me tight.

Once winds of spring murmured
to me of love and delight to be had.
Told me stories of things awaiting me,
whispered softly of the good and bad.

Summer wind sang to me of desire.
Hot flames that no wind could tame.
Blowing hotly round my curiosity,
delighted with its erotic naughty flame.

September winds were slow and sweet,
cooling the fever of a riotous mind.
Winds that whispered of contentment,
winds that were so soft and so kind.

Now winter’s wind circles me round,
seeking small places that it may creep
under my blanket and blow frigid on
my toes as I prepare for final sleep.

Oh, it whispered to me all my life,
but I never noticed it was even there.
I shiver as it tells me tales of other
universes, but soon I will no longer care.

Details | Sherry Asbury Poem

Old Women

Old Women

Old women are forgotten wombs
whose graceless bodies have fed
the word, then been sent
to sit in its shadow
not quite seen, not acknowledged,
not nurtured

They are more patient than God

Old women are crucified
with nails of oppression and poverty
Equality is a Damoclean Sword
when age freckles out-number
soft, sweet patches of youth

Old women have scarred and bloody knees
from kneeling in submission to lesser minds
who felt bigger from the looking down

A rosary of sorrows is strung
through the weary fingers
of old women
They are hung on the crucifix of youth 
and beauty to wither into dust

Alone in cubicles and corners,
frayed photos beneath their coats
Old women remember children
who have long forgotten them

They do not seek a man’s arms,
for that is not a refuge, but a honeyed trap
where souls are flayed beyond recognition

Such wondrous minds
Living libraries of  life
Vision and experience left untouched
because it is not behind a pretty face

Behold the woman
She is a wealth of wisdom, power,
beauty and courage
yet she is left beside the road
of living

Her reckoning will come
Until then...she endures

Details | Sherry Asbury Poem

My Autumn

My Autumn


Spring and summer are mostly for the young,
when ideals and mores are upon us strung.
Now is the Autumn of this woman's life,
a passing through childbirth and being a wife.

Now do my beloved rains begin with showers, 
and through the woods, I brave the green towers.
I have loved Autumn rains from childhood to now,
spending hours seeing the trees sway and bow.

My beloved is the place where nature sings,
I revere all the beauty that she sweetly brings.
Give me not a public-house or sprawling mall...
give me an Autumn rain and trees so very tall.

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Ghosts of Glory

Ghosts of Glory


They came to Auschwitz and Treblinka...
they tore down the walls that confined us.
How we wept with joy as the SS officers
were taken away - we spit in their path,
those of us still able to call up sputum 
from lungs tortured with malnutrition
and iron beds that bore no blankets
for our bones.

My sleeves are covering the number
they burned into my arm, taking away
my humanity and rendering me nothing.
A young soldier takes my arm,
he has tears in his eyes as he
tells me he is from Texas...there are
no other words he can pull from his
young, shocked brain.

When you see this picture -
remember these words:
“All it takes for evil to flourish 
is for good men to do nothing”.

Details | Sherry Asbury Poem

The Poor and Lonely

Today someone praised a poem I wrote
It is about considering the disenfranchised
at this supposedly jolly time of year
Why, she said, just think about all in need,
why not spend Christmas with them, she asked

Amazingly enough, that is just what I do, 
For you see I am one of the poor and disabled
whose SSD checks just do not stretch to month's end
All who live in my building experience much the same,
depending on food boxes and the generosity of others

We come in all types and sorts, full of warts and woes
Mental illness has felled a number of us terribly
They closed the hospitals and mental facilities
Just can't afford them, government says, so out
they were tossed roam the streets, incapable and lost

Poor choices plagued many tender, women who loved,
or thought they did, men who beat and burned them,
took their money and left them ill and unable to fight
Years of abuse, wisdom awakened, years more to heal
to even a bare minimum of capability to survive

So, dear tender lady, with heart of gold, trust when I say
I live with the broken and poor and lonely each day

Details | Sherry Asbury Poem

Comes the Night

Evening Hours 

An azure sky is being defeated 
by a shadow world where
a persistent half-moon is already
making its way up the silken expanses 
of blackest night

A horse whinneys, spooked
by the rattle of an old 
lawnmower on its way to the shed. 

Mosquitoes, agitated, smell blood
in veins that evade their foray,
then try to find egress
through kitchen window screens

A limousine glides through
the dusk, empty, but proud
A raggedy convertible pulls up
The driver pets the fur of his
small dog

Both must stop at a traffic light
while an old man with one leg gone
is sweating to get his wheelchair
across the street before
the light changes

A silver haze from too much heat,
lasting too long, shivers over 
shadows in the park, where a
street man has curled up on
a wooden bench.

The half-moon tips its crescent
toward a statue of a soldier
on horseback, saber raised,
hat on straight

A slip-slap of slippers sounds
on the still-warm concrete
as a young woman puts out
a letter to be gathered 
by the mail man.

The evening smells of roses
attar burning the nose with musky beauty
Murky pools of gathering night 
darken the corner the corner
where daisies grow