Home » Poems » Best » Barbara Peckham » Best Barbara Peckham Poems

Best Poems Written by Barbara Peckham

Below are the all-time best Barbara Peckham poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

Untethered

Salt tears drip from leaves, 
to land on tea-colored pages.
Hopes and dreams, 
written in the ink of history,
slowly blur and drip 
into the underworld of the
abandoned and long forgotten.

Salt waters of the ocean
and tumbling waves turn 
stones and pebbles to sand,
erasing familiar shapes
and throwing up barriers
to once precious memories.

Dimming eyes look out on
unfamiliar landscapes of a mind
inching inexorably into
a vast emptiness that steals 
learned behaviors, abilities,
and the past, leaving nothing.

The empty eyes wander
but do not understand, for
the spirit that occupied this frame
has broken earthly chains.
It now soars free, no longer captive
to expectations and this mortal life.

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

A Nation Lost

A Nation Lost

When did it happen
that we became
a nation of haters?
Not just the few hate groups,
but millions of us.

What happened that
we have turned neighbor
against neighbor?
Caused people to be afraid
to pray outside of their
chosen sanctuary?
Made small children fear
their parents will be taken away?

When did it become okay
to mock disabilities,
to prey on people’s insecurities?
We had made progress,
though much still needed to be done.
With just one single election,
we took a giant leap
into the past,
dredging up old divisions and
creating new ones.

Threatened is the security
of health care,
carving away hard-earned benefits
of the indigent and elderly,
cutting food stamps for
those who are most needy,
decimating the environment for greed,
depriving our children and grandchildren
of their rightful inheritance,
destroying Nature’s good earth.

But forget religion of any kind.
We now worship money.
Democracy? Forget that, too.
Our oligarchy is healthy
and growing healthier every day.
But don’t ever give up!

Do not slip quietly into
the land of darkness and hate.
Speak up. Fight for truth.
It is up to all of us to shine light
into the blackness and work to
restore goodness and democracy
to our nation.

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

Letter To a Soldier - a Trilogy

LETTER TO A SOLDIER
A Trilogy


I.  SONGS OF LOVE

Love walked with me
In the crisp fall air
In a shower of gold and red.
Love showed me the print
Of a doe’s foot
And where she made her bed.

Love sat by me
And warmed my heart
Under winter’s starry sky.
Love fitted my soul
With gossamer wings
And taught me how to fly.

Love rode with me
Through soft gray mist,
Through feathery palest green.
Love opened my heart
And looked within
Where no one had ever seen.

Love walked with me
And held my hand
On a breathless summer hill.
Love lay with me
In the soft green grass,
And time and the wind stood still.

The sun was hot
And the green grass sweet,
And the leaves whispered quiet above.
With cherishing words
And gentle hands
You taught me the songs of love

II. WHY?

Sometimes, at unexpected times, 
The bittersweet memories flood back.
Those magic years when the 
Days and nights were endless
And seemed to run seamlessly,
One into the other.
When life itself was today,
Only the present, 
Never the past or future. 
Only the moments we seized.

We drank them in greedily, 
With abandon, spilling carelessly
As if we would always have enough!
Away from studies, we roamed 
The hills and woods of West Point.
We climbed the redoubts and
The lichen-covered rocks under
Trees of another century
That leafed out to cover us,
Keeping close our secrets.

There was that small glade
Where we glimpsed a deer with fawns
And found Jack in the Pulpits
Blooming in a sea of ferns.
We made love on the bed
Of soft green moss by a little waterfall.
So little did we think then of the 
World outside our love – the world
Where, in a far-off Asian country
A war would crush our dreams.


But, inexorably, the day came 
When we both were graduated, 
I from college, you from West Point.
And, after the celebrations 
Were over, you had to go away  
(We did not know it was forever)
To serve your nation --
Until the day you gave your life, 
At barely twenty-two, in the 
Desolate foothills of South Korea!



III. LAST LETTER

You had to go and leave me.
I wasn’t ready
For the emptiness,
The open sky and vacant roads
And fields and fields and fields!
In the pathways of my mind
I see you waiting still,
With that crooked smile
And waiting, open arms.

Can you see the past? 
Can you feel a sense of loss?
Can you remember the 
Blackberry kisses, 
Juice running down our chins,
While we crumpled up
With laughter in the sun-sweet grass?
That pale, featureless room with
The ugly flowered bedspread
Where we made love, 
Cocooned in blankets, and 
Fought away the dawn?
The frigid Catskills lake,
Buildings boarded for the winter,
Where we laughed and 
Swam and ran out blue and shivering
To the old, green van, where,
Wrapped in clothes and quilt,
We warmed ourselves with coffee
From a thermos and 
Ate ham sandwiches?

Now you are forever gone,
I feel my grief in silence –
No public rituals for me.
And so I add this last letter 
To the small packet in
My hand and light the match.
The wind fans the flickering flame,
And my eyes tear up and sting
As smoke and flames and ashes swirl
Upward, then vanish in the wind.

CODA

Now I rage against the pain
Of all those who since have lost
Fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, lovers,
Against lives squandered, dreams shattered
In frozen mountains of Afghanistan,
In muddy swamps of Vietnam,
In burning deserts of Iraq. 
I wail in the darkness – “Listen!
Listen! Surely God by any name
Never created humankind to hate,
To kill, and do it in His name!”
But why does no-one hear?

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

Waffles

Waffles - Sunday night supper
Butter melting yellow in the
Crispy, tiny square pockets,
Sweet maple syrup and fat sausages,
Glow of lamplight flickering
On dining room window panes
And the warm glow of family
Gathered in happy chatter.

Waffles for breakfast with
Softened butter, cinnamon sugar,
Or strawberry jam, freshly made.
Morning-hungry family with
Plates proffered, everyone clamoring 
For “more waffles, please,
And don’t forget the sausages!”
Bathing suit clad, stoking up
For a fun-filled day at the beach.

Waffles, the best comfort food,
Warm and oozing with sweetness
A counter for your misery
When you’re in bed with the measles
And can’t go outside to play.
Waffles hot from the iron
Or popped up from the toaster –
No matter, just keep them coming!

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

Miss Ocean's Dress

Miss Ocean wears her blue-green dress,
Sprinkled with tiny crystals beads
That sparkle in the morning sun.
She shakes her ruffled petticoats of white
And shows off for the passers-by.
She dances on the jetty rocks
With seaweed hair that streams behind
Before she dips her head again
And swims far out to greater depths
To play with dolphins, whales, and fish
And mermaids in their hidden lairs.
She sweeps the ocean floor and brings
Her treasures to the sandy shore,
A trove of scallops, slipper shells and
Mussels clinging tightly to the kelp.
Empty conch shells, pink and clean,
Pearly stones and worn green glass.
Miss Ocean wears her blue-green dress
Embroidered with tiny crystal beads.
They sparkle in the morning sun.

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

To a Veteran

Thank you for your faith
In the country you so love
That you’d offer up your life
In a cataclysmic strife.
Thank you for your courage
Although you shook inside.
You did all that was needed
No matter what the price.
The noise of guns and mortar
Convulsed the fetid air
You saw beloved comrades
Lie bleeding at your side.
You suffered pain and conflict
When required to kill another
Against what you’d been taught,
To love, not hate, your brother.
We call you strong and brave, 
And admire your fortitude.
But the toll that it has taken
Is in your mind and soul.
To kill for love of country
And the freedoms we possess
Takes strength we can’t imagine
And thanks are not enough.

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

No One Left to Remember

Only three of us now who knew
both sets of our grandparents.
The three of us, 96, 94 and 88,
how much time have we left?
There are sepia photos from the
old, first Brownie cameras, a few
portraits of some from a bit later,
all still, silent, as they were not in life.

Being the oldest, I recall two great-
grandmothers, albeit vaguely,
one only in a darkened bedroom,
the other short, chubby, with the
horn she put to her ear to listen.
My mother’s father, Grandpa Jones,
studied his Bible lessons every day, but
he died when Dan and I were little.

Who but we three now remember the
stern but kindly mother of my dad?
Grandma Pope had endless patience
teaching my small hands to make jam,
can tomatoes, make pie crust and bread.
She had an infectious laugh which sent
tears rolling down her cheeks.
She let me go alone to 
the bakery to buy penny rolls.

Grandpa Pope first showed me a keyboard
and named the keys. An accomplished
pianist and organist, who had worked
for Chickering Pianos, he didn’t play
often any more, as he had toughened his hands
in the factory where he worked during
the Depression, but when he played
everyone was completely entranced.

My mother’s mother, Grandma Jones,
was Boston proper, a wonderful seamstress
and seemingly stern, but very loving.
I often would crawl into her bed at night.
When I had mumps she made me hot chocolate.
She would be sure I had hat and gloves
and take me to lunch at Jordan Marsh.
We did endless puzzles in her sitting room.

So much more to these people than
ever can be seen in a photograph.
Even this poem only scratches the surface.
The love, quirks, personalities are missing.
I suppose, some day, my descendants
will look at pictures of Doug and me
and wonder what kind of people WE were
and what WE really were like.

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

Odd Hours

It’s four AM
I’m wide awake
no chance of more sleep
clicking noises 
from the dining room
low hum
is it voices?
I get up
pad into the dining room.
daughter and grandson
playing Yahtzee
at the dining table
laughing together
grandson worked late
daughter insomniac
I sit down
join the game
daughter finally
peels off for more sleep
grandson and I
continue playing
he makes a sandwich
cuts me up
an orange
I have an oatmeal
cookie with my coffee
grandson decides to 
go to bed
I stay up 
dress for church
write some poetry
it’s nine o’clock

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

Empty

Empty


A hammock swings to and fro in the wind
As if propelled by an unseen foot.
A tricycle lies abandoned by the porch,
One handle grip with its multicolored
Streamers long gone, a wheel missing,
Its once-resplendent pink paint eaten with rust.

The “For Sale” is old. It sways tipsily,
Tilting in the wind, covered in graffiti.
Where is the little girl who used to play
In this lonely and forsaken yard?
Where is the boy who whiled away the hours
Reading and dreaming in the hammock?

Where is the mother who tended these gardens,
Now full of weeds, and the father whose children
Greeted him joyfully at the end of the day?
What calamitous series of disasters
Befell this family, to force them out,
To make them leave the home they loved?

Maybe they sleep now in cheap motels and
Eat their frugal meal at a breakfast bar
Or live in a noisy, overcrowded shelter.
Or do they move from place to place,
Rootless, living in a car, dreaming of that
Joy-filled home they left behind, a lifetime ago?

The staring house now stands bereft,
Bewildered, wondering - where is the family that
Once lived and loved inside its empty shell?
It seems to wait in loneliness, pining for
Those happier days of oh, so long ago,
While the hammock swings to and fro in the wind.

Details | Barbara Peckham Poem

A Woman's Right To Freedom

We decry some Arabic countries
where women are forced by law
to wear burkhas and cover
their faces and cannot speak out.
We speak for them, and ask,
“Where are the rights
of these poor women
who can make no decisions
and cannot participate?”

“Horrors!” we cry.
“In this country women
can make their own decisions
about what they want and
about their own bodies!”
That is, up until now, at least.
For certain lawmakers
would have us believe that our

government should have the right
to tell us we MUST have a child,
once conceived, no abortion,
no matter the financial or
health issues or even rape!
They want no birth control for
those “wanton” women
(Many of them married) who

want to have sex without
procreation in mind!
No more terminations of
pregnancies to save a
mother’s life or to protect
the victim of a brutal rape!
In other words, NO MORE CHOICE!
No doctor's interference.

Other people are given the 
right to decide what
it is a woman has to do.
Less government, they say?
yet the government will now
sit in judgment in our bedrooms?
Shame! Shame on these throwbacks
to a hundred years ago!

Shame on these who would
move our country back into the
dark ages because of personal beliefs.
We hear we must overturn
theocracies and turn them into
secular democracies like ours,
where there is freedom of religion
as we have in this country.

But some who tout our democracy
Want to turn our country
Into their version of a government
by religious fiat, in which
their particular interpretation of
he Bible will determine
what we can or cannot do.
Gone will be options for women!

And gone, also, will be that
precious freedom of religion
our forefathers fought for,
along with the separation of
Church and State that is laid
out in our Constitution!
But it seems the Constitution
doesn't deter our leaders.

Stand your ground, women. Vote!
People of ALL religions or none,
stand your ground as well!
For, if we are too lazy to vote,
too lazy to stake our position in
defending our Constitution,
we will lose everything, whether
we are Jews, Buddhists, Muslims,
Catholics, atheists or, yes, even moderate
or evangelical Protestant Christians.