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M. B. Poem
When winds collect the forlorn pages
of every newspaper that failed to meet
a sympathetic bystander
I will call you to the porch and
relieve you of your shoes
except you don’t seem to have any on
In which case, we’ll wash your soles
in the kitchen sink
and go on in to eat
There will be an endless supply of
chilled fruit to stain the tops of your shirts
Even if you dance behind your dining chair,
not able to sit for just a moment
when the caterpillars outside have so much life
and the dog needs more petting
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2023
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M. B. Poem
In those days we bought gloves with grip pads
to go with our Nerf footballs
Because our hands were not yet large enough
to pantomime dads that stood too close to the TV
and ran from commercial breaks
We spent hours perfecting lean-tos
playing dodgeball in sweat-filled basements
discussing the perfect capture the flag strategy
and skipping ahead to the battle scenes in action movies
We barely had enough breath to eat
I have done nothing of the sort in years
Now my eyes wither under the glow of computer screen
and my lungs never even catch from the thrill
of bare feet on grass cradling
underdog victory in the last second of the game
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2023
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M. B. Poem
You told me about the whales
How the sinking act of death
from such a massive thing was
actually an instance of creation
How there was in essence
a new world drawn to
the promise of food and shelter,
however fleeting
Until eventually even bones
were broken down
And I wanted to be the whale
For however long it takes to drift
to sleep with you beside me
Waiting to watch the afterlife
unfold in my own rib cage
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2022
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M. B. Poem
There’s not much to love in the land of
72 ounce steaks
Air-conditioned grace droning over
AR-15 soaked Saturdays
Remembering is not the problem these days
Rather it is forgetting that
Children can have new names
If they pick them up with their own hands
The bootstraps have all but worn off
these snakeskin boots
And I am tired of something I can’t put my mind to yet
But I never thought I would love
Bird feces soliloquies
Thanksgiving apart from family
Humidity on top of humidity
Or evenings that never turn to nights
So I’ll just hold my own name
Firmly in soiled hands until I can
Plant it back in the ground
Where it belongs, beside a cool swift stream
Shaded by a bigleaf maple
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2023
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M. B. Poem
The first inevitability of summer is
that your fingertips will never be clean
They will at all times be covered
in fruit juices
strawberries first, then cherries,
watermelon, peaches, blueberries, blackberries
pears and plums if you’re lucky
The only way to cleanse them is to
jump in a lake, sometimes a river
without pretense, whole body at once
in a way that is sure to get water up your nose,
really it’s unavoidable
But a fair trade for clean hands
and conscience
The second inevitability of summer is
that it never has the same number of days
as the calendar shows
Therefore, children have conspired amongst themselves
to steal back handfuls at a time
from the night to counterbalance
I’ve done it once or twice myself
Old habits don’t seem to die for me
they just get harder to cover up
what with the sticky fingers and all
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2023
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M. B. Poem
My father is a diamond in the rough
in that sometimes he would pull
a handful of golf balls from a trash bag in the garage
and hit them into the forest from the field behind our house
on a Friday evening when he had nothing better to do
And now when we go walking, occasionally
when the light hits just so
we stumble across an unwilling time capsule
in the form of a moss-covered golf ball
And remembering one man’s carefree days
we begrudgingly pick it out of the duff
only to deposit back in the garage stash
that hasn’t been touched in a while
May 27, 2023 A Diamond of Time Poetry Contest, Sponsor Julia Ward
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2023
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M. B. Poem
I’ll never forget the beauty of
a stare unabashed and
unwelcome in its own right
The public spaces in which
my mind unravels
from cords pulled tight
against hollow lobes
The centipede that stitches them both
together in the fading light with
tiny purposeful arrogant unwavering
masterful steps one at a time
With no guiding notion
other than grooves in the bark
of twisted branches
Though that very well could be enough
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2023
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M. B. Poem
I hear crosswalk signals in my dreams
their constant metered pace is comforting
the command to wait always a touch too brazen
they never change though
-the signals-
they give the same tired palm reading
I take the hint and wave to cars passing by
I can’t see anything but the sun
reflecting off their tinted windshields
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2023
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M. B. Poem
What do you suppose a star eats for breakfast?
I have always thought that Cheerios make perfect sense
but then again, they must get the flickering just right
I hear a healthy heart is not ideal for bouts of irregular motion
At any rate a breakfast cereal would be in order
there is no shortage of milk in space
as any child could remind you that certain bovines
have a proclivity for hurdling the moon
Nevertheless the question stands
without reasonable means to ascertain an answer
Manages to stir the side of me that
clings to a line of poetry
debates the proper way to walk
listens to the protests of plants cropping up through the cracks in cement
And dares to wonder then
what stars might eat for lunch
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2022
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M. B. Poem
Do you know how loudly I want to proclaim
with my own small voice that
I am not yours
Copyright © M. B. | Year Posted 2023
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