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Best Poems Written by Fran Delaney-Barron

Below are the all-time best Fran Delaney-Barron poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

Blm

So black lives matter now we say
their worth now seen anew
While ages past we saw the day
we recognized so few.

But white lives matter too they said
and brown and yellow too
Yet centuries of hidden bled 
‘neith toes of masters’ shoes

Enslavement built our country strong
in goods and crops and funds
A wealthy nation moved along
on backs of murdered sons.

We benefitted, all us here
no matter when arrived
The trials, the deaths of lives held dear,
paid forth while some survived.

To teach, to know our history past
to claim what we have done
to own the wrongs we’ve amassed 
and could never be undone

In knowledge learned we find our quest
to right the wrongs we’ve made
To drop our shields, our acts confessed
True history now conveyed,

Now streets so loud, with anger, fear,
drums beat resounding clatter
How long ‘till we erupt in cheers
that every black life matters.

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

Ladies Who Write

Women of a certain age
Pour hearts out on the written page.
Tarnished by a tangled past
Now silence gained a voice at last.

Between raising kids and husbands too,
And survival, jobs, free moments few,
Recording life behind their eyes,
The chores got done and families thrived.

Beauty wanes, youth’s spark subsides,
But a women’s wisdom steadily abides.
She stares out from her quiet home,
May the drumbeats of her heart be known.

Her favorite pen is close at hand 
The fiercest sword within the land
For the woman who lived the fullest life,
Tells truth of human joy and strife.

Beware they say, she’s old and wise
No longer concerned with outward guise
She’s just as likely to boldly slay us,
To cut us down,and coldly play us.

Unshackled now from mediocrity,
Beware the woman who's been set free.

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

Line and Verse

In sparse words
the poet writes
choosing power
over fluff.

The perfect line
and word
and length
inked on the page.

The poet’s bow
pulled back
taut with arrow set
then flies

to strike a heart
if lucky
if exact
a breath gasped

a pause created
for the words
to step into
and change a life.

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

In the Place Where Nothing Grows

He has no poetic garden to gaze upon
no outside to the inside of this room
Soft breaths of brothers 1, 2 and 3
like the breeze on the asphalt playground
of his tiny school, one mile away.

No light shines in his window
No birds sing hymns from leafing trees
No sign of spring or fall or summer
display beyond the sill.

In this place where nothing grows
is life, but hidden from the world
and the grand and stylish homes
(with their fruit trees and fancy lawns)

Within these walls with brothers 1, 2 and 3
mama collapses, exhausted on the sofa
and papa snores loudly from the floor. 

He prevails with dreams and plans and sadness
in leaps and bounds and setbacks
between school lunches and cafe con leche for breakfast.
In the place where nothing grows, he lives.

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

Season of Instances

Aching cold in swirling grey,
damp, wet, sharp within the freeze.
The loud retort of battering winds.

But then the silence...
a soundless crystal expanse.

The timeless, endless halt 
of all things storm and damage.

A pristine genisis emerges
on the knife -edge of the instant.

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

Coastal

At lowest tide, you shimmer at my feet,
fluid glass thinly glazes my squirming toes
Pacific respite from today’s prevailing heat
The cycle of waves, on and on it goes,
a watered source of lifeforms grand and small
Your mollusk, Pisces, star, survive and thrive,
‘neath waters dark and deep with cloud and squall,
Your oceanic underworld abides
Above, below, each day these worlds collide
Horizons far delineate both spheres
On liquid current surge the wild things ride
Our lives lived out, separately but here,
entwined by water, air, the sand, the sea,
where waves will pass and creatures come to be.

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

Red, White, Blue Yellow

The kids are just fine
On this Wednesday eve
Our lives intertwine
Until one takes leave

On this Wednesday eve
We huddle in the waste
Until one takes leave
From this bombed-out place

They’re readied for school
Packed up for the day
Ballet class in tule
Then we hurry away

Packed up for the day
The evacuations begin
Then we hurry away
From the siren’s din

Distraught by expectations
Life’s daily demands
Guiding child’s aspirations
Mold their lives in our hands

Life’s daily demands
From missiles, we flee
Mold lives in our hands 
As we dodge the debris

We discuss the whole day
Watch the news, sip our wine
In lands far away
We witness war’s crimes

Huddled in lost places
We assess the whole day
Do they hear us, or see us, or know us 
In lands far away?

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

God Is a Flat

Dead and distant.
Someone's personal best friend.

Don't say his name, don't draw his face.

He or She or They are an A Flat or a B Sharp,
or a thought, a spark, or a coming together,
Everything or nothing at all,
or love.
The beginning and the end.
The Alpha dog the scruffy human pack seeks,
roaming wildly in the quest for answers.

God is an A Flat or a B Sharp,
but not a Middle C.
That would just be too ordinary.

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

We Mourn

Each delicious breath,
Every cooling drink.
I salute your passing.

Temperatures we enjoyed,
your breezes stroked my skin,
sunlight played softly,
green fields waved salutations.
I recognize your demise.

Unfiltered sunlight on my face,
the electric drone of insects,
the melodious aviary song,
the dance of sea lions,
the taste of spring water,
Gone in a generation.

The doe greeted me on my trek
to glacier-capped peaks.
Rivers ran cerulean 
reflecting a perfect sky.
I feel the loss.

Gentle rain-soaked pastures
with bouncing young sheep,
gleeful in life’s celebration.
Nature's bounty fed me.
I long for your joy.

We all do.

You splashed riches around us.
We met you with greed.
Overconsumed and ignored,
we changed you,
we hurt you.
We miss you.

An angry you remained,
not joyful, giving, or golden.
still you, but thirsty, lonely, dark.
Alone in your existence,
your children died around you.

You witnessed the deaths,
the floods, the fires,
the famines, the heat.
You mourned with us.

But we broke you, we killed you. 
Your evil twin remains, 
to punish us until a balance returns,
that might save a dying planet.

Details | Fran Delaney-Barron Poem

Ocean Dance

I watched a group of twelve-year-olds
digging in the sand
No older though, for they squealed in laughter
Heads thrown back in the wind
Something in the sand and water excited them
And I swear they did a circular dance around the liquid hole

I drank in the freedom
of those prepubescent boys
So thrilled and free they were that day
that I became invisible as I passed.
I wondered to myself
Had I ever laughed so fully
in the whole of my existence?
I hope to do so someday
now that I see it can be done.