Category: childhood

  • haiku for a clover kind of day

    spring clover blooms white childhood backyard memories and barefoot bee stings 4-13-23

  • Mother’s lilies

    Do the lilies still rise up from cold ground by Easter Sunday Mother would marvel at their white gowns moving with the wind. Blossoms on long stems gold dust falling from stamens onto petal lips? 4-9-23

  • The handkerchief

    Dad pulled it from his left back pocket folded to a dry spot and said, “Blow” It grossed me out one small square of cloth for all my siblings lined up in a pew To save my dignity I carried my own handkerchief quit sniffling in church or using my sleeve Sixty years on, I…

  • Mungo Jerry

    When tree leaves grow as big as your hand and tomaters appear on the vine, when cicadas are in full voice and bull frogs bellow dusk to dawn, when squirrels rest in the shadows and you glisten while sitting under a tree, when birds refuse to sing, and ice cream drips before you’re done, when…

  • Childhood memories

    They say a pruned tree bears more fruit. Did the tree ask to be more fruitful? Did it willingly submit? I have been pruned severely, whole limbs lobbed off, abandoned on a orchard floor. Some of my own choosing, some not. If I come for you with my pruning hook, tell me to shut up…

  • The burnishing

    “My first counsel is this, possess a pure, kind and radiant heart” (Baha’u’llah) crow in woods torments squirrel at bird feeder neither of them will quit neither of them will win trauma of growing up love and hate relationships do not go away there is no finish line no final tabulation sum of victory and…

  • at our daughter’s house in Locust Grove, GA

    Daffodils bloom in January, a dozen cardinals gather on the lawn. When the back door opens, take flight and chatter in the woods. Mom would like it here. Dad would like anywhere he can watch the football playoffs undisturbed and fall asleep by halftime in a comfortable chair. I wait to be happy doing what…

  • QAnon childhood inoculation

    squinting into nightfall pink/orange on gray clouds eyelids tired of trying gum grows tasteless throw it out the window mom said, Albert, if a bird eats your gum, it will expand in their belly and explode for a silly moment I feel remorse and then tell myself I’ve never seen a bird drop from the…

  • 4 poems on 1-22-23

    01/22 – today is a day for reading and daydreams and capturing short unnamed snippets of poems that swirl around me #1 A young boy never sees a tree he doesn’t want to climb in his neighbor’s yard, the county courthouse grounds, grandma’s house, the gorilla enclosure at the zoo An old man looks for…

  • Do

    Something in me always says I don’t have time to read the READERS WRITE section of Sun magazine so I pass over it. It must be some childhood trigger which causes me to do this so I continue to do this every month. It’s a habit and I don’t care. _____ When I get to…