My husband's poetry

Category: childhood

  • For lack of empathy

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    by

    cfblack
    in , ,

    I don’t know why, but fifty years on I thought of you, tall lanky friend of my youth, we used to sometimes talk walking home from high school; me bombastic and loud, all full of myself; you quiet, deferential and shy. We never became close; you a confirmed loner me a loner, hidden beneath layers…

  • Two lifetimes ago

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    by

    cfblack
    in , , ,

    two lifetimes ago, returning from a lonely hike In mushroom mountains sat under a bush, light rain falling in the yard of a church I did not attend Johnny Cash sang about Sunday morning coming down on the radio of an idling car I left my body unburied, never returned and found a new one…

  • Run-on sentence memory of Dad

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    by

    cfblack
    in , , , ,

    My father dropped me off my first year of college, notebooks, pens, a dictionary and Bible in a cardboard box and a dress shirt I never wore on a hanger my mother packed for church and a suitcase of clothes, I was not an easy child to raise and he was nervous about me going…

  • Graveside manners

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    by

    cfblack
    in , , ,

    I still carry my father’s casket, Holding onto the side rail As we pull him from the hearse, Unable to release my grip And say goodbye. I have questions in need of answers And he still won’t give them up, Even in death. I still carry my father’s casket Hoping he answers – just once.…

  • haiku for a clover kind of day

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    by

    cfblack
    in ,

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

  • Mother’s lilies

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    by

    cfblack
    in , ,

    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

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    by

    cfblack
    in ,

    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

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    by

    cfblack
    in ,

    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

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    by

    cfblack
    in ,

    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

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    by

    cfblack
    in , ,

    “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…