My husband's poetry

Category: daily life

  • Parking lot civics

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    cfblack
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    Last night, I dreamed of the old man who used to rest his hand on my head while talking with dad in the parking lot after church. He lived in an old clapboard farmhouse where gravel turned to blacktop and subdivisions grew among the corn. Rooted in old settler stock, he ran for state legislature…

  • Momma said

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    cfblack
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    Momma said, Take your shoes off on the back porch, I just mopped the floor. Leave you muddy clothes out there, too and keep your dirty hands off my clean wall. Momma said, Come eat, clear your plate before TV, quit picking on your sisters or I’ll beat knots on your head. Momma said, It’s…

  • Sunday

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    cfblack
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    Sitting on your porch reading a magazine and you want to Google the veracity of a statement and you can’t. Sitting on your porch reading a magazine and you want to Google the veracity of that statement, but you’re too damn lazy to go inside and get on your computer and you don’t. Sitting on…

  • Day old Tang

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    cfblack
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    On the western edge of Eastern Time Pink and lavender clouds curtain the horizon You race west into the sunset Before your cell phone clock Back flips into Central Time You haven’t bothered to calculate the spin And tilt of the earth, the angle And slope of the road or the speed of your car,…

  • next week

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    cfblack
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    All his life He imagined himself A great painter And swore He will start painting Next week Sixty years later He imagines himself Having his first retrospective At a famous New York gallery Aspiring young thespians Serve cheap wine And fancy finger food Last night He woke up Stressing That he still hadn’t Started the…

  • migrations

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    cfblack
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    The geese have been gone two weeks now Only the heron and turtles remain. Our grandson and his girl friend fly home to Indiana Saturday. Our quiet routine returns until next summer. We miss the solitude of loneliness And the noise and bustle of family, But if we must choose between the two We will…

  • Monday morning

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    cfblack
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    He stirs last night’s ash Blows a spark to flame Sips his coffee warm Nods to the night shift nurse, who goes four times around the park Smiles at the muscle shirt dude Who walks three dogs and never scoops Greets the bright colored walking stick lady All dressed in white Watches an anole race…

  • I26 near Spartanburg

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    cfblack
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    near the border near sunset near home pass through storm’s edge on the other side sun still hangs on horizon multiple rainbows prism the sky semis shed water streams windshield wipers on high tires hydroplane steer back control race on towards home 7-20-22

  • naps

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    cfblack
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    …forgive me if I take more naps than I used to on the backs of my eye lids maps etched of places I’ve been and places I still want to go vignettes written of folks I know and imagined conversations with folks still here and folks now gone I’m not tired I’m just planning where…

  • the vanity of underachieving

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    cfblack
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    Send me 21st century Proverb to hang my hat on; push me to do more My adolescent self found Ecclesiastes and I have been too lazy to go beyond “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” I have two decades left and need to make up for 70 years of underachieving So send me a 21st…