relationships

The fire has passed

The embers last

Long into time

The warmth still felt

As the days melt,

life tries to stay kind.

CMM 2021

It was a loaf of bread,

a gift of love.

She struggled to say,

it is all I have.

Times were hard,

her family at risk.

She came to dinner,

from a dark abyss.

Picked as a flower

from spring she left.

Stormed in the winds

and soon was adrift.

It was a loaf of bread,

it was all she had.

she asked please

take it; quietly cried.

Copyrighted:  2018 CMM Publishers

flickering morning fire
quietly throws warmth
across the shadows

no sleep lifts me up
from my warm bed
to sit in the dark

thinking, weighted
yesterdays forge
into serenity

praying in resolution
knowing the day
will be full

copyright:  2017 CMM

I wrote a poem yesterday,

I don’t remember the words

Or what it had to say.

I scribbled it and jotted down

upon old paper

I picked off the ground

Writing quickly so not to forget

It came flowing

The sonnet set.

I found a place

Behind the books

Stuffed it where no others look

Later I promised I would read

The poem of the heart

A now forgotten seed.

©  CMM  2012

I remember the dirt drive laden in gravel just

off the main asphalt country road.

named after generations of people,

who came before me;

We called family.

I wonder how many trips were

taken in and out,

and for what reasons

as we came and went to this place;

we called home.

Generations of successors grounded

into the beginnings of a southern family.

Two world wars and aromas in the kitchen

with Sunday afternoon get-togethers;

everybody knew everybody

An echo of memories sounds into the tomorrows,

old becomes new and the new often forgetting

the once was, just off the gravel road

leading back to the circled drive grounded into a name;

for generations now forgotten.

©   CMM  2008

Smoked-filled room, choke the senses,

tenant’s visits heightens defenses.

Buried emotions, snuffed stale air,

vacant expressions with sunken stares.

All who come to the evening tomb,

cloud their lives within the room.

Clinking of glasses the flame of the lighter,

two strangers meet, become one-niters.

Reaching from trust now long failed,

hopes wrapped up now kept and jailed.

Speaking present, the buried past,

masking in drinks, in hopes it will last.

Long enough to help forget,

strangers, soon lovers, talk and sit.

She now with her tinted hair light,

sits as he listens throughout the night.

Each one look for their night of need,

knowing dawn their guilt will breed.

A different loss, a hollow space,

another night to seek; erase.

©  CMM   2000

I was born with a cowlick,

as they say in the South

It is nowhere related

to parts of a mouth.

If you looked real close

nothing laid down.

Hair stood up everywhere

even the crown

People would notice

then look away.

See only the  pretty girls

no cowlicks, got to stay.

But, even born with a cowlick

isn’t too bad.

Cause it won’t make you happy

and it won’t make you sad.

That’s got to come way deep inside

learning to take cowlicks  all in stride.

©   CMM   2012