A Poem
If I wrote among the willows would the earth receive my tears ?
Would the roots gather moisture and return the pain of years ?
If I dry my tears with ashes and wipe my anguish with moss,
would the day seem less melancholy and the passing less a loss ?
Be with me a moment and I will gather in the rain
All the earth of my humanity and the lightening of my pain …
copyrighted: CMM 2014
Yeats
Yeats in his epitah does say,
chiseled in stone of gray
“If there is one left to cry,
horseman pass me by.”
Trojan men, painted clone,
equestrian power, chiseled stone.
Oh, steed the poet’s cry,
witness to the final sigh.
The pen, the ride, united quest,
invites you near, as their guest.
But when the final blow does come,
please leave by in open run.
I will in spirit lope to see,
all the poets following me.
copyright: CMM
I Will Never Forget
Touching the ground, wet grass, and still morning.
You lie beneath my feet, feet that feel as though
they are sinking into the very void of your presence.
Leaving barren ground to follow without you,
holy ground, hallow feelings of yesterday.
You do not exist in temporal tomorrows of living everyday.
I kneel, to keep from swaying in the feelings of uncertainty.
I want to lie and sleep near you, to feel you again.
A fragment of time, going and gone, and soon to be gone again,
I mix the moisture of the day with the moisture of my tears.
In the passing of life as I seek to find reason,
I bow my head to pray. I feel the swelling of life and death
fertilize the ground inside my grounding, so that I may never forget.
© CMM 2011
The Last Poem
(written by a friend who lost his battle with cancer)
(RIP Jan. 2011)
I have started to cry
causing tears up over my eyes,
but few come out.
A silence spreads
a bit of waiting for new breath,
my face looks up again.
It passes,
tears wiped away,
it passes.
© July 17, 2009
The Book
I picked up your book,
left behind as a gift.
I thought how nice.
Now you have left,
and I think so nice I have the book .
I have the letter you wrote with such eloquent words,
full of philosophy and reason.
Now you are gone and the reason seems mute,
and the philosophy unfulfilled.
Combing my fingers over the checkmarks,
bringing me to attention to the tributes
you made to me, and us, and our friendship.
I feel you presence pour inside of me
and I know.
There is no book, no letter of reason,
no quote of philosophical works
that replace your having died without reason.
© CMM 2013
Coffee Shop Poetry
Voices came in sizes and inflections
telling their lives in all directions.
Stories of anger, mothers and life,
sexual encounters and academic strife.
Nationalities were all represented,
each as they stood an presented.
Works of art in a smoke filled room,
coffee ordered and quickly consumed.
Listeners listened and interpreted the verse
some as a blessing, some as a curse.
Emotions were heightened as one gesticulation
stood on the edge of suicide or elation.
Others subdued in memories of war,
while others recalled the evenings they scored.
Readers and audience like me were all strange,
as we take words and life and uniquely arrange.
Then step to the mic, they gave up their soul,
from the very young to the seasoned and old.
My hair caught the smell of smoke in the air
while I listened and captured the love and despair.
I turned in the end and stood to see
they all were a fraction of reflection of me.
Copyrighted: CMM 2004
Lost Letter
Cleaning my desk,
I opened an envelope stuffed
with keepsakes, cards, letters.
Crinkled against time, some tattered
with wear, I saw an old familiar address.
Pulling it from the pile was like pulling
a friend from the reservoirs of memories.
I opened it, the dust had settled on his words
as ashes and sand settled on his grave.
He had written to tell me that he was diagnosed
with cancer …
He reflected in ink, spilling his frozen moments
of time on the paper, as he waits for the rest of his treatments.
Slipped in the envelope was a picture he had taken
of a seagull taking flight.
It was this, the lost letter, I had looked for
from the past.
© CMM 2013
Sterile Winter’s Return
Cold the sun
which days now come,
a frozen still breath,
a summer now done.
Barren limbs
widows time,
to watch and listen
a quiet sublime.
Oh, but the promise
of summer’s youth,
is lost among dried
leaves now mute.
No wind, no breeze,
does not remain
as time has come,
winter’s season now reclaimed.
© CMM 2012
