Sometimes I write poetry.  Things just come to me at the oddest moments and I need to drop everything and write them down.  This poem is short and it’s tight.  One might think it took a short time to compose. It took many hours.

This poem was prompted by a student’s question about a word he found in the table of contents of a book he had taken out of the school library– A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  Instead of using the word “chapters,” they used the word “staves.”  He asked me what “staves” meant and we looked it up together.  After that, the word grabbed ahold of me and wouldn’t let go until I wrote this.

Life’s Blows

Life’s blows cruelly stave a heart,

and bring it, pleading, to its knees.

A heart once shattered,

opens slowly,

letting love leak in.

Loving truly saves the heart,

and lifts it gently with great ease

toward what mattered

all along.

Love’s where you must begin.

This single poem uses very few words to describe what it’s like to grow older.

“Yes”

We are oxymorons, we…

Young minds encased in ancient housing,

full of expectant possibility.

We argue with our groaning bodies,

who tell us “No,” when really,

all we want to do is

live the “Yes.”

Be Loved and  Beloved—I play with words sometimes.  This is a celebration of second chances.

“Be Loved”

Gentle balm

enough to calm

a man of worldly cares–

To my beloved,

I once was thus.

And now,

I am again.

Aren’t we all a contradiction in terms?  Our feet walk in two worlds while our hearts know that our truest selves belong to only one of them.

“Hanes, Her Way”

A “Hanes Her Way” gal stuck inside

“Victoria’s secret” world,

I fail to see that she can know

what I have come to learn:

That love begins inside your head,

and oozes through your hands,

and spreads upon the one you love,

while clear-eyed hearts approve.