Peaceful Leonids

For Sherry’s Prompt at Real Toads, Wordy Saturday, places of healing.

 

Peaceful Leonids
Lying in the darkness in the cold night
Wrapped in my grandmother’s quilt,
I watch the Leonids weaving light in the black sky
singing their way to earth.
Peace coming up from the earth
And down from the sky.
I watch the meteors bursting into light
And I am healed.

leonids November 2018

Aunt Pearl

For Kim’s Quadrille prompt over at dVerse. The prompted word is “earth”. The song was one of my Aunt Pearl’s favorites and she taught me how to sing and play it on the guitar when I was 11.  Two versions:  Aunt Pearl’s favorite by Mr. Hopkins and my favorite by Fats Domino

Aunt Pearl
My Great-Aunt Pearl was an earthy woman.
Lush, sensual, nurturing.
She used to play blues on the guitar and sing,
her voice roughened from cigarettes
And scotch.
She taught me to play the guitar.
Black curly hair and sapphire eyes.
A truly beautiful soul.

 

Our Home

overgrown Detroit

Our Home
“I’m a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us. Maybe some fuzzy animals will go with us, but there’ll be plenty of other animals, and they’ll be back. Anthony Bourdain”

The moon is a peach in the sky.
The stars are sparkling grape tomatoes.
The cicadas are singing now.
They’ve emerged from their underground homes.
Watching the garden grow
in the dark of the universe.
I hear the nightly owl fluttering overhead.
With all the beauty around me
I mourn.
The orca’s skull can be seen beneath her blubber
as she carries her dead calf on her emaciated body.
The calf kept sinking as the mother
tried to push her towards the surface of the water.
So much beauty in this earth
and it is rotting beneath our feet.
The earth is an overripe peach
long past its maturity.
One day maybe we will be gone
and all that remains will be the skeletons of cities
poking through the overgrowth
with whales and deer and wolves
living in our place
roaming free and safe.

local peaches

12/21/12 12:21 am

The earth softly turns

In its sleep.  A sigh in the

Dark.  Sussuration.

 

A half moon gently

Glows through India ink tree

Branches.  Bare.  Frozen

 

In time. Ending and

Beginning as well.  Beginning

Winter and iron

 

Earth.  Ending of warm

Soil and extravagant blooms.

Time to rest, repair.

 

My footsteps crunch on

Frosted grass.  No fear of this

Darkness, this aloness.

 

No grief at this end.

No fear of this beginning.

Silent. Aware. Calm.

 

The earth softly turns.

I hear it sighing in its sleep.

I smile in darkness.