Lament

All posts tagged Lament

The Crane

Published November 12, 2014 by rlmcdermott

Did you
know that
I am dying

that I am
like a blue
crane flying

riding thermals
without wings
life is such
a fickle thing

it’s so hard
to let you go
yet so easy
to live alone
how could
I have loved
a moon that
never shines for me

am I grieving you
or grieving me
so long this dying
has to be–
a day a night
spent in the sky
who loves me
loves to flyThe Last Cranes Flying

The Bone Singer

Published August 29, 2014 by rlmcdermott

and in her
turning is
a turning

back to
the blue
lichen
and fleshy
moss dripping
from bare
trees where
wild gods sit
and play
songs on
white bone

she has
grown old
underneath
a silent moon
waiting for
something
that never
comes–
to be loved again

and as
her small
feet strike
stone a
note is
struck
on bone
white bone
that sings
of home–
a place she’s
never known The Bone Singer

Long Season Of Waiting

Published February 14, 2014 by rlmcdermott

I wonder why
for some of us
life is like a long
season of waiting.

Does the cone flower
know the brevity
of its dance;
its one brown
eye blasted daily
by the sun–
can it see
anything
but the sky?

I’m a flower too
and my season
has been long.
For me, there
is no fall
in this place
just an endless
summer of grief.

I am unnatural,
a seed lifted
by the breeze
and carried here–
distant from the prairie,
distant from the tall grass,
distant from the meadow lark,
and distant from that softer
season when the earth
puts on its gray hat
and takes its flowers home.Landscape On An IPHONE

The Yew Tree

Published February 13, 2014 by rlmcdermott

she dresses
you in red
and takes
you to her bed

you think that I don’t know

but flowers
grow beside
my heart
and tell me
all their secrets

the small hotel
the river Seine
the Paris sky

pain is all I know these days

you lied

I was myself
until you came
and sat beside me
on a garden bench
and asked my name

I couldn’t turn away

two years have passed
since that bright day
the moon has danced
across so many skies
all painted blue and
I grow old and cannot
die for love of youThe Yew Tree

Thief Of Color

Published September 13, 2013 by rlmcdermott

You can
steal my
poems,
the pain
is mine;
I earned
the rhymes
with failure
and its bright
consequence.

Too young
to love;
too old
to be loved–
I loved.

I put ear
to ground
and listened
to the music–
an infra-sound
of beating hearts.

I threw my
gauntlet down
and rushed
into the light
to find myself
alone except
for this small poem.

So take it all
the words,
the images,
the rhymes
but leave
behind the
color, please!

I wear it when
I’m blue and red
and all the leaves
have fallen from
the trees and all
the music’s fled.
The Thief of Color

The Ghost of Gangrene

Published May 23, 2013 by rlmcdermott

it moves from left to right
and calls your name

it preys and prays
and calls you to its side
to dress you dead

the sweet deliverance
of pills that know your name

the sound of your own voice
the hidden mystery of it all
to watch death is to die

codeine has the properties of gangrene

your nerves dance like hobbled ballerinas
on toes that look like blackened twigs

your spring has been a bitter season
grown sweet before its final blossoming
roots dipped in the alkali of too much love
andante-sweet dementia-praecox
is simply another word for prayer

this is the epic of your life
to die without birth
a requiem of pain
unannounced and unashamedFlower

The Geisha’s Song

Published May 22, 2013 by rlmcdermott

I couldn’t find
my way among
the trees so
I turned back–
the darkness,
an old friend,
welcomed me.

It took my hand
and lead me down
the garden path
and I was patient
in the moonlight,
for the first time,
I was patient.

I’ve loved so
many things
the singing birds,
the summer sky,
the coneflowers
but most of all
the weeping
cherry blossom tree
that sheltered
everything but me.

I’ve lost you
but most of all
I’ve lost myself
because we shared
so many things–
the falling leaf,
the polished stone,
the tall grasses.

I’ll look for you
again, someday,
but not today–
today I’ll write
a poem and paint
a picture of the moon
and dream of gardens
where flowers never bloom.Geisha