Meaning

All posts tagged Meaning

The Botanist

Published February 14, 2014 by rlmcdermott

Love
ducked
around
the corner
when it saw
her coming
until she
found it
here–
hiding
in a field
full of
wildflowers.

She knows
their names
better than
she knows
her own–
coneflower,
lady-slipper,
brown-eyed susan.

They grab
at straws
to keep
alive. Their
days are
bright and
flat and
they roll
them on
their edges.

Deep in
the tall
grasses,
she can
hear them
sing–
a simple
song that
settles on
the wind.The Botanist

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 Bird Girl

Published December 5, 2013 by rlmcdermott

All these
moons I’ve
painted that
bring no light–

the sun,
the stars,
the sky,

they can
not see
that I am
standing still.

These things
I dream are
dreamed for
someone else–

the bitter fruit,
the barren tree,
the songless bird
are all for me.

I wear them well
around my neck
until I cannot breathe–

I will not stay to
see them leave.

Who reads this
poem cannot
know me–
I didn’t bury
birds they
buried me.The Bird Girl

Le Jardin

Published November 21, 2013 by rlmcdermott

the place was set
but no one came

she waited for an hour
and then she ate
pistachio and pumpkin
chestnuts and white truffles

outside the rain

the waitress was kind
and left her to her pain

the other diners
pretended she
was not alone
and smiled at
the lonely woman
sitting by herself

French restaurants in fall

the opera crowd
with season tickets

the sommelier

the taste of taro on her tongue

the bitter root of love denied

coffee and a sweet dessert

she paid the price

outside the rainLe Jardin

Borrowed Time

Published September 10, 2013 by rlmcdermott

this is the
moment that
has been
hunting you

you are left
with only
a pen and
a blank book
to rewrite
your life

remember
the day that
you took two
hundred pills
and laid down to die

where’s the difference
between a soldier with a gun
and you with a vial of pills
you both alter flight

you hear your future
a dangerous cat
padding down the
corridors of it’s
accidental habitat

the rattle of pills
still in your brain
their coated surfaces
dissolving as memory
spills into your periphery

yet you go on
a predator of your
own life sleeping
in the shade of forgiving
trees until sunset when
the wild bird sings and
moonlight enters your dreamsBorrowed Time