August Lives Forever...

 

Linking with What's Going On? for this week's prompt "August"

Thank you Mary, Sumana, Sherry & Susan for all you do!

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There is no timetable for grieving —
      Grief is a snail
      It's a shooting star
      A walk around the lake
      It's eternity
      Or frost 'til bloom —
Memories coursing through the heart
It lasts as many heartbeats as it takes;
      sometimes all of them.
~Terri Guillemets

*******************************************************

My heart is a train,

and it passes through the town of your last days

over and over again.

True destination August

 first day of school, 1972

at a hospital now abandoned.

The time and place are etched on a ticket to board,

and I take a window seat watching things pass by.

I am 61 now

having traveled 52 years since that day.

The view still has the same solemn news,

the shock and the suddenness

like a train stopping in its tracks.

I can still feel the jolt of it,

hearing those unexpected words.

More things were abandoned that day, than a hospital.

Loss is more than death certificates in file cabinets, and witnessing a last breath.

It is days that bleed into years with something greater missing.

I hold this ticket, it heads to all the places we will never go together,

and unspoken words I shall never hear.

A birth, marriages, divorce, and graduations all hold an empty chair,

the one next to mine by the window seat

the place where August lives forever.

For my heart is a train, and it passes through the town of your last days

over and over again.

Coffee Table Heartaches

 

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List

This week the words are from Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars.

Thank you Shay for all you do to keep us writing!

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Like magazines, I set them all in rows;

the nights

the weeks

the years

with every possible heartache laid on top.

Remembering each sorrow as if it were a pretty wedding.

Every harsh word is close like lips and lovers.

I can drink them like lemonade and hold them like polaroid photos, fast and sure.

The day I lost you stands tall like an oak,

for love and loss are kindred cousins I know too well.

So, I must keep them both close (at least that is what my heart once told me)

for it is far easier to hold on to the pain than let love be faded by time.

You see, I forget the colorful Care Bear’s names,

but cling to the dark and lonely crow,

gingerly holding with no plans to set him free.

It is funny how that somehow soothes the wounded ache

even though it is the very thing that broke me.

Her Voice is a Stranger Now

 

It is strange how we lose the memory of a voice. We can picture the smile, feel the grip of the hands, or see the stance, but the voice it slowly fades into the distance like a cowboy on his horse into the sunset. After 50 years, it is something I know has slipped completely away from me, like a lover that was destined to leave one day; her voice is a stranger now. I can only wonder if I heard it again, would my face light up or would I be unaware of the gift.

Linking with What's Going On? The prompt this week is "sounds".

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That Kind of Wreckage

 

"The best way out is always through."  ~ Rober Frost

Sometimes to stop the fire you have to break down walls

 and other times you must leave some doors closed.

Destruction comes and leaves in different ways,

 like lost sons returning home.

Each one holds a different heartache,

yet the affliction is the same.

It is a painful feeling

when you must watch but cannot fix.

You do not hold the hatchet.

You do not have the power to stop the flames.

One can only pray for healing,

and mercy from that kind of wreckage.

 When the one you love is the soul that cannot run away from the burning building,

but can only go back inside

to save their self.

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #230.

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The Open Doors & the Slammed Ones,

 

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows... ~William Shakespeare

It is the open arms that we long for;

the bright lighting up of the eyes when we enter the room.

An old man can deny it, but the 5 year old within still knows.

We want to be welcomed like a sunflower field,

or the sweet voice of a grandmother at the door.

The need to truly belong is a force in itself.

You see everything in life has an impact;

the power of love and the compulsion of hurt.

The open doors and the slammed ones,

the last words spoken and the welcoming's,

our heart never forgets them.

You were too weary for open arms,

and too hurt to truly shine.

Truths an old man can discern,

but a child 

 can only feel lost in the darkness of it all.

For it is the open arms that we long for;

the bright lighting up of the eyes when we enter the room.

An old man can deny it, but the 5 year old within me still knows.

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse#204

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The Memory of Sorrows

 

There's nothing in the world that clings

As does a memory that stings...

~Georgia Douglas Camp Johnson

 

 

Everything is fragile

skyscrapers

 bobby pins

an old woman’s hands

Styrofoam cups

the northern spotted owl

a human heart

you see even the moon has craters

being the old woman that I am

I have come to understand and know this

still my mind forgets all the details

but my heart remembers things

the flickering of starlight

the joyful tears of birth

the song they played at my grandfather’s funeral

falls that scrape more than knees

for words crash like waves upon a shore

relentless like a salesman

and serious like a preacher on Sunday

the memory of sorrows

is a child waiting

 promised a day at the county fair

you can bet your bottom dollar

that day will be remembered

in the joy of going and even more so in the not

it is all the things our hands never hold

that seem to leave the heaviest of weights

for a child never forgets

and one day that boy becomes a man

with a heart that still remembers

what a child cannot forget.

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #198

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One Hurt Yet a Thousand Injuries,

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List #7 (Langston Hughes)

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Grief is historian of the heart. ~Terri Guillemets

 

When the heart remembers

It is never a gentle farewell

It is the burn of cities on fire

Blood of arguments words can’t un-tell

It is clocks that won’t stop ticking

And the landlord always at the door

It is the full moon of longing

Lighting an empty room that once held more

It is a million withered roses

That never filled a vase

And strangers all around

That remind us of a loved one’s face

For when the heart remembers

It is never a gentle goodbye

It is the bruise of a thousand stumbles

And wound’s salty sting from every cry.

 Photo by Rachel Claire from Pexels
 

Above Bullshit & Silence

 

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List #6 (Laura Marling) 

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I held my love like a wounded bird

Wings broke from life’s fickle ways

The skin of my heart bruised

From fallen words

Spoken on lonesome lips

Yet I still write poems of love like a song of blues

For I am a hunter of truth in a wild land

Searching for warmth in December

For holy in the lost places

Crying for sand and sea in the waste land of dust

I ring bells trying to be heard above bullshit and silence

For that is what poets and lovers do.

A Mighty Weakness

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #190.  Come join us!

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows... ~William Shakespeare

 

My soul is a parakeet that tries to fly

But my heart can be a cage

Gripping mightily to all I hold dear

But in the letting go I am weak

Like a lost man on a ledge

No longer able to stand

We lose many things in this life

And we carry each loss as we go

Like weary children crying to be picked up

We lift them upon our hip

Close and careful not to drop them

So I find that even in the letting go

I am still truly holding on.

 

Being Alive

 

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #185

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Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix. ~Mignon McLaughlin

 

 

Being alive is a strange and magnificent thing

a vessel

 that moves

and breathes

and holds

we are filled with a spirit

 like wine in a glass

yet we can hold so much emptiness

and carry loss with the gentle strength of a mother holding her child

my hands tried to keep you close

to know you like a mother does

and fill every need upon your lips

I thought love could be strong enough

to never break

but I have learned a thing or two since then

a heart that has never broken

is broken indeed

and even a hurting heart can move on

it beats even when shattered

and unlike a fallen wine glass

It still can hold what it longs for

love

that is one of the many bittersweet miracles of being alive.

 

 

 

 

 

What Holds Freedom? Two Poems from Different Places

 Caged Canary,

 

You are beautiful

Like the glimmer of starlight

Even in your loss

You search for prairie flowers

In the middle of the wild seas

Your hair a mess

Tangled in the rocky sands of misery

with blue eyes wandering beyond the horizon that we know

Making my heart ponder what is free and what is truly broken

Now you are anchored in a heartache

continents from where you were meant to be

unyielding to the sting

of every memory

you hold on tight

unable to let go

as caged as a canary

that knows all he can surely know.

**************************************************************

 What the Sky Holds,

I don’t want to be the boat

I long to be the sea

Touching land from end to end

A reach as vast as grains of sand

I don’t want to be the anchor

I long to be the sail

Riding winds like wings true journey

Above the dangers of dry land

I don’t want to be the bird

I long to be the sky

Touching the heavens and reaching stars

An endless bounty of openness

I don’t want to be the child

I long to be the mother

Witnessing future's gleaming smile

Holding eternity within my arms 

freedom's truest embrace.

Come join us over at the Sunday Muse for Muse #167.  We would love to see you there!

The Ghost of Absent Goodbyes

 Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #165.  Hosted this week by the blazing talent Shay!

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“She’ll tell you this house is haunted, but I believe the truth of the matter is that people get haunted.  Not places.”  ~ Will Laughlin

 

I had another dream about your absent goodbye

There was a standing crow cawing to the sky

He spoke of open wings

And he spoke of flight

I heard him from my heart

Yes from the deepest part

Freedom is a lonesome drive

Where fathers leave

And mothers cry

Then all the children wonder, why?

I know this in my heart

Yes from the deepest part

I stood at the window facing south

Yet not in those walls

But outside that house

hunting familiar ghosts

like a boy scout

 I have seen them in my heart

Yes from the deepest part

Regret is a mirage down a long hot road

A broken-down car that cannot leave home

It steals and borrows until you're broke

I have seen this in my heart

Yes from the deepest part.

All the Poppies in California

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 155 Thank you Shay for holding the fort down when it was my turn to do it.  You are amazing my friend! 

I lost a beautiful and precious flower long before I had the strength for letting go

so I became a hoarder of the sky

my eyes glued to the moon like sequins on a red dress

stars in my eyes I walked through all the fields of poppies only longing for blue birds out of my reach

I had an empty vase that all the poppies in California could not fill

certain regrets   burrow and  dig    and take away

leaving a soul always searching for more beyond the horizon

stuck between the couch and the wall like a paper airplane

thrown careless and hard

life gives and it takes away

and we either learn through falling

or we remain stuck

eventually I learned to get back up

to reach out my hands

not just for help

but also to let go

that is how birds learn to soar.

That Blinding Glare & Other Hazards

 Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #152 hosted this week by the brilliantly talented, Shay!

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I learned more about economics from one South Dakota dust storm than I did in all my years in college. ~Hubert Humphrey

 

I have been blinded by more than the glare of the sun

and been sent spinning off treacherous winding roads

I have fallen down the steps further than I care to admit

that’s what too much whiskey and the wrong man can do…

next time I’m staying home and eating ice cream!

 

 

The Tenderness & Might of Armor,

 

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 141

Happy New Year Everyone!

“The past is not a package one can lay away.”  ~ Emily Dickinson

 

I once wore my disappointments of the past like heavy armor prepared to battle all that the future could hold or take away.

Keeping every harsh word and silent goodbye like folded letters in envelopes I could never send.

I grew wide fields of wheat feeding an obese denial that no tractor’s blade could ever plow,

and my heart built colossal walls so magnificent that no man could ever climb nor could my own eyes see beyond.

You see memory is a relentless child that has heard news of the carnival and will never forget when it does not come to town,

and those disappointments seem to grow bigger with time like a child’s hopes or a woman’s hips,

but even harder to ever lose!

So in the lessons that life’s hurts and losses seem to bring,

I learned to carry grief tightly like an over protective mother afraid of running children and the oncoming cars.

Looking back now, I see I had spent all my strength fiercely holding a certain sorrow;

afraid of losing all I hold dear.

Holding the cold hard knowledge of what it is to truly lose.

For life becomes a bitter struggle when the fear of what we could lose outweighs

the abundant joy of holding what we truly have.

 

 

The Sheltering & What the Trees Know

 Photo by Craig Adderley from Pexels

Linking with Verse Escape for the Friday Flash 55.  Hosted by the magnificent talent Joy.

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To hold the souls of others is considered holy

And that is how she would be remembered

She stood a monument among her kind

Broken in pieces and built back up

Her soul scarred by saw and blade

But she would live on

Giving to others as she always had

Once breath and now shelter.

A Heart That Will Not Break Is Truly Broken,

 

Image Source

Linking with Verse Escape for the" Flash Friday 55" hosted by the utterly amazing talent Joy!

The world has a fever

and the aches of sickness are settling in

there is no vaccine for this kind of disease

some hearts are too cold to be broken

so those who believe

do pray

as the ghosts of hope

cough profusely

trying to make us hear the news

love is the only cure.

Final Signiture

 

Image: Brooke Shaden

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 126 

Hosted this week by the legend in her own time talent Shay!

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“Even without wars, life is dangerous.”

  ~ Anne Sexton

 

My name no longer ends with yours

what was once whispered low

is now a bellow yet still a song

these words I give liberation

but for you they will echo

back and forth with a force that leaves a sting

I will no longer lay down in your dark pastures

hidden by your wheat and lost oaks

I shall rise like smoke

leaving a burn in your throat

you will never be able to swallow

like the hardest of pills

forgetting would be a luxury now

these aches are deeper than one sunburn out on the plow

the truest of regrets splinter in and root deep

the softness of my love

will settle into your heart that way

a piercing prick

pushing ever deeper

full with the ache you cannot forget

I gave you everything once

you stomped on it like a lit cigarette on the ground

I will take what light I still have with me

both heat and light rise and so shall I

my name no longer ends with yours

I suppose it never truly did.

Places of the Heart

Art by helldivo at DeviantArt 

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. 

~George Moore

Emptiness has a way of holding a heavy weight within the places of the heart

Like a sinker on a fishing lure

Taking broken men down broken roads

Where all the paved highways lead to every gravel path

It is there that they seek some kind of shelter

but loneliness rips through every room like fire

leaving behind only the silence of rubble in its wake

we lose ourselves in many ways

trying to hold up bridges that are not ours to cross

forgetting where we came from

we head to the same place that took our father so far away

 lost is a place that cannot be found on any map

 we stumble upon it blindly with empty hands

for all the mapped directions that lead to somewhere else

have long since been left in drawers full of other things we never needed

I searched for you in the eyes of others

Wanting to never lose the memory of your smile

It was in that place of longing

Where loss plants the deepest roots

And no matter how high up the tree you climb

It is hard to see beyond that place

It took me years to discover that simple truth

Trying to find my way to you

I lost my own direction

Until I realized

You were already there

In the reflection of my own eyes.

© Carrie Van Horn 2020 

The Provision of Hope

 

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 121  Hosted by the amazing and immensely talented poet Shay!

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I was once a corn field in Virginia

I reached across the horizon

stretching wide like arms of a lover

the wind and I danced every chance we got

my heart was so full like a rain bucket in Seattle

overflowing with the promise of growth

I did not know of the harvest in October

and the journey that lied ahead

or how what cuts us

leaves a mark we carry with us

for I was cradled in hope

and though life has taken me further

from where I started

I still feel the warmth hope has

nurturing others with all that I have

there has been a bounty

that has returned to me

sure like a bird in flight

 love’s provision for me to hold

the giving and the taking

are braided like a basket of food

I give it to you my love

and in the hunger of taking

that is your greatest gift to me.