PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

for my daughter

In a mausoleum of dozing trees
I imagine lemon balm and fairy-tale
pink.

This is the winter I have created.

Many years ago she was a chattering
woman in the making:

a blank page and everything and anything
and all she wanted
was one more tea party.

What is fifteen minutes next to a glacier
of time spent sprinting
after everything you now know
was everything?

You run and it runs faster.

The frozen ground hides the idea of earth.
You knew an easy life once
and you try to remember.

There's a phantom glimpse of joy
in that lone squirrel that reminds
me of freedom, but the space it fled
is locked in ice, paralyzed as
the nest of barbed-wire
branches all around.

Give me the spring my daughter screamed
when her cat offered her a
dead mole as a gift.
Give me dogwood blossoms like
her origami birds.
Give me morning glories like
the hope in her eyes.

February's clouds seem close to heaven:
mirror of our authentic self and
our runaway dreams in all directions.

Fatal and glorious, this cold.

Beautiful tyrant, I know you too well
and I've fought you too many
times before.

Sacred emptiness of now,
life after many lives,

what is fifteen minutes?

Patricia Joan Jones