Her fifteenth birthday party was
barely over
when she shyly
showed me a text her beau had sent
me via her.
He spoke of how
pleased he was to
meet me and promised to always
treat Kodi with
care and respect.
Technology
may have changed the manner of
delivery,
but good manners
and grace remain unchanged.
JDG
Writing poetry can take us
right to the heart
of things, pushing
aside pretense
and posturing, laying the bare
bones of truth out
before us and
challenging us
to open our own hearts to the strong
fragility
of each pulsing,
precious moment.
JDG
“Let us remember … that in the end we go to poetry for one reason,
so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which
we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might
be less apt to destroy both.”
Christian Winman, editor of Poetry Magazine
When they were young and dating, he,
after holding
open many
doors for her, laughed
and said, “Have you forgotten how
to open doors?”
She laughed too and
over the years
they opened many doors for each
other. Now, after
fifty years, he
opened one final
door for her and she passed through.
JDG
(In memory of Elizabeth Pittard and in celebration of Roger and Elizabeth’s fifty years together)
Among the row of bare-limbed trees,
one limb, broken
from its base, still
holds brown, stiff leaves.
The others, stripped clean, await new
green of Spring, but
this lone limb clings,
as does its leaves,
to what no longer is alive,
the dead clinging
to the dead, held
by what still lives.
JDG
His eyes, fixed and focused, stare at
mine as though to
say,” Can’t you spare
a tiny crumb
for your friendly four-legged pal?”
When that tack yields
no results, he
tries another
one. Edging close, he flips the plate
and deftly fields
the flying food
as I gaze, aghast.
JDG
When the body is out of sorts,
it’s hard to find
the line between
flee and wallow,
to come back again and again
to this very
moment, to not
add or subtract,
but just to breathe and be, breathe and
be, making no
demand that things
be otherwise.
JDG
Undoing holiday trappings
on a sunny
January
day reminds me
of how much I enjoy hum-drum,
unhurried days
when nothing is
expected and
all there is to do is not much,
when there is lots
of time to sit
and come unwrapped.
JDG
What if, after all these years, we
went back to where
we started from
and picked up once
again that early fire of
desire – that
pure, strong, pulsing
urge to let life
have its say, and now to trust that
wisdom will guide
the hand to reach
beyond its self.
JDG
I opened my arms and heart to
the two year old
who stomps her foot
and cries, “I want
to do what I want to do when
I want to do
it!” Sensing she
is finally
embraced after seventy long,
resentful years,
she settles down
and lets me grow.
JDG
A boulder falls and blocks our path.
We can fuss and
fume, protest, and
blame, or simply
play a waiting
game. Still, things will
stay just the same
until we see
ourselves or the
boulder differently. Then out of
nowhere, new paths
appear and we
move on, renewed
JDG
