Chasing summer
through pinholes in time.
dancing, swirling and mingling
with the yellowing leaves.
In this, the eternally warm
and eyes squinting,
we live in love and laughter
always knowing,
dreaming,
hoping
for another summer.
CMarsh 2023
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And so she speaks
She speaks in the sound of rain,
exhaling a whistling wetness
that calms
and cleanses,
that cools
and caresses.
Her voice, when it sings,
pours out of her throat like
rain from the eaves,
dripping itself coolly down your skin
and pooling itself around your feet.
The sound when she cries
stutters
and drinks itself dry
before tears stain her cheeks.
and so she speaks
and sings
and continues
as though compelled
by the rolling waves of rain
running themselves
through the gutters.
CMarsh 2016
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Is there a word
for the sound of wind
gusting towards you
that you can hear
- far off at first -
but can't yet feel?
Rustling trees
closer -
closer -
closer -
a growing sound,
the anticipation and crescendo
building slowly
until it finally finds you,
tossing your hair
dancing briefly around you
before quieting
and moving on
singing through the trees
composing a haphazard melody
as it goes.
CMarsh 2023
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A Sonnet for Huntington's and All You Stole.
The day, when broken on your fallen's face,
so pallored as it is with sun-starved skin,
now sees no hope to send her joy; replaced
instead with dread at all that could have been.
She chokes on food and gasps for breath amid
the shakes and shudders of her bones. Her brain
betrays her voice and stunts her lips, undid
by words and woe, her smile a sad refrain.
A decade lost to you, your subject now
turns tides, revolts and finds herself anew.
She's laid in wait, stark still with furrowed brow
and, broke from her vessel, faces you.
She turns on dagger eyes and with a breath
says fond farewells and conquers you in death
CMarsh 2016
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Farm Fresco
Driving home in winter,
the sun tucked behind the horizon for the night,
mom hummed along to the cassette
stuck in the tapedeck
as she kept her eyes fixed ahead
- headlights slicing a gap in the dark curtain
where the streetlights stopped
and country began.
We welcomed a sudden thud-crunch
of tires moving from the subtle hum of asphalt
to the pockmarked gravel road
drawn across the prairie
like crayon lined portraiture
on winter whitened looseleaf.
A final scribble of curve in the road
gave way to the house on the hill
with a light burning;
and the broad silhouette of dad
watching for us
outlined in front picture window -
his shadow painted across the snow
framing the front of the house.
The house
was nights of dinners around the table
and songs sung at bedtime.
It was green shag carpet
that became forests for Hot Wheels and GI Joe.
It was a collection of cat bones
each buried with gentle hand
and childish tears
underneath a pussywillow tree.
Post Bugs Bunny Saturday mornings
pulling on rubber boots
and pouring out of the front door,
we played biologist in sloughs,
scavenging for specimens
in old jam jars.
Winter built us snow bank fortresses.
Spring found us slough-splashed with mud.
Summer sang us to sleep against the spark of campfires.
Fall raked cool air across our cheeks.
We slugged through farm yard mud
to the barn –
a solitary splash of red on the horizon
like our cheeks in winter.
We would play hide and seek
in the stables and peek precariously
out of the hayloft door on the top floor,
daring each other to creep closer,
army crawling through dust
and dried pigeon droppings
to hang our heads over the side
and see the landscape
of farm and prairie
that we painted ourselves into.
CMarsh 2016
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Missing Him.
She breathes life silently
into her lonely bed
by making his side
before crawling to sleep
under the embrace of cold linens.
She stares at his empty pillow
and whispers to sleep
while her hand absent-mindedly
grasps across the mattress
to the scent of him
still lingering on the sheets.
Her smile remembers him
briefly
before her dreams float in
filling the room with him
until she wakes
and remakes his side of the bed
before her own.
CMarsh 2023
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The Greys.
The rogue streak spreads
like a blanket of snow
across a brown prairie.
Curls are looser now
and less shiny
than when she was younger.
Silver hair matches
slivers of age across her face -
laugh lines, frown lines
furrowed brows.
All of these, signs
of love, life, experience
and the excitement
of (hopefully) many more
years to come.
CMarsh 2022
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Danielle Mckinney (American,b. 1981)
Chrysalis, 2023
oil on linen
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None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.
ig credit: parkingonthewildside.
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One of my many pieces of scrap poetry, scrawled on a random leaf of paper in a random moment I can't remember now.
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Moon, what should I do?
Nothing. Do nothing. Be still.
Lay in my white light.
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Stay.
We bend and almost break under all we do not say.
Smiling, laughing, passing time, knowing you can't stay.
Breathing in, drinking, scents and tastes of spring -
warmth and sun and berry sweetness - a welcome not to overstay.
Though the garden, tended carefully, can last into fall,
for all your begging, pleading can never make it stay.
Gather and freeze berries and squash and protect against the frost,
hoping your favorite among them will manage to outstay.
I embrace the coming autumn - prepped, at ease, resigned,
but in my mind, to this short sweet summer, still, please. Stay.
CMarsh 2022
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Summer.
I dream
of windy summer days when we would lay,
heads together, in long grass -
Hearing wind from afar
rustling leaves on a path towards us,
slowly building like the warming
of an orchestra settling in to a symphony.
We held hands in that childish way
thrilling at our hideout, blanketed
in blades of grass,
visible only to the few clouds passing by.
Our hair and laughs tangled in the breeze
and warmed in sun
as we held fast against approaching evening.
The summer.
It was us,
we were we
and we were together.
CMarsh 2022
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