For Peggy Goetz’s prompt at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads , a poem about going outside (mind, body, spirit, your choice!). I’ve been trying to hang with the Real Toads during NaPoWriMo, because it’s a small group of intensely focused poets who gracefully critique each other’s work). This will also appear on the sidebar at my first and always poetic home, Poets United (proud to be a member!).
Inside, Out
It stirs within him
The call to get out
To explore the
yet to be, yet to see
He stretches,
not wanting
to leave home yet,
but knowing it’s time
The way to the door
is dark, narrow,
but he’ll squeeze
through the gate into…
Bright lights
Much noise
Something pushes him on
Then a woman’s cry –
sharp as a thumbtack and
bright as an Easter bonnet –
sings across the hall:
“It’s a boy!”
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Home At Last
Cuddled under my favorite purple afghan,
(“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple”)
contemplating the months just passed;
dreaming of the year to come…
How did it happen that we landed in Madison?
These people, who see me not as troublesome,
but a graying sprite with her feet solidly on earth
(even as her mind lags, or revs – or does somersaults).
A faith community of solid citizens
who know that worship is not some game
of collecting brownie points with God,
because God always grades on a curve.
Our choir sings with gusto.
The bell choir rings sweetly.
The praise band brings it,
makes the Spirit spring within us.
Was it luck that landed me here in this state
of Badgers and Packers, a hundred varieties
of cheese, and even more kinds of beer? This
hearty stew of politics and action and reaction,
as we fly toward the audacious goal of
booting the Guv back to his Brothers Koch?
Students who actually live downtown near
the university? Poetry readings and buskers?
What brought me here? I’m in heaven, yet all I did
was follow the love of my life to a new church,
a new ministry. (Wither thou goest, I shall go…)
It wasn’t luck – it was God. And it was love.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Brenda Warren’s Sunday Whirl gave us a dozen words to weave into a poem: year, fly, earth, happen, citizen, luck, states, dream, trouble, purple, lag, and game. Check out The Whirl and give it a try!
Sharp Little Pencil 