The Last Daisy of Summer

Dear Happiness,
I think I saw you today.
Yes, I'm sure it was you.
You fluttered near the cage
I had prepared for you.
I briefly touched you,
And then the wind carried you
Just beyond my fingertips.

My old friend Happiness,
When I was young,
We walked side-by-side, you and I.
We explored the seashore,
Noticed sparkling pebbles in the tide pools,
Painted my nails for the first time,
And celebrated the last daisy of summer.

Do you remember?

I should know better than to chase you.
I just wish you would chase me.

© Judith C Evans 2014

Shared with Poets United Midweek Motif. This week's prompt is "happiness."

Ashes

Children,

I watch you learn the same paper crafts that I learned

Nearly seventy years ago.

I might have been your great grandmother,

Had history taken a different turn.

Fold the paper just right

And pray for me as you set the paper cranes

To flight.

Forever six years old,

I am in every sunbeam, cloud and snowflake

That falls over Hiroshima

As the ashes of my bones,

Caught up in the poison windstorm decades ago,

Look for a peaceful place to rest.

© Judith C Evans 2014 

Written for Poets United Midweek Motif prompt: "Hiroshima, or Ring a Bell"

Wise Choices

Barely as tall as the shopping cart,

I could tell that we were getting closer to the produce aisle

As fresh peach and apple fragrances greeted my nose.

I reached upward toward the sparkling display of grapes.

I noticed that my mother’s navy blue sneakers kept on walking.

“We’re boycotting grapes,” she said as she pushed the shopping cart

Past the green and purplish-black jewels

Without missing a beat.

(I thought of one day during the previous school year

When we had an assembly because a great man had died.

We saw a film about bus boycotts and lunch counters,

And signs that said who could drink at which water fountain.)

I turned and looked at the forlorn grape display,

Realizing that they did not look as sumptuous as they did two minutes ago. 

And that was the day I learned to shop.

© Judith C Evans 2014

Shared at Poets United Midweek Motif . . . this week's prompt is BOYCOTT

PTSD-Slayer

Ah, to be a knight!
I'd slay the devouring serpents:
Those screaming, voracious dragons that
Crush our joy.

I'd guard our castle,
Deflecting smouldering darts
That would not dare inject
Their venom into your
Sweet poetic mind.

Until then, we will find refuge, you and I,
Between the lines of sonnets,
As the perfume of homemade blackberry jam
Drifts through our kitchen
And envelops the acrid smoke
Of old nightmares.

© 2014 Judith C Evans

Unshattered

A collection of mismatched shards:
That is how I saw myself
Until You handed me the missing pieces.

Examined in the light,
Each piece offers
Unexpected colors that change context
And deepen perspective.

Nearly whole,
Revived by Your breath,
I speak with my voice
For the first time.

© Judith C Evans 2014

I Left Her There

She's there somewhere.
She used to be here,
But I left her there.

The one who loved to sing
As much as she loved the smell
Of a new box of crayons
(That first-day-of-school smell).

The one who drew stories
Others might have written.

The girl who let her Muse
Take her on winged journeys,
Farther than her imagination could see,
Higher than her thoughts could breathe.

The child who held up
Fists full of sunlit beach sand,
And let the fine, tan powder
Sift through her fingers
And sprinkle her face with stars
That sparkled the rest of the day.

I left her there,
An unfinished sentence, past tense,
Testing the sparkling clear waters with her toes,
Unaware of the icy tides
That crashed on the shore
And stopped the heart.

© Judith C Evans 2014