Green

The color your eyes appeared

in moonlight the night

melancholy took you from me.

The emerald texture of the moment

casting altered shadows on

the brightness you left for me.

In the green veined earthen

child that crawled from the

womb of wanting you.

From the parts of myself genetically

engineered to seek Eden, and know only the

intangible idea of that desired state.

You called forth it’s growth from my depths

life hewn from the stone carved heart

I settled into the palm of your green thumbed hand.

You whispered grace over it,

made flesh to form from it’s deadness

etching into it, like ink on skin, your initials.

With breath and green mist you

enveloped me within it’s blanket of bliss

and promises steeped in raw sensuality.

I saw only what you wanted me to see

though I always held the knowledge of what

lay beneath, a haunting haze of realization.

I could not keep you was the color

of the earth upturned as it’s brown depths

swallowed slivers of grass on the day I lost you.

It's sharp flavor stung my tongue into silence

amputating from my vocabulary

the words that would bring you home to me.

You left me to sail upon a faith-filled sea,

waves the origin of my orphaning, it’s

tides carving deep channels in my skin.

Sand softened glass it

brought me instead, and instead

I kept your green gaze behind my eyelids.

On that beach of your absence

I crafted a mosaic from

green sea glass the color of mourning.

From the poetry prompt Green at dVerse.  

Return to me My Paramour

One word and I became thy paramour

First exchange you became my paramour

Dancing from twilight ‘til first light

You gave heart cause to sigh, my paramour

All seasons end, tempos fade ‘til absent

At rest hopeful for your return, my paramour

Gone again and with it’s end I defy

The stars that separate me from my paramour

Torn asunder severed souls are restless

I seek, and hope to find my paramour

Upon these wooden planks I plot my course

With pure love shall I find my paramour.

All ahead full, ‘til season ends

April brings back again my paramour

I'm linking up with the poets over at dVersepoets.com for a Poetry Prompt by Samuel Peralta using the form, ghazal sonnet. This is my first attempt, which I'm sure I will edit further at a later date. For now, however I appreciate any feedback you might offer. Thank you ~Apryl 

An Oregonian Experiance

Mt. Hood taken from the plane

the natives speak with northern language

the song of the American settlers

carving glacial pathways from east to west

not as much Minnesotan or Michigander,

more like those in Ohio with their approach

to words and meanings far beyond their

level of perceiving it, and my own, foreign to them

this young, urban and sprawling city with

children generations gathered together

upon the remains of the lava flow

formed the land that shapes their lives

in the pew I hear talk of culture and my

southern conditioning is apparent in my

urgency to yell out during the sermon,

my deep fried Amens and Right Ons

that pepper congregational behavior

we are creatures of our conditioning

of the culture and places we inhabit

and here, in central Oregon I feel a settling

in my spirit that reminds me what the scent of

home is like, and I am at peace

humidity of Tennessee a memory and I am pleasantly invited

into the outdoors like my Colorado used to

Juniper and Pine, and how I pine for home

hiking sandals and yoga clothing seem the normal

attire here, espresso on every corner and

local organic produce a staple in every home

breweries under Hooded every dark flavor of hops

birthing center advertisements the size of

hospital billboards back home, and the

contempt for western thought and medicine

has been added to the water supply straight

from these once volcanic mountains

three Sisters overseeing the desert children

and in them lies the possibility of a new

awakening, like giving birth to

life outside the environmental need for it

Mt. Jefferson towering over, as a reminder

of what this place was once, and what it may yet be

in the seat of a Bend lies a craving for

something beyond verbalization

an elevated understanding of life

and the pursuit of all that is good and wholesome

a utopian craving creeping up the spine

elongating the understanding that

this too, was a place without form

until the one who formed it gave it

meaning and in it lies the possibility

that one day the children of this land

will become the children of the Lord over it

in these thoughts lie my prayers

awaken, become, breathe, and return to

this place and it’s people that which

you have received, and in doing so

support your local organic farmers

Linking up for Poetics at dVerse Poet's Pub. The prompt is to observe and describe something you see. I'm in Oregon for the week visiting my sister so these poetic observations of my Oregon experience thus far. Join us, won't you? 

Existence Elemental

Existential transcendental

sleepless awakenings

the promise of satiety

slivered peace

through veiled consciousness

provoking like daylight

in the sequence of being

the molecular essence of truth

beneath surface of skin and self

elemental hunger, we need

to face this world victorious

Linking up for the Poetry Prompt by dVerse~Poets Pub 
Join up and Link up Click Here

Older Than

Posted for http://thegypsymama.com/ won't you join me? It's a free write for five minutes then link to her page and share. Have fun with it, I know I did!


I am older now. She has undone me, the ravishing redhead with innocent blue eyes, about to don the cap and gown that I never wore.

I’m older now than my mother was when I remember her seeming old to me. The wrinkles show, my hair I keep much shorter now. My eyes are not as wide as they were when I was a girl and my glasses obscure the angles of my face. I am easing into another life, or so it seems, one not riddled with the insecurities every young woman carries, but a woman now with more comfort in her skin. I am enjoying this stage where vacations are possible, choices are easier and I care less about what others think of me and more about the relationships I’m building with my children.

Older they are, older than I want them to be growing faster than I had anticipated and time, passing through open fingers as I grasp it’s liquid form begging to have some of it back.

Older are the stories I tell, the memories I cherish, and the photographs that fill the shelves where once a single scrap book stood, lonely and alone.

Older are the thoughts I have of returning home again to live in the places where my children were given birth to, somewhere between mountains and sky in the Denver of my adolescence. Older are my parents, my grandparents are fewer now, and I carry some with me through the vague remembrance of faces and voices from an ancient past I now tell my children about. How I long for them to know those who came before them and enabled their being through the DNA I carry in my bones.

Older, yet not expired, older but not unable, older and perhaps a little bolder.