A Message Directly to You

Here’s what I want to tell you –

you have done more good in your life

than you know.

Comments, asides of encouragement,

times you were silent so others could grow.

Life continues.

There are blessings yet to give;

silences to be held, prayers to be prayed.

Although you can’t know,

you have played a significant role in this world,

been an essential color in the weaving.

You made a difference; make one still.

Just breathe in life –

you who have rushed,

who skipped now for perhaps

is for could be.

Exhale, lower defenses,

lay aside prickly words,

self-justification,

used to declare

you are worth life.

This is my gift –

forgiveness, amnesia,

a fresh world at dawn.

A Message Directly to You

Here’s what I want to tell you –

you have done more good in your life

than you know.

Comments, asides of encouragement,

times you were silent so others could grow.

Life continues.

There are blessings yet to give;

silences to be held, prayers to be prayed.

Although you can’t know,

you have played a significant role in this world,

been an essential color in the weaving.

You made a difference; make one still.

Just breathe in life –

you who have rushed,

who skipped now for perhaps

is for could be.

Exhale, lower defenses,

lay aside prickly words,

self-justification,

used to declare

you are worth life.

This is my gift –

forgiveness, amnesia,

a fresh world at dawn.

Billy

We live our now

before our fullness

and after what has been.

The defunct past is where you are,

latency unfilled.

We loved as brothers love;

with slaps and pinches.

I stole your skis; you grabbed my hat.

We planned together for a sometime.

Learn to craft boards ourselves?

Bomb down Zermatt?

When you came home from war

our brothering had thinned.

You had lived the darkness,

learned to kill and turn away.

Led your men from in front,

Kept your chin high,

pressed together lips that trembled.

Now, just as for mother, my fingers type

dull facts into the document;

officially declare

what should not be.

Though separated now,

we’re brothers still;

in dreams we touch.

Tonight,

I’ll take your boards;

we’ll tandem ski

– and you will lead.

Fade

Grief fades

like a much-scrubbed shirt.

“Is” to “was”,

“have” to “had”,

“entranced” to “endure”.

My hands ache from the wash.

Cedars and Shadows

Gull-grey skies contract;

surround, comfort, beguile me.

My love is gone; I am alone.

Frail cloud continents, slate-hued, drift;

gossamer veils sway.

Glimpse of shadow bird in the cedars.

The vibrant resonance

of his baritone voice.

Forest sounds mute, distort;

clarity bent to enthrall.

Cedar fronds fondle my cheek;

I almost feel his gentle touch.

He loved to hold my hand,

open my palm to trace my love line,

my life line.

Scent of pine pervades.

He loved a mackerel sky.

Today there are striated ruffles of cloudwebs,

low on the horizon.

Charcoal blur of mountains hint the unknown.

A private world;

alone;

alone with the shadow bird.

Composed

In the gathered dusk

she looks away,

still.

Don’t look directly,

catch him in the slant of your eyes.

See him lean toward you,

wary,

tentative;

this vapor of a poem.

.

© Tina Blondino

2020

Reawaken the Path

Sit in the woods;

feel the trees breathe.

Ivy, ever growing ivy, surrounds.

Picture the growing tendril of each vine,

dimutive leaves on the point of a spear

aimed up to the brightness.

Reach out, stretch.

Then, with the weight of maturity,

lower, extend.

Senior leaves welcomes the new,

a foundation on which newness floats.

Rejoice in aliveness.

In your hand, the weight of a secaeurs

remind of your task.

Renew your commitment,

a clear path through the ivy’s web

for the halting steps of the woman

who loves these woods

and planted the ivy;

who fostered its exuberant spread.

In quietness explain to the ivy

the woman’s desire

to walk through the woods,

to see again the budding laurel,

the cedar’s new seedlings,

the rotting bench.

Explain to the ivy –

to reenter the past is a hazard.

It is the duty of others

to trim away tangles, smooth the path

as much as they can.

The price of exuberance

is often repression –

from such wounds fresh growth will flourish.

Then, on your knees, reawaken the old path.

To the scent of ivy’s spicy sharpness,

trim the overflowing generosity of vines;

redeem the path.