Mark Creaven, Wednesday Poets' session, Barton Public Library, October 12, 2022.
Our prompt was to take the last line of a poem to use as first line of our own. This first poem was Mark's take on that:
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches
How lonely it would seem
So far from town
To fill one's time just
Bending trees
Alone so far from town.
His amusement and his play
Will leave a stand of birches
Nearly all bent over or even broken.
We leave a trail too in our lives
Surprised
That some we thought could hold our weight
Turn out to be so brittle
While others do not break or bend
Instead bring balance
so as to hold our weight.
We seek their strength once found.
How lonely it would seem
So far from town
Just to fill our time
Alone
So far from town.
FIRESIDE
I sit there safe at home.
A fire warms my feet and legs.
Today I walked in a cemetery.
A friend had said it would be fun.
It started out ok,
reading the names carved large
on the marble stones.
I came across
a smaller stone, about a foot long,
6 inches wide.
Most were almost hidden.
I bent over and looked:
"BABY," it read,
nestled by the larger stones.
"BABY." No name, just the rock.
In today's world babies
are safe, poked and played with.
Those babies in their small
wooden caskets had no chance.
Human wreckage,
inflicted by random chance.
Here 3 children died but one lived.
There a mother and child
die on the same date.
What terror.
What horror.
Nameless Time slams ahead
as they and we
stumble through our lives.
***
My
world is holding its breath.
Outside
the storm is fading.
It
was that simple, wasn't it,
to find the missing piece
of
me.
***
A PAST LOVE
In the early hours of the day,
when sleep
won’t come,
he shambles
through
his echoing
empty halls.
seeing a love
remembered.
Long ago time
swept her away.
Sand poured
through his
withered and
grasping fingers,
piles of all
his now dead dreams.
