some Mark Creaven poems

 

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.