Watching the River Run

We hear the steady drip, drip, drips

as melting snow turns to rivulets

racing down the mountainside

chasing along road’s edge in steady stream

to join the roaring river below.

What was once a quiet estuary

turns into churning white water

crashing over rocks and boulders

combining with larger waterways

on their quest to mesh with the sea.

We view the rising river

filling inlets and backwashes,

observe scores of riverbank trees

submerged to their knees

awaiting runoff to slow

and surge to recede.

There’s comfort found days like this

in the knowledge that somehow

no matter how much things change

some still remain the same.

© Ginny Brannan 2017

Day 12 NaPoWriMo Challenge was to use Rhetorical Devices of Assonance and Alliteration:

Assonance is a resemblance of sound, particularly vowel sounds, occurring in words of close proximity: i.e. trees, knees, recede

Alliteration: the repetition of a sound, especially a consonant, for rhetorical or poetic effect: i.e. rivulets racing, roaring river, steady stream.

Not too heavy on either, but a small sampling of both.

To the You I Barely Knew...

I never really knew you, except in the long ago;

...lipstick on…nails just so,

soft leather handbag, Tabu cologne—

you smoked Chesterfield Kings

    I remember these things.

And you would bake…

  oatmeal cookies, cream puffs

coconut pies with perfect crust

—a taste I would die for

would that I could taste once more.

It’s hard to live up to the memory

of  the you I barely knew—

shorter than five foot nothin’

yet a force to be reckoned with.

With these less-than-perfect hands

and broken nails, I favor

the crafter, the woodworker,

the other half that molded my existence.

But I have your eyes, and when I look in the mirror

   it’s you I see looking back at me.

So I carry all your stories in my heart,

told by the ones who knew you best

living on the memories we never had

           

…we could have been such good friends.

© Ginny Brannan 2017

Circa 1962 Franconia Notch, N.H.

In loving memory of Clementine "Tina" Mary Donzello, 1921 - 1963

Just Another Day

We waken in the darkness before dawn,

to psych ourselves before we face the fray

as day arrives, another night absconds.

While trapped inside of routines that are rote,

how quickly now the time just slips away

while we’re left struggling, trying to keep afloat.

Still, as the sun slips mountains to the west,

and to the moon and stars now cedes the day,

I breathe the stillness, gratitude professed.

© Ginny Brannan 2017 

The Nocturna is basically a nine line poetry form based on the nocturne (night) theme containing three, three-line lessons recited during the night. The subject must be nocturnal and it consists of three couplets linked by the rhyme of the centre line;  a. b. a. c. b. c. d. b. d. Not sure that I got it right, but there's a first time for everything!

Was It Love?

Was it love, actually, that stole your heart—

…or just a promise of a new beginning?

Was it love that whispered: “This one is different;”

the connection made on a cerebral level,

or found in the effortless banter,

the instant smile, the easy laughter…

Was it love that captured the day,

hastened your heart beat, swept you away,

made your palms sweat, kept you from sleeping?

Did you pass it off as some sort of illness

   perhaps the flu?

Or was it love, actually,

that brought you to this place…

this sacred space,

   I share with you.

© Ginny Brannan 2017

The suggestion for Day 8 of NaPoWriMo suggested composing a poem that relies on repetition. 

Unknowns

Who will I be when I grow old…

will I sit and babble nonsense rhyme

old poems and remnants left behind—

when those final years take hold.

Will past and present merge as one,

as mind relinquishes control;

or stay alert, my thoughts left whole

while body starts to come undone.

No gypsy fortune-tellers, we...

what lies before us, undefined;

should favor nod as we decline

perhaps we'll keep our sanity.

Yes, all things acquiesce to time…

we only hope the years are kind.

© Ginny Brannan 2017

There, Beyond the Stars...

I’ll never know the sound a rocket ship makes,

nor the courage it takes to  go

“Where no man has gone before…”

but I do know the magic of a moonlit night

and can still imagine the footprints that remain

in the dust of a billion stars on a small satellite

orbiting the third planet from the sun

In a world before fake news we had real heroes:

ordinary men who did extraordinary things

Science was expanding and the stars were in our grasp.

And we dreamed, and we believed…

Dreams are smaller now—

hopes dashed by the small-minded and clueless

in positions they don’t deserve

making decisions no one can fathom.

But this day we remember the first human

who  ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth,’

and a time when the whole universe

lay before us…

         …just waiting

Godspeed, John Glenn

© Ginny Brannan 2017

Military Portrait of John Glenn, Wikipedia

July 18th, 1921 to December 8th, 2016

Interred at Arlington National Cemetary on April 6, 2017
Among his many accomplishments he was the first man to orbit the Earth, February 20th, 1962, for the Friendship 7 mission.

*"slipped the surly bonds of Earth" Excerpt from the poem "High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Shackled

Image: Google Images

I watch you enter - eyes downcast

uneven gait, carrying a weight

too heavy for one so young.

What brought you to this place —

happenstance; circumstances

beyond your control?

Was it a conscious choice,

what played a roll?

Who where your role models

and where will you go from here?

Each one of us judged on what we take or leave behind

—or where we place the blame.

Will you be remembered for a future that you wasted

    or the past you overcame?

© Ginny Brannan 2017

Whether good or bad, we all have a past, and a choice to make on what we'd like our future to be.