poems

Two Poems

Trapped
Hemmed in
If I could just
Take the deepest breath
And burst the stretch of my skin.
Too full of life,
But there is no buckle
Only my toes poking out of my shoes
Picking up dirt and rain from the puddles
Squeezed onto the ground earlier that day.
If I’m not careful, I’ll start to sniffle.

Loving, pure instinct
Does what it does
Unclipped, unfixed, lives.
Rainbow cape
=/≠ (delete applicable)
shroud of shame.
Playing catch up
From the start,
The finishing line is the same
But our field is full of plot holes.

EMC

Picture: Creative Commons

For National Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day, and it’s now Autumn, which make the following by Keats the perfect fit.

To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44484/to-autumn

Pictured: Keats’ original manuscript, 1819, in the public domain, used under creative commons license