Joy Ride

think how your body moved down the avenue of fourteen
hips swaying into tomorrow and the next day

how you curl your tongue around the idea of chocolate
consumed by it even as your body consumes it

how your eyes connect with other eyes,
locking you into that inevitable, unforgettable dance

and feel how your body shudders and utters delight
when you share its secrets

how Beethoven ravaged, savaged your heart
invading, vibrating a joyous ode across tiny ear drums

how your skin felt like silk when you dove into the ocean,
and the salt-flecked water blessed, caressed and ate you

how your body worked to roll out another and another body,
sweating and pushing, pushing and sweating you bore them out

then swooned at the scent of brand new-born
pouring into every open door your body owns

how you are stunned when you rise from a daydream
and your eyes run across the sky, immense, intense with clouds

how you glow when a little boy stops playing
to touch your cheek lightly, politely planting a kiss

 how a river of pleasure runs through your nose when a rose
shrugs off its holy fragrance

and oh,
feel how your heart pumped as you jumped on your bike
willing your eight year old legs to ride forever

how you soared, when you stopped on the road to Yosemite, awed
and had to lie on the hood of the car to keep from falling into the stars

and how your heart sings in time with the birds
when spring arrives to banish, vanish winter

your body convulses and pulses with laughter,
tears flowing, you fall down on the floor

when you think what an impossible joy-ride it has given you
ever since you climbed aboard at your naked, gasping birth.

Published :
Charlotte Digregorio’s Writers Blog March 21, 2021

Originally published :
July 2014 –  Bards Annual  2014 – A Poetry Anthology

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Day Moon

The reeds make music
In their own greening voices,
They touch one another, like lovers caressing,
And the rustling rises like an anthem.
Sea oats don’t ask for second chances,
They just quiver with life,
And when the breeze passes by
They stand in ecstasy.

A falcon rides an updraft,
Above a sun-beaten shore
Not questioning but soaring,
Wings swooshing as it dives to find
An unsuspecting field mouse,
Whose time has run out,
The final screech unheard, except by the wind.

I walk for miles and miles,
My mind wandering and pondering
The evidence all around,
My eyes sting with the yellow of goldenrod
Born of sand and salt,
My ears ring with the humming of bees
Sucking the last bit of summer.

Late afternoon shadows pull me back
From thoughts that wandered farther than I
Along the beach,
I gather myself up, reluctantly,
Leaving the restless ocean behind.
The wind drums in my ears
This is your one and only chance.
I sense my breath keeping time with the wind,
Shivering……
I melt into the day moon.

The Bards Annual Anthology

                    2019

 

Seize the Poem – Someone Once Said

****

someone once said
the way forward
is to fill up
your garages
your closets
your stomach
your bank accounts
your houses
your days
and your nights
with “stuff.

‘
I wonder if
joy
can only
seep in
when you
divest yourself
of stuff
and stand
naked
and empty,
leaving room
in your soul
for whatever
comes along….
bird song,
rain on the roof,
a lover’s touch?
at least
there would be room.

****

Published in

seize the poem: an anthology

2015

Bard’s Annual – My Head is Beating with Wishes

My head is beating with wishes
says the great King Ginevra,
they are straight out of the costume dispenser,
where the clouds are made of Paris,
and the day is made of swirling capes
to wear on the cusp of morning,
the air is peppermint basil to go with a bite of sunlight,
blue mangoes and frozen kiwis
he sails around in the Caribbean,
filled with smiling fish,
we’ll bring the fat owl
who ate too many toads
and now is made of ribbits.
the owl smells like a knock- knock joke
and sings with the rubberized cow.
King Ginevra goes looking
for a painted mermaid hanging in the sky,
and he roams the nighttime ocean,
cawing birds follow him down the drowsy hole
and together they float to the  Eiffel Tower
without a single band-aid emergency.
He returns early in the morning,
drinking banana tea with honey,
and eating a bacon muffin too.
Soon after breakfast,
the great King Ginevra decides
that the theme for today is jungle.
and he rides the Q train
all the way to the popcorn zoo
or maybe to the fingernail moon,
his head still beating with wishes.

Bards Annual July 2015

Bard’s Annual – Listen

 

Listen,
to the silence in the winter woods,
a certain mystical vibration humming over the water,
making it hard to breathe without  catching,
hard to sing without dancing.

Submit,
to its shuddering, juddering pulse,
walk into that stillness where only dead leaves breathe
and winter berries surrender to a hungry bird
and a red-tailed hawk lazes on an updraft circling eights.

Follow,
the path  of light and deep shadows
comfortably wrapped around an empty wood,
embrace the gentle wind, nipping at bare cheeks,
nod to the cerulean sky, color for the blind eyes of winter.

Hail,
dead branches soon to surrender to the snowing, blowing gale
jewels of compassion hiding dormant buds that wait
for the light of  spring, to jump the threshold
when they hear the gentle call to unfurl.

So listen,
companion of the reckless road
tune in to the pulsing beat of darkness
as winter drums its drum,
time to rest before the blooming work of spring,
time to rest before the blooming work of spring.

****

Bards Annual 2015

July 2015

 

How Is It Possible – Hedgerow # 17

How Is It Possible

on a morning when the clouds
curl back upon themselves,
and give up only momentary corridors of bare sky,
on a morning when those maddeningly small tokens of blue
taunt and tease a rain-weary, fog-weary heart,
how is it that the sighing wind,
bending toward the naked oak tree,
can carry a burst of bird song
through the myriad layers
of a morose winter morning,
piercing the frozen edges of a february nap
prodding and poking me out of my february nest?

By what miracle does a Carolina wren,
the tiniest of wintering birds,
on the gloomiest of winter days,
sing in the only voice
the universe gave it,
an April voice,
conjuring up a stunning moment of spring,
and bestowing a blessing
on the rain besotted morning,
anointing my eyes and ears
with the chrism of its winter anthem,
just in time to save my despairing soul
from the depths of this winter silence?

hedgerow – a journal of small poems #17

February 20, 2015

Frogpond 38:1 Periwinkle

***

periwinkle –
how could my mother forget
the summer sky

***

Frogpond 38:1

3/15

Hedgerow #10 – The River

 

the river  Silence
beckons,
i dive in
listening
to ancient psalms
sing their poetry
tapping deeper
touching the pain
swimming through
to the still, silent pool,
i reach for a whisper
a single metaphor,
murmured underwater
an echo…. maybe joy
gasping,
and coming up
for air
then seeing
the sun rise
hearing the sky shout,

i breathe,
find a voice,
and sing.

**

hedgerow: a journal of small poems # 10

11/28/14

Fragrance of Sage

****

fragrance of sage
permeates the garden
in moonlight
I search for wisdom
even among the weeds

****

Published Bamboo Hut  Vol 2 Issue 1
September 2014

Dragonfly !

Weeding at
 six forty-five
A.M. and already
I am perspiring.
Little rivers tickle down my back and face, mixing with the citronella I
bathed in,  before venturing into mosquito territory.  There is a sparrow
singing
in the cherry tree, serenading  early risers.  I sweat and remind
myself that  all this bending will keep me young, allegedly. I spot
a dragonfly
on the bee balm
right next to my leg.
Breath skips out
of me.  Now
he flies,
spins,
thin
as a
whis
per,
land
ing
on a
shoe,
resting
from
what
ever it
is a
dra
gon
fly
d
o
e
s
!

 

Published 7/14 –  Bards Annual 2014 – a Poetry Anthology