Strawberry Words

Crone age is like strawberries

transplanting takes time.

I dig and move strawberries from my garden

like retirement transplanted me to Pennsylvania.

They grow thicker in this rich soil.

Runners shoot out and root,

dozens of new plants start,

overgrowing their borders.

The plants are poems

I pick, type and polish,

submissions are transplants

sent into the world.

When the patch grows too thick,

strawberries produced grow smaller,

they’re crowded out by new plants

and wild strawberry vine imposters.

I go back in and thin, weed my words,

find small nuggets: haiku,

recombinations in rengay,

quatrain, tanka, ronka.

I pick gems of sweet berries and short forms,

harvest red gleaming treasures,

eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner,

voracious insatiable excessive.

There’s never too much,

nothing exceeds like excess

when it comes to strawberries and words.

 

 

Miracle

She was a good mother to their children,

constant to an unfaithful husband.

When booze killed him,

she believed it was her destiny to remarry in one year

and God would supply a husband.

She planned a big wedding with no groom in sight

and unshakeable faith.

Her minister agreed to marry her and saved the date.

Friends and family marked their calendars,

guests bought plane tickets.

She confirmed the church hall, planned flowers and food.

Got a gown, selected a wedding party, sewed the dresses.

Ten months later, no sign of the intended,

her minister got worried.

He counseled Lavonia, “Call off the wedding.”

She counseled him, “Have faith.”

She said, “I have faith the Lord will provide.

I haven’t have found him yet, but he’s there,

I just have to find him.”

Six weeks before the date, he came to Bible Study.

As soon as she saw him, she knew he was the one.

He was as sure about her as she was of him.

They married according to plan.

Lavonia and Willard Hall,

happily married twenty-five years and counting.

 

 

Mountain Bus Ride

The engine groans, the gear shift grinds

on a bus trip over the highlands

to Chichicastenango in Guatemala.

Tassels sway on the windshield,

the cab shivers and shakes,

everyone holds onto their seats.

We follow switch backs,

I look straight down

and feel queasy

seeing four lengths of the road

we just traveled,

no guard rail to hold us in.

We pass white crosses

marking roadside losses.

This bus load holds me

and a woman with a chicken

wedged between skirt and sandals,

pigs are tethered under a net,

tied onto the roof

that secures a mound of cargo

to prevent it from shifting

or flipping the bus.

The road straightens,

in concert Mayans around me

make a sign of the cross,

heads bowed in silent prayer.

I’m glad to be alive.

 

 

Catskill Music Retreat

We sing

in one accord,

harmony of voices

in chorus,

one chord are we.

White light

breaks night open.

A buddha full moon climbs trees

in the rippled water

of a chanting stream.

We sing

each other’s joy,

sorrow and pain,

a chain of healing

links and blends our voices.

Rock teeth

comb old man’s silver hair,

long tresses tumble downstream

between dark ribbon banks

of the Taconic.

 

 

http://beneaththerainbow.com/poetry-by-ingrid-bruck/