Age Rushes Us

Over the river, and through the wood,

To Grandfather's house we go;

the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh

through the white and drifted snow. . . .

~ Lydia Maria Child

  

Journeys we take repeatedly from home

to parents should leave ruts in roads travelled,

but we find them in hearts and minds instead.

There they speed up or slow down on approach

depending on what we anticipate—

pleasure or pain—until age rushes us.

We grow old, but they grow older, and hard

as it is to see them decline, we watch

to love and watch to learn, aware we’re next.

Mortality has had its way with us.

What now can we govern? What controls us?

What kindness have we earned? Where is it from?

Unconditional love exists if we

can leave our ruts and give wholeheartedly.

 My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Becoming Happiness

“. . . do not think that the person who is trying to console you

lives effortlessly among the simple, quiet words that sometimes

make you feel better. His life is full of troubles and sadness

and falls far short of them.  But if it were any different

he could never have found the words that he did.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Intention hasn’t grown

happiness for me—not

like seeds grow into annuals

nor clouds to rain.

But between solitudes,

between pity and fear,

between deluge and drought,

there lies a happy place.

Rising like an island

unexpectedly

in peripheral vision,

it’s not there when sought.

But it invites us in

through faces along the way,

through songs, through sidewalk trees

and through meadow flowers.

And I welcome it like

fresh air and community,

like red rose buds opening

without a whimper, whispering.

For my prompt: Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Happiness

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Preparing to Seize the Day

View from Earth with the Moon, the Sun and the Milky Way Galaxy aligned.
By Pablo Carlos Budassi

To dream, you’d have to sleep much more

than down and up in two hours—

not enough for rem-time, not enough to balance 

the fifteen-hour days that follow. 

Remember when you fell asleep

at twilight and woke up at dawn? 

Childhood and saving electric, they said,

the bills coming faster than they could pay.

But think of the lesson it could have been

(you who think you are smart but miss the point).

Nature’s time, little flower: Let your eyes close

when the sun is out of sight and sleep until it rises.  

Close like day lily petals. There will be more 

of you to open up each time the sun and moon rotate 

around our spinning planet in delicately-timed 
authenticity. A magnificent design.

Imagine moving with it, repairing the tears 

in your dear soul, the rips in your petals, 

the lapses in your sensuality.  What then, 

little flower, might you do when you awake?  

Remember dew drops?  Robins and worms?  

Greys and pinks in the cloud-lined daybreak? And dreams?  

You fear them, but remember how you woke and laughed 

or sobbed, and how sweet the day rose ahead of you.

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Becoming a Weather Vane

Does happiness cushion your heart

as sadness fills and tragedy  

cracks it?  To ache, tear up and smile 

simultaneously—with soul 

steady—is marvelous strength in

a life too often wracked with pain.

This must be how a home withstands

storms, how maple and dogwood trees

experience changing weather.

Last time it rained, I stood arm in 

arm with a white pine to feel drops

pelt skin, to drink with my fingers.

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Beyond Shrink-Wrap and Faucets

Source

Shrink-wrapped chicken flesh sits on shelves, but who

remembers how to raise hens for their meat?

Faucets dispense fresh cold and hot water,

but who knows how to haul it in buckets?

And from where?  We close our eyes and put our hands

on them, hoping food and water will tell 
us how and where.  Will they who we abused help us?

Survival skills are sparse away from farms.

And our parents’ parents’ stories seem like

tall tales.  We’ll have to shorten them, now that

Flint shows us lasting pollution, now that 
science and government have both failed us. 

Time we sing praises to water without

waiting for more reasons to weep.  Time we

learned to save it without looking for whom

to blame.  Time we showed up to save ourselves.

And as we walk toward the fields, let's greet

those who might still welcome us—trees and plants

and folks native here and those who—like us—

are still their guests.  We have only this chance.

For Sumana's

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Water

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

A Very Good Deal

source

Judas muttered all the way to his suicide

“What profit if I gain the world but lose my soul?”

He couldn’t remember planning the trade—a life

for coin—gold coin to lead a healer to the knife.

He couldn’t remember why he wanted money,

and suspected manipulation from above.

He was surely damned anyway, so what matter

a rope? He’d tried to give back the money, but no.

All could be recycled—the rope and gold

and man.  His story, too, like Adam and Eve’s, would

teach whatever object lesson the priests wanted.

Nothing is ever wasted in this paradise.

Judas moaned, “Ah, rope.  Was I ever in control? 

Who profited when I took money for my soul?”

For my prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Barter/Trade

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast