My Place in the Family of Things*

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Le Petit Prince - p. 26

From my house on its square quarter acre

you can barely see the climate changing.

Like the Little Prince’s glass globe, my house

keeps me from feeling night winds, from feeling

and seeing it’s been much too warm to snow.

Here is a cottage industry of faith

in science that stops me running water

without thinking while brushing my teeth and

washing dishes, that makes me recycle.

I don’t want to see the climate changing.

I read of stranded polar bears and dead

whale babies, of people leaving parched land

to find greener pastures.  I see the grief

and awful risks.  It can happen right here.

Climate change refugees have no more homes.

They are Princes leaving little planets

where they had houses, land and animals.

Still, they have a place in the family

of things, as do I.  Having tamed this place,

I must care for it. To care, I let it tame me.

*The last line of Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”

For my prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Climate Change

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

Shadowlands

source

The hurt is proportionate to the love—

(or something like that).  CS Lewis watches

his love succumb to cancer, and I cry

without fail.  Every time I watch the film

the great shy man falls in like and then love

and then grief—then the miracle happens

every time—he falls in love more and

he listens.  The great wise man listens

to the wisdom his love has deep in her heart.

She wraps it around her son and CS Lewis.

She wraps love from the shadow lands around

the men in her life, and they know, finally

the meaning of the inside of the wardrobe—

the fierce love of story, shadow, and light.

For Sumana's prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Life: Paradox And / Or Balance

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

Alone at the Well

Lifting the phone today 

seems a taboo.

Source

It isn’t, of course.  

Only I impose silence 

as if it were the medicine

needed to make prayer more effective.

Today the phone 

seems too heavy to lift.

What if no one answers? 

Does loneliness alone lift me 

into the arms of the divine?

The single cutting thrives in fresh water.

Calls and texts are tendrils 

reaching out

when doubt pollutes 

and cuts off the water,

when fear absorbs all of life’s nutrients,

when balance is elusive 

and fingers itch

to grab the flowing water 

and to clutch 

tightly to what answers 

the lightest touch.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

Drink at My Well

Drawing, Landscape With Deer in Morning Haze, Winslow Homer (ca. 1892) Public Domain

“Each morning we are born again”

 ~ Buddha

O Brave New World! I

greet you in daylight again

as if the first time.

Grateful to wake up,

nod with your tree limbs, and

feed two waiting cats.

Wake healthy or not,

I rediscover your love,

your solidity.

Clean air and water

greet me, and I drink my fill

knowing I’m lucky.

Daily, grief returns

that children hurt at borders,

and in their own lands.

Daily, I re-pledge

to share your wealth.  All who can,

Come.  Drink at my well.

For my prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Starting Over

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

Sounds and Silence

In response to Rosemary's Love, eventually

My black cats

with black whiskers

disappear swiftly.

They see

me watch them

and scatter as if

billiard balls—

but meal times

find them sitting

racked up in place

wary, waiting.

They reward

my consistency with

roaring purrs,

and at times

those sonorous sounds

accompany slow affectionate petting

eyes closed.

Unexpected moves

and misplaced fingers

send them flying—such

exacting teachers.

My black cats

with black whiskers

disappear swiftly.

(Using the Arch form described by Rosemary)

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

Lost in the Woods

Until I remember why I entered this room

and turned on the computer so deliberately

I will stay here.

Until I remember why I opened the door

to the refrigerator with a cup in my hand

I will stay here.

Until I remember why I don’t have the Good Will donations

and shopping list with me, I’ll stop the car roadside

and I will stay here.

Mom taught the pre-schooler me to sit still when very lost

in the woods.  So someone could find me.

Here we are, sitting.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2019 Susan L. Chast