Twilight Times

I won gold with this poem..about the picture




I am a creature of the twilight times.
One night the trees burned, hot sparks flying
across the midnight sky.
I ran, my nose singed with smoke and fire.
The beast clawed at my feet
but finally it died,
smoldering in the night.
At dawn I climbed a lone tree.
I sat in deep melancholy
on the twisted blackened limbs.
Destruction framed by a perfect new day.
I watched the ash fall
around the smudged edges of my new life,
wishing I could return to the velvet green of my youth.
One by one a flock of cardinals
gathering on the ash covered tree
offering me the color of their song.

Without Her

This poem won gold in a contest about loss, from a man's point of view..

Without Her
Again this morning, they gather
in the high white pines
and along the back clothes line.
The birds watch the window, waiting.
The empty bird feeder swings in the wind.
I watch them from my seat on the front porch.
They have no interest in me,
it is her they are waiting for.
She use to fill the bird feeder every morning,
no matter the weather.
The morning doves approach me first
hopping across the boards of the porch,
heads held sideways asking perhaps,
"what has happened to that old woman?"
I ignore the chatter and sip my weak coffee,
still after a month of trying it doesn’t have
the punch of the stuff she use to make.
I find it strange that the smallest things
are what I find hardest to bare without her.
I use to take for granted all the clean socks
and underwear that use to appear like magic every day.
A chickadee cries hauntingly from the pine tree.
I ignore the call and continue to sip my almost cold brew.
Just as I am ready to go inside I see it,
the flash of red fluttering above the trees.
Every year my wife would wait for them to come.
Some years they never were seen.
Her favorite bird, perhaps because they were so rare.
My heart aches in my chest, wishing she was here to enjoy this.
I think about the empty feeder
and the bag of feed wasting away in the porch.
A female cardinal joins her mate on the tree.
Two cardinals now that is a rare sight.
With tears on my cheeks I go into the porch to retrieve the birdseed.
I can feel my wife's light laugh drifting on the wind
as I walk back to the pine trees and fill the feeder.

Empty Nest

This poem won bronze in a contest..we had to write about nurturing...

Empty Nest

Autumn has come too quickly.
My daughter has left
for her first year of collage
the last of my children to leave home.
My hours seem long,
I’m lost in the wanting
to change things back to when
my children were young.
I know in my heart I have
nurtured her enough
that she has wonderful wings
to fly on her own.
Fall leaves blow,
raising color.
Scarlet and orange,
like curled butterflies,
they flutter across the yard.
The smell of dead flowers
their fragrance still sweet
even in death.
May’s renewal,
now a distant memory.
The wind blows hard,
a tiny bird’s nest falls at my feet.
Weaved within
my daughter’s lost hair ribbon.
A small bird flies out of the tree,
winging its way south.
The mother bird has long ago
taught it to fly on it's own.
I wonder is the empty nest
breaking her heart?