Set to music we all can hear
“Trees, trees, murmuring trees”
“Cheerily, cheerily, cheerily, cheer”
“Oh Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada!”
Are these lines of poetry?
Coded messages from an evocative dream?
Lyrics from a beloved children’s lullaby?
The answer is: none of the above. Yet these “words”, sung by the Eastern meadowlark, Black-throated Green warbler, American robin, and White-throated sparrow, respectively, do seem to evoke a poetic, lyrical, almost dreamlike state. Especially when we hear them outdoors on a warm, cloudless day.
Of course, we need to use our imagination to actually hear these words and…
Then and now.
When I was young, my legs would sometimes ache. My mother would smile and say, “That’s just your growing pains. Your legs are stretching, growing strong.” And so it seemed to be.
These days I sometimes feel pain, it seems from head to toe. Kneeling and standing , stretching or bending, or even just lying in bed, my joints and bones make themselves known.
“Slow down”, some urge with solicitude. “You are getting too old.” But I prefer to see these pains as signs of growth and change.
I must move with more care these days, and a little bit…
The fear of failure
Hello, Please include me in your list of writers for Inspire 250. http://medium.com@824drb
Thank you!
I thought of you
Holding us hostage
A confessional poem
She is a killer of houseplants
and has been all her life.
When she takes them home
they tremble and wilt,
knowing they soon must die.
What can they do, helpless as they are
if fate has decreed this unkind end?
To die overwatered and underfed,
leaf by leaf to wither and fall
with a muted tap on the kitchen floor?
She doesn’t mean to kill them, after all;
in truth she wants only this:
to be surrounded by ranks of living green. …
Deborah Barchi
Deborah Barchi has recently retired from her career as a librarian and now has time to read, explore nature, and write poetry and essays. 824drb@gmail.com
