Fifty three

Sidewalk burning my small feet

I froze in place

Tears in my blue eyes

until I called to you

Move! You said.

I can’t! I thought

But your voice gave me the courage.

 

Years evaporating

My Blue eyes searching

To find whatever footprints

You may have left me to follow.

Moving forward,

Even when afraid,

Your example gave me courage.

Now I reach the end

Of your footprints

And I pause in the last one

Seeing clearer now

My imagination my compass,
a gift from you,
Father of my blue eyes.

Found

Lost love

They call it

But I know

Where it lies

I’ve sewn it

Beneath a scar

Long and jagged

Almost invisible

Sometimes catching

On a sharp edge

Of memory

It opens

Spilling tears

Of crimson.

And I mend

With stronger thread.

Marsyl Warren

Godsong haiku

Violins
God's breath
in my ear.

Watching Family Movies

My father's jumpy images,

miles of trees,

autumn on parade.

Looking for myself

in all those flickering cells,

in spring.

In autumn;

the sun, and my head,

out of the clouds.

Looking for dad

in all those flickering cells.

Found,

In miles of trees.

colors

In the stained glass warehouse

Searching for the hues

We'll miss in winter

I'm channeling my father

Who loved color

As much as I.

Haiku for a black and white bird

Little chickadee joy

a stunning jewel

framed by my window.

A Genealogist’s Garden


A northern gardener surely cannot be surprised
By the rapid passing of the seasons
The urgent, boyant seedlings
seeking the spotlight
The unselfconscious bloom of summer
The sudden peak of beauty at harvest,
Which can only be discerned in looking back
And the long colorless decay
Buried under the cold
Of winter.

As I remove the detritus of death
From the sprouts of spring
I wonder.
How generations of my seedlings
Will continue their blooming
Long after the debris of my being
is swept away.

-Marsyl Dickinson Warren-