A Pair of Poems

It’s been a busy week in writing land, so I dipped into my archives for today’s post.

Last year, I took a poetry course in college. It wasn’t my favorite course ever. My professor and I often had very different tastes when it came to poetry, so I wasn’t always thrilled by the revisions she suggested. However, I do enjoy experimenting with poetry and learned a lot to help me do that more effectively. Poetry is quite different from nonfiction and fiction, and I find it can frequently help me process things in a way prose writing cannot.

I chose two of my poems from that class and looked over them again, preserving the revisions I felt truly improved the poem, and changing some lines back to my original version that I liked better.

I hope you enjoy these poems; I feel they both are a good fit for late summer in their own ways.

Waves of Memory

Waves of clouds are black in stormy night.

Blacker still the ocean as it rolls,

Till waves above kiss waves below with light.

Lightning’s bell rope strikes and thunder tolls,

As wind beats sand dunes into buttressed eaves.

The sea chants and unfurls its ancient scrolls.

“The dark and wet need not be beauty’s thieves,”

The sound of sky and gulf as one decree.

“Then,” I cry, “from beauty grant reprieve.”

At sunrise, there’s nothing left for me

But tattered clouds and sand strewn with debris.

Waiting for Love

If it’s true that love is a red, red rose,

Then my heart’s garden is yet sparse and green.

Many have passed the gate, yet no love grows,

The path is soft, but footprints can’t be seen.

Some nights I keep myself awake with dreams

And tell myself love’s not beyond my reach.

Awake, hope fades like morning’s dewy gleam

That withers from the buds as I touch each.

My love must be a man I haven’t met,

Among the burly oaks without a mind.

For strength and stature fade with time, and yet

Our thoughts will ever grow and intertwine.

But “not yet” may mean only put on hold,

And gardens may still bloom though they be old.