Holiday poetic prose

As a non-hibernating human being there is a time when in my existence I lay dormant in a shadowy malaise, as it were, a condition that transcends my true nature causing me to be a grumpy misfit among sun worshipers and barbecue bimbos as I have never seen the value in frying ones epidermis to a pork rind in the infra red blast furnace of ole Sol’s rays.

My arousal arrives with each day’s sunset beginning a little earlier and with the tree leaves shuddering to fall from their perch in a frosty apoplectic form anticipating re-birthing in the coming spring with a rather unwelcome death that coats the yard by their cast off carcasses leaving spindly shadows on a rather well manicured carpet of green.

However, autumn and winter herald scrumptious tables of Thanksgiving dining with friends and family, bright multicolor lights reflected in the eyes of joyful children, and glittering Christmas trees surrounded by gayly wrapped presents which are those things that energize me from somnolence into a jolly jig dancing Fantasia footed fool, ain’t it grand.

©2012, Donald Harbour

Grandma

Every morning, looking out the window,
clad in a thread bare chenille house coat,
she watches.

She is an unseen companion to memory.
A diminutive figure stooped from ninety
years of life, of waiting. Yet she
stands there with a slight tremor
in her hands and watches.

Her thin legs coursed with purple veins
end in feet planted in terry cloth slippers,
they are the best she has.

From somewhere in her head shrouded
by a silver-grey cloud of hair,
visions of the past play in her mind.
A kaleidoscope of good times, youth, and love.
Feelings of joy and sadness.
A pantheon of life treasures.

Today she forgot her teeth but a smile is there,
on her lips and in her eyes.
Some might think her a fool smiling, never speaking.
Occasionally blinking or with her tongue
wetting thin cracked lips.

She leans closer to the window,
her slight breath leaves a fog of moisture on the pane.
She does not know that she has out lived
her man and her children. She was the one
that gave their home a heart. The truth for
her is that they are out there somewhere
playing or working.

And so, remembering, she watches,
waiting for their return home to her
and to the comfort of her love.

©2012, Donald Harbour

I know the meaning

I dreamed that one held the scepter
of life. Not a god, not a beast, not
a government, not the whole of the universe.
I dreamed a child and I knew the meaning.

©2012, Donald Harbour

My boot upon her back

This poem is written in celebration of Earth Day, 2011 – with love ♥ for Gaia.

she lays before me
bare breasted
those lusty mountains
skirting the temptation
of a flat dimpled plain
with her loins
strong as coastal shores
she calls to me
her suffering body
suckling her children
taking their abuse
she persists in her love
gathering all of them
into the folded crooks
of her bridled arms
she blossoms in spring
wears a girdle in autumn
is a cold scornful woman in winter
frolicks in the summer sun
she possess all the seasons
holds unknown wisdom
this tempestuous creature
where the seeds of life
swim in the fluids
of her sheltering being
I too love her
though I have placed
my boot upon her back
she cries not
her lack of tears
shames me rips at my heart
I am a lesser man
as are all men for what
they have done to her
yet she accepts us back
Mother Earth always forgives

© 2011, Donald Harbour