Category: Poetry

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #22

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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Elemental Series: Fire

This rainbow of color, this flame
of blue and orange and red,
its black fingers curling
into the night sky, beckoning.

Step too close and the furnace
opens, the hairs above your wrist
lifting in surety of their own demise,
every breath the charcoal scent
of dying wood and the slow burn
that heats the belly.

Yet, rising Phoenix-like out of ashes
upon ashes from lightning hits,
ciggies tossed, the purposeful strike
of an arsonist’s match, this flame

coaxes new breath from what lies
burnt and broken, feeds the grasses
that will reach through blackness
towards the light, fire and earth
seeking, desperately seeking,
the balance the planet, which moves
to its own rhythm, demands.

Ramona Levacy
April 22, 2013

Posted in Living, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #21

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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Elemental Series: Air

Lean into it when the day is still
and you will stumble into nothing,
yet you know it is there,

feeling its icy fingers or baked rays,
enjoying the tickle of its whisper
when gentle breezes lift all
that is ordinary from your burdened neck.

On atmospheric days, when what we
have given shows itself plainly, the soot
of smog a pallid reminder that all
actions come with consequences, the cast
of convenient living in contrast
to the gray, dying sky.

After a rain, washed clean and forgiving,
it keeps filling us, one breath at a time,
an exchange of molecules as old as Adam,
the one thing we cannot see that we
continue to believe.

Ramona Levacy
April 21, 2013

Posted in Christian Living, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #20

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

On Knowing God

Just a piece of weathered wood,
once part of a great tree, a tall oak
spreading toward the blue sky.

How did it come to be swept
onto this sandy beach, beaten by waves,
barnacled, the smell of the distance
clinging to its nooks and crannies?

Walking in the dunes, searching
for shells and the evidence of God,
we know the loneliness of logs
taking cover under moss,
all truth of their beings hidden
under layers of salty water
and the memory of rain.

Only on our knees, the ocean’s mist
fanning our faces, do we peel
away our own layers, open the core
of our being to the One whose truth
is everywhere, even in the cast-off bits
of a mighty oak now twirling in front of us
on a distant shore.

Ramona Levacy
April 20, 2013

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #19

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The Wallflower

Hands in his pockets, shoulders slouched
to draw all that he is to himself, he leaves
no faults exposed, no sign that he has come
for any reason of his own to this gym,
this concrete-lined box decked out
in tinsel and lights that glow,
as if it too must live in mystery.

She hovers near the punch bowl,
her eyes darting between couples
twirling on the court-turned-dance floor,
her flat shoes keeping the music’s pulses
under a skirt the length they wore last year.

If he were a poet, he might write lines
about her violet eyes, the way her dark lashes
flutter behind her thick lenses,
a promise of the beauty she will grow into.

But she, not one to wither, strides
through the crowd, her limp locks bouncing,
her back straight, her head held high.
When she taps the football captain’s shoulder,
her smile transforms a dandelion to a sunflower,
their bold dance the stuff of jealous whispers as he
keeps his solemn place against the wall.

Ramona Levacy
April 19, 2013

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #18

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

When Things Could Be Better

Perched on the fence post, he preens
each morning, announcing the sun
with an old voice he owns
like the hens pecking in the hard dirt,
his kingdom the span of our two acres,
this junk yard of Grandpa’s used car parts
and the patch of wilted vegetables
Grandma clings to.

He haunts my daily chore, lunges
when I head to the hen house,
where the ladies nestle, squawk
at the swift swipe of my nervous fingers
for the oblong, lifeless orbs that mean
money for my mother’s quilting thread.

These days of sweeping dirt floors,
kneading sourdough, churning butter,
our only breaks the quiet moments
darning clothes threadbare and long past
normal, I long to be clucking,
the lone master of my universe,
a land full of potential, absolute control,
the only thing I know.

Ramona Levacy
April 18, 2013

Posted in Faith, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #17

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

For That Which Must Be Tried

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.  (Hebrews 11:1)

Reaching for the invisible God,
I come with arms open wide, with eyes
searching for a heart like His,
my whole being in the now,
until every cell vibrates in waiting
for the whisper of the Spirit
or the gift of that chance moment
to be the face of love unending
for another searcher, to one who needs
God’s touch to believe.

Listening for God and hearing
only my voice, I pray for His echo,
commit His words to memory
as truth, as the hope
that keeps all faith alive.

The more I reach for God, the less
I bind myself to what glitters,
to what will make me put myself
above everything, speak harsh words,
view the world down the length of my nose.

Reaching for the invisible God
is what peace feels like, a calm
washing over my insides,
like a fuzzy blanket on a long winter’s night.

Ramona Levacy
April 17, 2013

(Thanks to Philip Yancey’s title, Reaching for the Invisible God, for giving me my opening line for this poem.)

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #16

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

To Another Woman’s Dream

 

The picture, faded around the edges, hangs
on the bare-wood wall above the table,
the room’s only furniture, except two benches
polished to a bright glow.

Squiggles along one side mark where the page
once lay in The Saturday Evening Post,
this household’s only link to linen napkins
and flower pots on ledges of unblemished windows
looking out to manicured lawns and box bushes
lined in rows.

Over the caption, Home Sweet Home,
bound by picket fence and rose bushes,
perches the white brick promise of rocking chairs
swaying on a long porch, a golden knocker hanging
on a bright-red door.

From sunrise to sunset, through her bread-baking,
feather-plucking, and the dripping of her sweat
on the dirt-packed floor, the picture points her
to something greener, or to the other thing,
the secret we all hide in dirty corners,
that unending thirst for more.

Ramona Levacy
April 16, 2013

(Note:  I wrote two poems today because the first time I tried to publish this, there was some sort of glitch, and the only thing that showed up was a picture I had used!  My actual poem had disappeared into the computer ether.  So, this is my re-write of what I had just done and had totally lost.  Now I know how Hemingway felt when his wife lost a suitcase full of his writing!  Yeah, I’m a Hemingway—NOT!)

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #15

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The Bond That Does Not Break

This child we have created
blinks at us, her doe-eyes,
large and round, clear
irises the color of the tiny span
of moments, all guarded and lovely,
all she knows of unblemished breath.

Her cries, even the smallest whimpers,
pluck strings in us we guessed
but did not know would blossom,
strong as steel, alert as Spidey senses,
the bonds for which we would count
as nothing the very marrow in our bones
if the sacrifice meant her smile
shining in this sphere just one more hour.

The Spirit, the gift He gave which never leaves us,
will be our Comforter, these days, when the horrors
blaring in unending bytes of binary code
and high-definition streams leave us
aching and wordless, our baby’s world
stretching before us in a scary unknowing
that has been since the beginning
in this fallen place.

We huddle above her crib,
pull the blankets snuggly to her chin,
and return her trusting stare with eyes
full of undeliverable promises,
all we have to offer.

Ramona Levacy
April 15, 2013

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #14

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The First Day of Summer

Our bare toes gritty in the sand,
the foamy saltwater
licking our calves in swirls,
we breathe the oxygen so free
around us, tingle with the light rays
warming skin grown pale
in winter’s hazy days.

These moments, when the heart
beats with the pulse of the earth’s core,
we believe anything, feel
like the sea turtles
in the violent pulses mid-ocean
moving with such careful intention,
they look like birds in the clouds,
floating for decades in purest peace.

Having now and only the promise of other days
of sunlight and seawater, we grab with two hands
the beauty of an afternoon together,
our own errant thinking the only obstacle
between ourselves and a loving God.

Ramona Levacy
April 14, 2013

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #13

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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What Animals Have To Teach Us

In warm-belly comfort, stretched
in the only puddle of light
on this cloudy afternoon,
our tabby sleeps in oneness
with the air she purrs in and out,
blissfully ignoring the boxes half-packed
and piles of treasures, the junk
we know as us, strewn in random anger
around her.

The first time, she bounced
from box to box, then hid under the bed’s
farthest corner, her patience for the lull
in rising voices outlasting
even the cling of her dinner plate
tossed mid-argument onto the floor.

Our patience, mostly human, spars
with the need deep in our chests
to be the right one, no matter the cost,
be it cozy afternoons in our own light’s puddle,
or the quieting purr of a tabby
curled like a pretzel in our laps.

Tomorrow, we will come back to center,
shake our heads over another weekend
lost to best left unsaid, long for the peace
we see modeled in furry perfection,
as she kneads our bellies and begs
for supper, all she need know
of life to the full sealed and waiting,
the essence of her cat-ness
preserved in a round, metal can.

Ramona Levacy
April 13, 2013