Poetry – Page 6 – goodchristianfiction

National Poetry Writing Month #12

Posted on April 12, 2013April 12, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Like Chicken-Fried Love

The chair, cherry red but chinked
with black layers showing through,
stood in the corner of Grandma’s noisy kitchen,
gathering cobwebs to its spindly legs
and golden flecks of crumbs,
the shortbread of love we grandkids gobbled,
in lopsided circles where it wobbled
as we begged for her jolly grin
or stood upon the well-worn seat to spy
the mystery, the absolute alchemy
that only she had mastered.

Hands pudgy and pink, she kneaded
rolls ready to rise, Buddy Holly tunes
wafting in the air around us,
along with scents of cinnamon
and something she called cooking sherry.

At her rounded elbows we learned
the meaning of happy, how butter
richly lingered, cast iron held
flavor to its belly, meringue peaked
like mountains making us forget
all but our wide-eyed awe.

No microwave or take-out, plated
even on the finest china,
replaces the clock slowly ticking
as we savored our chair moments,
watching the loops of Grandma’s apron
sway in rhythm, tucked safely
in the kitchen warmed by her gas stove,
cocooned in country chemistry.

Ramona Levacy
April 12, 2013

Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #11

Posted on April 11, 2013April 11, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The Librarian

Miss Alice wore cardigans trimmed in lace,
and plain, brown skirts that draped
her manly shoes, her bunned hair
a perfect circle at the base
of a long, thin neck. Her head swiveled
like a ball on a stick, her horn-rimmed eyes
piercing every cranny of the dusty shelves,
the world she ruled in whispers.

We children plagued her rainy days
and any time the frozen wind blew.
The young men, their chins covered
with fuzzy bristles, made Miss Alice’s ears,
turnips on each side of her round head,
blotch red, their speaking glances
at the girls in bright dresses the prelude
to the secret contact in dark corners
that made the older woman’s eyes bulge
the few times Miss Alice left her desk
to pounce on them.

That desk, with its mounds of books,
piles of history and science and truths
sweated out like blood,
rose around Miss Alice like a fort,
like the walls around her heart,
her hidden organ, tucked inside the drawer
with all her dog-eared romances
and locked away.

Her thin nose and sharp eyes were always there,
as we worked our way through Judy Blume,
grew into Hemingway and books almost banned,
brought our own children to haunt
her disciplined aisles, watching them
gawk at her, eyes wide, silenced
by the swivel of her now grey head.

Her children, bound and musty,
could not keep her warm nights,
tucked in her flannel gown, a hidden treasure
perched on her belly, her only love story
the printed pages blurring just beyond
her thick, round lenses.

Ramona Levacy
April 11, 2013

Love, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #10

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The Marriage Dance

When once we waltzed as one,
nothing went unsaid,
not praises plenty or sorrows,
the painful bursts of that
we should not utter, even what
we would take back,
all absolved, binding us
like the musical patterns we wove
in our living room carpet nights.

Now, the country between us
pitches and yaws like the cool breeze,
our constant companion, no middle ground,
only these miles of weeds and stickers,
our aloneness a wall we will not tackle.

This waltz by myself is not easy,
casting me in shadow, slicing the happy
of others to my heart’s core,
beating rapid rhythms around me,
as I lumber like one dancing in the dark.

Was it days blended into days,
sugared coffee and oatmeal and the sound
of the sprinkler splatting the back door,
that brought us to this black, soundless chasm?
Or was it forgetting to keep the music at our center
the One and Only keeper of the light?

Ramona Levacy
April 10, 2013

Christian Living, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #9

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

To Know Him

Silence is a cool breeze tickling
skin warm from the sunlight,
grass blades licking earlobes lush
in paintbrush and dandelion,
a stream bubbling clear
just beyond reach,
the blue sky high above
and white along the edges.

Thoughts scurry, as fears breathe out
with the fall of the chest,
and oxygen warms the belly. Arms
flung sideways, the legs sink
into the clean, crisp earth,
letting go, holding nothing,
open to everything,
even the gentle whisp of a butterfly’s wing.

Knowing God means quiet places,
finding brooks in our mind’s crannies,
away from unholy treasures,
tucked in the deepest dark
where we are most surely and yet never
alone.

Ramona Levacy
April 9, 2013

Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #8

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

A Two-Step Dream

He loved her when once she danced,
skittering loops and lines
across a grit-smoothed floor,
her long, blond hair glinting white
against the strobes of lighted halls,
her skirts, always red, twirling ’round
her well-formed calves in rhythms
his heart tapped beats to.

Her heart, solid and cold, except when music
filled her senses, matched his footsteps
only when the band played, her breath
a hot promise on his ear lobes, as close
as ever she came to love.

In the circle of a dance floor,
they twirled and tangoed,
bobbing and weaving the maze
of nothing or all, forever dangling
between them like the twinkle
of gems that seal promises
so many never keep.

Now, tapping heels to any song
wafting past his easy chair, he thinks
of her lips, the plump, red orbs
just touching his cheek stubble,
the two-step all he’d ever know
of a full, gentle world.

Ramona Levacy
April 8, 2013

Christian Living, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #7

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The Supplicant

They are just hands, cracked
as any work-worn skin might be,
the creases running in lines
telling stories of every lost dream
and hard-won victory.

Just looking, we see past the embedded dirt,
the scars stark white against tanned skin
so thick, even softness is just a memory.
These hands know pain, hold hurt
like a solid something, ease misery
with the lightest touch.

Only hands that have raised the crops
for the table or sewn the quilts
warming family beds feel the cold
on winter mornings as something
more than nature’s biting chill.

Clasped in yearning, these hands
have come as close to God
as any believer, stretched in faith
toward that something that binds us
each to the other, the surety of things hoped for,
the evidence of that not seen.

Ramona Levacy
April 7, 2013

Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #3

Posted on April 3, 2013April 3, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Feline Logic

Lapping threads of raindrops from eaves
weathered beyond repair, their creaking crevices
evidence of owners long-since buried,
he too exists without an owning,
his past and future looped
in the now,

in the flick of his quick, pink tongue
against the cold, unsure pinging of this day’s
gift from the sky, his ears pinned
in different directions, this skill,
like so many he has mastered,
his only defense of his perilous place
on this food chain.

Today is all he has ever had,
is all he will ever know
of an un-shrunk belly and the warm earth,
pawed and circled to fullness,
that is his definition of happy.

He leaps from the worn fence, his thirst
already forgotten. One front paw stretches
and then another, his backside rising
in a curve that could only be a gift
from His maker. He crouches
into the stealth that has brought him this far,
sniffs the air with practiced nostrils,
and steps into the new,

his knowing the envy
of every someone who has lain awake
counting unhatched chickens
or re-living torrents of emotion
like streams that flow forever.

Ramona Levacy
April 3, 2013

Poetry

Like A Drop Of Wonder

Posted on April 2, 2013April 2, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

What about the frothy water,
churning molecules from mostly murky depths,
makes even landlocked hearts flutter?

Is it the broad horizon, stretched into white,
broken only by the slick backs of mammals
grown huge and perfect in a world
even man has not yet conquered?

Or is it the promise of something
undiscovered, a final country so vast
that even what tickles our bare toes
as they wiggle in the uncountable
are drops of salty knowing that will
come and go a thousand times
before we pass into the realm of no more?

This world where balance equals motion,
where survival means wind shifting,
belies the challenge of land living,
makes us feel our smallness and face
our own knobby knees.

Even if the cool wind touches
our salty skin like a whisper,
even when the silence thunders
like the voice of God.

Ramona Levacy
April 2, 2013

Poetry, Writing

For National Poetry Writing Month

Posted on April 1, 2013April 1, 2013 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Because Poetry IS Music

Having neither time nor energy,
but only desire fueled by love
of words that dangle on the page
waiting for breath,

I fall with arms
wide-open into the black cavern
of this promise to wax poetic
daily for a month, celebrating
fellow dreamers, those who hope

with total spirit, whose hearts
are worn at the edges,
exposed on sleeves threadbare
but comfortable, living in skins
to which mostly loneliness
clings, who labor

for the right word as other men
sweat blood, all for the tinkle
of a syllable from lips whose masters
understand the value of sound
produced like ivory lovingly fingered.

Ramona Levacy
April 1, 2013

[A special note to my “followers:” If the title, tag, and poem weren’t clues enough, let me explain that I have decided to take up the challenge of writing a poem a day in April in honor of it being National Poetry Writing Month. I still plan to do my weekly post and apologize in advance for the extra emails you will get of poetry this month if you don’t particularly care for this genre. Thanks in advance for giving it a shot. Ramona 🙂 ]