toward midnight

she wore impatience
barely assembled…
jeans, sandals, t-shirt
brush swiped hair

there’d been years
for logos, labels
mirror glances
suntan afternoons

now urgency
set rhythms…
three friends gone…
distressing vacancies

she still had patience
with nostalgia…
yet sought primary colors
not pastels

she read books…poetry
in draughts…to inebriation…
paused…when honest people
wrestled with ideas

kept awake past midnight
to stay closing of the light

Bonnie Marshall

Photo Credit: botanizing-flanerie

Elemental Thursday

Thor’s…day
due tomorrow…day
not for a wedding…day
place keeper
pick up stitches
survey space in hours
filter subtleties
into primary colors
blue…yellow…red
burn vanilla candles
live in a Bach concerto
drink black coffee
at a café down the street

Bonnie Marshall

iThing, My Ariel

You nestle in my ears
to sing me wondrous songs
and orchestrate full symphonies
of kaleidoscopic notes.

Responsive to my fingertips
you anticipate my need
for instantaneous union
with out of sight dimensions
of thought and imagery.

Then…once you take me there,
you so intoxicate my mind
with vast…prodigious wonder
that.. inebriate and tranced
I grow reluctant to return
to tame sobriety.

 

Bonnie Marshall

to shape a day

Artist: Bill Watterson

by ten…twelve years,
some…most…grasp the knowing
of how to shape a day:
Huck Finn of the Mississippi,
Peter Pan of Never Never Land,
Calvin of Calvin/Hobbes,
though Calvin was six
…an early learner…
when he made up Calvinball
to ease into life…simple rules:
every player wears a mask…
no one is allowed
to question the mask…
different rules each game…
make up rules as you play along…
that game taught him
who to trust,
how to face adversity,
and how to shape his day–
just like Huck,
who lit out for the territory–
just like Peter Pan’s
days with those lost…lost boys
in Never Never Land

Bonnie Marshall

floating home

rain waited off the coast
for its attendant storm
to gust and bluster
entrance to the bay

she…chill-braced
wool-layered, slicker, boots
stood witness for Poseidon’s
assault upon the shore

she’d built her home
nearer sea than land
aromas of cedar…pine
and redwood…winded, fogged, sunned
rough-ridged beneath her hand

for treed robins and bluebirds
she’d traded pelicans and seals
gulls…whale’s white spout
kayak-trailing lemon sharks

she told time with tides
and slant of brightness…
she moved to subtle rock
of the water push

then when rain appeared
she tasted salt upon her lips
breathed in the ocean air
heard distant Nereids sing

Bonnie Marshall