A Poem a Day (690): The maybe

 
The word is as it was, as it always did appear,
as it should, as a filler, as a kind of maybe,
and so we choose how we say it, think it, spend it,
while it screws up its expression at the light, redraws
how it thinks we will read it, imagine it into being.
 
This is the question in the answer, the foreboding,
the way we guess without surety, without a window.
 
We stand still in the deluge that cannot guide us,
create a compass in the imprints of our own feet,
follow where they carry us as if they made a bargain,
because we cannot always remember the way,
or we cannot always find a way to remember it.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 5, 2024

A Poem a Day (689): Alight

  
They stand in line,
ushered in by the west wind,
 
cards majestic without pose,
neither Jack nor Queen nor King,
 
pegged to split this nestled earth
and yet they anchor us still.
 
They harbour ghosts with no direction,
pursue history and press pause.
 
Grey wolves brush their limbs, listen
to their whispers, marking ground,

but lightning cannot hide its vengeance,
and struck these matchsticks light.
 
Glowing leaves in flight chase scarlet.
From a dip in the hills comes a streak
 
of sirens, the battle cry of the many
come to save nature’s living awe.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 3, 2024

A Poem a Day (688): Worn slippers

 
Recoil in sheets and pillows,
blankets of driven snow,
a smothering of words.
 
The gap widens to a chasm
no bridge can traverse,
just a cookie-filled dip.
 
An empty juncture, cooler
with the passage of time,
it becomes impassable.
 
One turns off the light at night,
one sits up and reads a fantasy.
And never the two shall meet.
 
The only warmth in between
is the golden dog. And sometimes
even he finds it too cold.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 2, 2024

A Poem a Day (687): Ours

 
I open my hands to take yours.
You open your hands to take mine.
This lack of space devours.
No time outside of travel,
magic without a single left word.
We could drown like this.
Or we can rise.
The moment is futureless,
It does not even feature beyond this room.
It only is.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 2, 2024

A Poem a Day (686): An urn

 
Set sail upon a silenced space
of many splintered seas, cast-off
stamped cases, spent places, memories,
all shaken inside snow plastic effigies.
 
Morning comes, sees and fades out.
Darkness tends to hide itself away
if it is too tired to search the stars.
Containers can only hold so much.
 
Into this closeted urn a little each day,
a thought here, story there, a feeling,
regrets, crayon faces from childhood.
There is no deluge, only a plodding ebb.
 
A shadow could just be a curtain dusting,
some days haunt more than others.
So the urn may need to crack or splinter
into a million pieces to become whole.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 2, 2024