April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, I’ve decided to again take up the challenge to write a poem-a-day. I altered the challenge a bit last year to only happen on the weekdays unless I felt particularly inspired on the weekends, so I will likely stick to these guidelines again this year. My kidsContinueContinue reading “PAD Challenge and Creek Walk”
Category Archives: poetry
Explaining Easter to My Three-Year-Old
Imagine your marshmallow Peeps devoured by your brotherwithout one lick of sticky sweetness, the giant chocolate rabbitmelted in the sun. Even your mother and father –those great false gods – have eaten every jelly bean,taken away the pastel colored eggs. You hold your basket,empty, save for some stringy plastic grass.This is how Good Friday feels,ContinueContinue reading “Explaining Easter to My Three-Year-Old”
Cascade Valley
Look, my daughter, the pine treedropped its seeds, and herea fragile sapling braves the forest floor.This used to be a birch treebut maybe lightning sliced it,wind heaved its heavy breath against itand now the trunk is rust.Sticks used to flirt, flaretheir skirts of springtime buds,but now we throw the broken limbsinto the rushing floodwaters toContinueContinue reading “Cascade Valley”
The Homecoming
Tuba bells catch stadium light in the end zone,flash it to cymbals, who wait at attentionin the percussion section. In the stands, parents bundle under blankets, wave to friends.Elementary boys wear oversized jerseys and blue jeans,chase girls with bags of popcorn and fruit punch.Their older siblings gather in corners, drink Pepsi,eat pizza, go out intoContinueContinue reading “The Homecoming”
Version 2 – A Voice in the Crowd at Capernaum
John 6What I really need to know is how the callousesblossomed on your fingers. I want to feelthe bristle of your beard on my cheek,place my hands around the feetof the man who feeds. You knowwhy I’ve come here: to make the impossiblebecome miraculous, to turn your vengeanceinto grace, to learn the difference between breadandContinueContinue reading “Version 2 – A Voice in the Crowd at Capernaum”
A Voice in the Crowd at Capernaum
John 6I have come up with a hundred reasons whyyou are unbelievable – you are, after all, just a sonof some carpenter, the illegitimate offspringof a teenage mother. I know where you’ve come from.Still I’m intrigued – I want to know moreabout the man who fed five thousand,his mysterious disappearance across the lakewithout a boatContinueContinue reading “A Voice in the Crowd at Capernaum”
Psalm 40
BootsPsalm 40These boots by the door are still cakedwith hardened clay, their leather darkenedby water, still swelling, absorbing,the flannel lining damp and pungent.Clumps of mud stick to the kitchen floor,discarded here and there from the fieldthat pulled and sucked until I was stuck.I will not use the broom – I like the imprintsleft behind, theContinueContinue reading “Psalm 40”
Jesus Walks into a Bar
(This is for Sean Lovelace, who insists there ought to be more poems about Jesus walking into a bar.)It is always darker than it should be,but over the pool table, a haloof florescent light. My father, his brother,like weathered sailors, dock at the barwith other tired shipmates, hunched,feet propped on the reflective footrests,haunches resting heavyContinueContinue reading “Jesus Walks into a Bar”
Crater
Wrap your atmosphere around me –I do not want to be the moon, unable to deflectthe smallest cosmic speck. I flinch and dodgea thousand bullets in a meteor shower,yearn to watch the light show at night without fear.Without you, my surface is sensitive – I bruiseat the slightest affront, scurry away to nurse each hurt.IfContinueContinue reading “Crater”
Junction
There is no el train in Auburn, no steady rumblelike long thunder on a summer afternoon.Instead, Suburbans honk and veer behindmy neighbor’s combine, pass and speed to the light,line up at four-ways for permission to turn.The Cleveland and Eastern Interurbanused to pass through here, the Maple Leaf Routecurving slow through Newbury out to Amish country,itsContinueContinue reading “Junction”
Sarah Marie Wells 