poetry

Rain

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

It’s raining!  It’s raining!

It has not rained in more than a month.

I run out the door,

spreading my arms skyward.

I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.

A smile smears joyfully across my face.

I run across the patio,

rain drops pelleting my face, my arms.

I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.

My dog stands, rain running off her.

Usually, she hates the rain.

Lightning flashes, thunder echoes,

the steel roof plays staccato music.

I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.

It’s raining!  It’s raining!

Yesterday, I started an online poetry class with the Story Circle Network.  The teacher is Lorraine Mejia-Green.  This week we are focusing on the poetry of Mary Oliver.  While I was reading her poems and the assignments associated with them, it began to rain.  I became so excited I forgot all about my assignments and enjoyed the rain.  I even posted my excitement on Facebook and called my daughter.  She laughed and said, “You are a dork!”

Migraine

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Since I was a child, my only health issue has been headaches.  When younger, sometimes they were little ones and sometimes nearly incapacitating.  As an adult I could count on having at least one a month, sometimes more.  Weather seems to be the main culprit now.  If certain weather patterns occur, a series may hit me for several days in a row and then blissfully nothing for a couple of months.  My daughter has migraines also; she must have inherited this from me, sadly.  Tuesday this week, I awakened with a doozy and suddenly recalled that I had to attend this class for work.  I took my medication and hoped.  While waiting for the class to start, I decided to write down exactly how these migraines make me feel.

 

Poised above my head,

the hammer ball strikes the ten inch nail.

It drives through my right frontal lobe,

the nail point jutting out just below my right cheek, shiny, bloodless.

The hammer flips, the nail pulled out.

Pain pulses, excruciating.

Poised above my head, the hammer strikes again and again.

Endless hours the hammer strikes and pulls.

I hold my head in my hands, rocking back and forth.

Endlessly.

DEATH

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

I was afraid of revealing me, the essence of me.  Who even, indeed, was I?  My mother told me, when I started dating, to hide the essence of me, boys wouldn’t like it.  Too smart; too aggressive; too full of myself; too intense; too serious; too burning inside strong; too adventuresome; too nasty a temper; too full of desire to feel, taste, see, learn; too much in love with a world of possibility.  I took her advice, married a genius scientist, safe, timid, disadventurous.  He liked me because I could shoot a bird off a wire hundreds of feet away.  I time, we all died, him, me, the bird.

 

 

 

This piece was a finalist in a flash memoir contest.

Marriage

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

The following poem was chosen to be published in the Story Circle Network’s annual Anthology this past autumn.   I submitted two flash memoir pieces, including the Spiders story on a previous post,  as well as this poem.  I was very surprised that this was the one chosen.

Marriage

                                               I remember the time he touched my face, melting me.

                                               I married him; my face slowly, inexorably froze.

Writing on the Rim

/ Juliana Lightle / 11 Comments

The canyon edge looms out my bedroom windows,

pale adobe, stark.

Fall to death or serious injury!

I will not fall; I love living on the edge.

Rain brings a one hundred foot deluge,

a roar of water, cascading, screaming.

Someone said my house is pink; it is not pink!

It is the color of the canyon, the worldwide color,

Moroccan, pueblo, Saudi, Mali, Navaho, Timbuktu,

Desert, alive and lovely.

Three bucks watch me through my bedroom windows.

They see me move; they stare.

Isabella stands rigid, watching.

I kneel to her level; follow her eyes.

The bobcat casually climbs the canyon wall, impervious.

He marks the cedar tree, walks a deer path, disappears.

He is a secret, rarely seen.

The huge hoot owl’s voice echoes down the canyon,

drifting through my dreams.

A young road runner calls, scratchy,

running across the patio–on the edge.

In the spring the mocking bird sings all night,

“This is my territory.”

I sing all year, full of joy.

I live in beauty on the rim.

I decided to reblog this because it is the season for giving thanks, and I am eternally grateful for the privilege of living in such a beautiful place.  Yesterday, my family and I took a hike here, saw deer, lovely colorful rocks, bunnies, and native plants the names of which I do not know.  I live in beauty on the rim of wonder!!  I feel blessed!!