Were they inconvenient? (Day 493)

Were they inconvenient 

for you   those first violets’ 

     expressive faces peering 

at sun’s sharpening 

edge  a blade of steel 

     custom-made to sear 

          summer’s shuddering grass 

So easy to miss   grass   

when friendly gazes 

     beam from loamy grottoes 

among the newly green-grown 

     blades   prone to being tread upon 

So easy to miss them    singing 

     evanescent spring into being 

          while crackling July droughts 

gloat   thirst   to crush 

all this   ridiculous tenderness

to crush it like a snake 

     beneath a desert sky 

to crush it like an early violet 

     inconvenient as the truth   

          beneath unheeding hurry

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Monkey With Violets (1880s), Gabriel von Max, 

oil on canvas, via WikimediaCommons

What I Am Not (Day 489)

I am not a Japanese Tea Garden.

I am a radiant beam of light.

I am not a tortilla chip.

I am a cup of coffee, black.

I am not an endless pity-party.

I am a reading light by a comfortable 

   chair on an early-winter evening.

I am not wandering down 

    the lane and far away.

I am looking at the moon. 

I am not a new pair of shoes that 

   make you run faster, jump higher.

I am a knitted sweater starting 

   to unravel under the left arm.

I am not Brussels’ Musée du cacao et 

   du chocolat.

I am an open bottle of coriander-scented 

   lotion from the Georgetown Kiehl’s.

I am not your favorite YA book ever.

I am a sleepless, sweaty August night

   without air conditioning.

I am not anyone’s president, elected 

   or otherwise.

I am someone who would have done 

   a much better job.

I am not a writer of stories and poems.

I am the language they speak.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: David Ohmer/Flickr

Stardust, lyrics: Mitchell Parish  

I’ll Be Seeing You, lyrics: Irving Kahal 

All Transpires, Dream-like (Day 486)

All transpires   dream-like   

beneath the land   sleeping 

spirits   seeds planted 

by tired hands   or thrust 

into the dark cocooning soil 

by cold machines   and weeds   

perhaps plucked by beaks 

or bills   transported 

through tumbling clouds 

and rushing winds   dropped 

into luminous air   falling   finding 

purchase there on willing earth   

waiting   artlessly scattered 

on hand-turned beds   arranged 

in mile-long rows and warmed 

by an incubating sun   fed by rain 

and thick inspiring fog   

never knowing under what skies 

they grow or wither   but sleeping 

silently now beneath the land   

where all dream-like transpires  

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: 12019/Pixabay