Loose Leaf Notes

Empty sheet of snow Unwritten winter notes Footprints wait to play Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads / Our World Tuesday

Your room is yellow quiet with a window no roommates no peanut butter crackers for breakfast You love the nurses but want to go home You thought your granddaughter gave you a sponge bath I laughed when I asked “How many fingers am I holding up?” but was really thinking “How many daughters do you […]

A wide grin of moon lifted my mood It gave me a smile that I passed on to you ______Colleen Redman / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

I shook out a poem at breakfast like loose change from a pocket From leftover lines and settled crumbs I gambled a metaphor and let the meter run I coined a new phrase but spent it at lunch Until morning’s excess became afternoon’s rut By supper I was bankrupt ______Colleen Redman_____Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

A petal A giggle A delicate drop of dew A flutter Wild wonder Honey hushed Sweetness suffused ______Our World Tuesday / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads  

Skipping stone moon in a tide of evening sky incoming clouds ripple by ________Colleen Redman / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Mary’s halo Oh holy night A wiseman’s moon of guiding light ____________Our World Tuesday / Real Toads / I Heart Macro

The light trickles back through the skinny-waisted squeeze of winter’s hourglass grip ________Colleen Redman____dVerse Poets Pub / Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

December sun is dull like an unsharpened knife Its light melts like butter on toast Fleeting and pale its brightness won’t stick I know it’s there but can’t see it Like a mug of warm morning already spilled in summer the sun lays tipped on its side Then it rolls too fast like a cool […]

  You compound my interest I’m counting the ways I’m finding the common denominator of you and me and adding the possibilities I’m dividing my time but multiplying my chances I’m upping the ante for winning your love   _____Colleen Redman / written for Joe in the late ’80s / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

  The last of warm weather in a November afternoon is like squeezing the flavor from a teabag Knowing it won’t be reused like a rebound love affair that can’t live up to the real thing The sun drips down draining light from the sky like a pinched rosy cheek turning pale I tip the […]

The creek traps leaves into neatly piled stacks like the papers on my desk that I’m too busy to read Filed between the rocks on their rush downstream they give a seasonal accounting of Autumn’s mounting cost _______ Colleen Redman _____Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

Day broke like yolk on a glass plate soaking a porridge of clouds Moon woke like a dish empty of purpose on the wrong side of the sky _______Colleen Redman / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Corn silk crescent Strand of night Cocoon for the moon’s growing light ________Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Fluff of milkweed Floats across night A celestial seed Sowing light _______Colleen Redman   Imaginary Garden with Real Toads 

Summer sail Golden spun A skipping stone in a sea of heaven   ______This is all I got to see of the Super Moon this month because it was so cloudy when the moon was full.   Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Poetry writes its own music but doesn’t sing to the choir It doesn’t lip sync or use stunt doubles It won’t do reality TV Poetry walks a red carpet but never in high heels It doesn’t give interviews or flaunt cleavage It won’t make acceptance speeches Poetry’s not followed by the paparazzi but sometimes it […]

The following is from a recent reading at our local library for the Floyd County Moonshine.  It will soon be the 13th anniversary (July 25th) of the death of my brother Jim, who died in a machine shop accident, which was followed a month later (August 29) by the death of my brother Dan, who […]