Parlor invokes a sense of home and family coming together Outside, I gathered bright red apples bruised from their bumpy fall But still sweet and full with so much to offer Was it Sleeping Beauty? Did she eat the wrong apple? Was she pricked with a raging illness? Yes, she was beautiful Kissed and un-stirring […]
The sun’s twin soul casts no morning shadow but hovers faintly over an alter ego of cloud ______Colleen Redman / Poets United / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
It’s my mother in me that couldn’t cry when I first heard she died and my father in me that finally broke down when I saw her It looked like she had one eye slightly open as if asserting her motherly omnipresence In life she didn’t miss a trick and she never liked to feel […]
Mining for diamonds to fall in our laps pockets of light burning holes The planet spins a starry web in a dark quarry of sky where as above so below has us all striking gold and we pan with our eyes for the mother lode ____Colleen Redman / Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads
Waiting for a meteorite to shoot across the sky is like waiting for a blind date to show up I’m alone in the dark in the middle of the yard And nothing happens And nothing happens It’s like waiting for a heart for my young friend on the transplant list knowing that someone will die […]
We get paid in corn for our garden labor We strike it rich with every husk pulled back The sun has forged an Aztec banquet a silky purse for August gold The rain has raised a gold rush harvest We reap the profits of its Midas touch With bellies full we dig potatoes for poorer […]
Hanging in limbo Pupa in cocoon Morning alarm rocks the cradle too soon Tension is a river dammed not to flow keeping me sleepless in an amniotic hold But I’m destined to be born Torn like a snagged twig I’m born to exhale and act from free will I will be delivered Slapped awake by […]
A disorderly yard disturbing the peace A dead lawnmower in the barn A showdown through tall grass and petals A hideout for varmints and ticks A lone black-eyed Susan flaunting yellow The wild west of summer defies law and order Plantain shoots seeds as guilty as weeds Daisies are delivered White clover spreads like thieves […]
Our love is a busy venture when we lay around we get a lot done We’re lavished in summer made golden by a fortune of wealthy sun We’re minting coins impressed with each other How richly we spend our time ___Colleen Redman / Poets United
Now that your ghost is 65 they want to sell you life insurance Now that you’ve been dead for 15 years the AARP wants to claim you The VA wants a donation for the return address labels from places you don’t live Social Security recommends a supplement plan but only during Open Enrollment It’s time […]
We made it to the big sandbox where the sand is too hot to walk on without flip flops, where young architects make castles with moats and beach goers plant umbrellas like astronauts plant flags on the moon. In the sandbox you spread your blanket out and set up your chair next to the lifeguard stand. You watch the lifeguards […]
The birds are back checking out the real estate a high-rise nest on my porch rafter A one room shelter inaccessible to cats with southern exposure and a landing deck Left empty last year by its previous owners who followed the flock down the Atlantic flyway to check out condos or live in trees to […]
It’s too late for going to Woodstock but not for wearing that leopard-skin pillbox-hat the one Bob Dylan made fun of and Jackie O passed over for pink It’s too late to take up anthropology become a neurologist or a Jungian psychologist but it’s not too late to see Claude Monet’s garden the one he […]
These are the days soon to be “the good old days” even though I considered them old when I lived them With my sons grown and life’s commitments slowed I blink through clouds of golden pollen bringing post nasal drip and fuzzy thoughts that don’t feel like mine These are the spring days of no […]
It’s a lament for a lack of inspiration that doesn’t have a beginning or a meaningful ending It’s a an exercise in practice because a poet should have a poem should have a good pick-up line that’s more than a bluff in sickness and in health A poet needs a back-up poem ready like a […]
Bride white moon down an aisle of night Through a reception line of stars sweeps her train of sheer light _________Colleen Redman / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
I’m nostalgic for pens like the one that wrote purple when I kept a note going to my girlfriend all week When I wrote cursive in high school about a boy named Richard Dear Diary, my brother is a jerk I’m nostalgic for pencils that erased mistakes that were chewed on in math class and […]
A few kidnapped words don’t know where they belong My body is a room a poem must escape from But there’s too many diversions and calls left unheard And the longer they wait the less sense they make _____Colleen Redman / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
