July 2022
Author's Note: It was interesting to revisit older poems, thinking about the optional July theme of “freedom”. Many visit our relationship with nature and wildness, and how that can evoke a sense of freedom or lack of it. Another was written after the first impeachment hearing our nation went through with Donald Trump, and references testimony we all heard then. It strikes me how relevant certain poetry remains through time.
Wild and Free
Give me wildflowers indiscriminate,
strewn across a field, flecked promiscuously
through blades of grass, playful; free.
Give me that, over planned and curated
garden flowers maintained;
robust and beautiful yet oh so groomed
and special. Isolated in designated territories,
separated by policing mulch, every one in its place.
Give me wild and free and random.
Give me mixed and blended, mingling.
Bright blossoms of dandelion littered
like stars in a green night.
Sprays of blue forget-me-nots flowing
like a stream cascading.
Neatly fringed aster, light-purple petals
around yellow button center, swaying, singing
shoulder to shoulder in a big congregation.
Turn a corner; be surprised by joy; stunned
by the vibrant, speckled gift of a wildflower field’s
abounding variety. Smells, leaves, petals;
texture, hue, pattern, beckoning
pollinator bees, butterflies, birds and beetles.
Indeed, a wild growing field invites
imagination’s flow in yellow, purple, orange, pink.
Joy hops alongside as a happy rabbit leaping.
A wild growing field has my heart aflutter
in its heaving-sided, full-to-brim basket
of perennial love.
What is Freedom?
Seed party!
Little birds have discovered them
in our blue coffee-pot feeder
They cling to its mesh and feast
on the black oil sunflower seeds
flit, flit
swoop, swoop
back and forth branch to feeder
to branch …
Such happiness outside my November window
with the leaves down
and cold winds blowing in
‘Let It Be’ comes on the radio
and I sing out
with tears in my eyes
Marie Yovanovitch’s* red hair
from last night’s tv
matches the breast of a small bird
*Former United States Ambassador to Ukraine (2016-2019). From Wikipedia: On November 15, 2019, Yovanovitch testified during the public impeachment hearings of Donald Trump. Yovanovitch testified to Congress “My parents fled Communist and Nazi regimes. Having seen, firsthand, the war and poverty and displacement common to totalitarian regimes, they valued the freedom and democracy the U.S. offers and that the United States represents. And they raised me to cherish those values.”
Originally published in What Rough Beast, Indolent Books 12/6/2019
Invited Out By The Day
to go for a walk in Spring. Impressed with prom-dressed lilacs, and their appropriate fragrance. Barefoot and casual apple blossoms too; they’ve a sweet and playful odor. Pink and white confetti mingle; inviting me to celebrate. Petaled-blessings blanket where I pass. Cascading veils of pale pastel ride with a wind that carries the vows of the cardinal. Yellow tooth-of-the-lion. Blue forget-me-not. Lilac’s heart shaped green leaves. Sweet violet in the grass.
Originally published in Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020)
©2022 Marjorie Moorhead
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