Colors

Polish clean

your cutting rocks,

my jagged stones

and see at sunrise

prisms.

.

(c) 1993, 2012  Betty Hayes Albright

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Dandelions

And so we curse

this edible vision,

this crayon yellow

turned silver-spun filament!

Oh, grand survivor

of mower and spade,

of poison and time,

perhaps it’s our viewpoint

that needs weeding out.

.

(c) 1982, 1994 Betty Hayes Albright

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Looking for Solutions

~

Looking for Solutions

.

Love poems sound corny like

old songs on radios,

black and white movies

starring bad actors,

valentine flowers

and sugar’s too sweet.

What language is there

for ethereal chemistry?

We need some math:

say it with algebra,

problems of love

could be solved with equations -

but no – we have words

that don’t know where to start

and don’t know when to quit

and never say quite what we

wanted them to.

There,

I tried again.

`  (c) 1982

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Turning Out

Children

are free flow

like liquid Jello,

sparkling

splashing

filling any form.

Why must we chill them,

make them set?

.

(c) 1982, 2012  Betty Hayes Albright

Original pencil drawing (c) 1965

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Root Cellar

(A Mayberrie’ poem)

.

It came to me, m’lord -

it was time to clear the cellar.

All inside

would long be in decay

from seasons left behind.

I braced myself

and slow approached

the thick, elm door

(and swear it opened

of its own accord).

And in the shaft of light

that followed me,

my eyes grew wide:

.

Instead of baskets

full of crops

long gone to rot

there was the scent of quickening.

Potatoes

with their eyes still wide,

beets the color

of my heart,

smooth carrots, orange and firm,

and onions with their papery skins

like pages in beloved books.

.

And in the corner,  apples!

Barrels of them, crisp and sweet

(I took a bite and beg forgive!)

How could this be -

a place outside of time?

.

Quickly then

I left it all

and sealed the door.

M’lord, there’ll be

no clearing out this day.

.

(c) 2009  Betty Hayes Albright  

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Future Tense

Future Tense

.

Where’s your dance,

old tree?

The music blows,

let’s see you sway,

let’s hear your rustling green.

Did winter tighten

up your knots

and sap your limbs so soon?

Image via Wikipedia

What’s this -?

It seems Pan left you

tail tucked between his legs

when he noticed the horizon

turning black

instead of blue.

And now I too

must hurry off

to find my cave and pray

that the dawn

will turn our mourning

into day.

(c) February 1980   (Premonition of Mt. St. Helens eruption?)

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Remote Control

He longs for newer channels

while erecting new antennae

as he tires of blue

and wants the sky

turned green.

But it won’t last

and so he free-falls

into bigger screens,

but still the Sony

always rises

ho-hum

in the east.

So he adjusts

the horizontal,

looks for programs

lined with gold

pre-empting

all his other roles,

and all the stars

he ever held

are squashed

with pouting lips

inside old picture tubes.

Those summer re-runs

always turned him off.

.

(c) 1980 Betty Hayes Albright

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Time Machine

Time Machine

.

Calendar pages

flap in the breeze of the

minute hands

winding me up

till I sputter

when is it?

at one o’clocktwo

on SaturSunMonday

sunrising

to summerfall

bees buzzing

seconds

alarm in my ear

that spins me

around

and all that’s

behind me

is everytime.

~ (c) 1980

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Too Hot to Touch

Too Hot to Touch

.

Above barbed-wire

beyond walls

outside the human barricades

our hearts connect

anode, cathode,

to some cosmic battery.

We cannot touch

our ions would explode

and all the world

would melt.

Yet our magnetic tears

are mixed

producing heat and light.

Without you

I could not see

to write another poem,

nor would I have

the energy

to smile.

(c) 1979

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Spontaneous Combustion

When our skin

grows thin

and our eyes

have finally dimmed

we’ll blow on that

charred piece of coal

(the one that never cooled)

until it catches on again.

We’ll crawl inside

and melt cold bones

into an alabaster stone

and there we’ll carve

our epitaph:

Never Say Die.

.

(c) 1979, 2012  Betty Hayes Albright

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