Preserves

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How is it that grief

stays so fresh year after year?

It must be the salt.

.

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© 2019  Betty Hayes Albright

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Shifting Manually *

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.

I dreamed

he was a little boy again,

sitting in his red wagon

waiting for a ride

.

but he talked

like a wise, old man

and showed me a scroll

of his life –

.

diagrams, notations

I couldn’t understand.

.

“I’m shifting manually

through the cosmos,”

he said.

.

I woke

with an ageless song

playing in my head.

.

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©  2018  Betty Hayes Albright

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*This was an actual dream, early this morning, about my late son, Arlie.  I jotted down his words, not fully understanding them at the time.  Later, when I told his older brother about the dream he agreed: only Arlie would say something like that.

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Arlie on left, and big bro Jason.

Both photos taken in 1976.

 

 

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Singularity

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Comes that moment
when eyes connect
with a stranger’s
and we feel
that deep click
in the gears
of the cosmos

and we’ve known them
forever
and it doesn’t matter
we’ll never meet again.
.
.
© 2012, 2018 Betty Hayes Albright
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(re-posted from 2012)

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Haiku #54 – Flame

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Many riddling years

can’t snuff out a memory

that still burns today.

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(c) 2014  Betty Hayes Albright

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(photo from Wikipedia)

 

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Root Cellar – 2012 posting

(Mayberrie poem – revised)

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She’d waited long enough.

The time had come

to clear the near forgotten room

he’d carved into the earth.

Ancient harvests deep inside

would long be in decay.

She braced herself

and slow approached

the thick, elm door

(and later swore it opened of

its own accord).

 .

In the shaft of light

that followed her

she was struck with wonder.

Instead of baskets

filled with crops

long gone to rot

there was the scent of quickening:

potatoes

with their eyes still wide,

beets the color of her heart,

carrots orange and smooth,

and onions with their papery skins

like pages of old memories.

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On the side were apples –

barrels of them, red and crisp

(she took a bite and begged forgive!)

.

How could this be,

a place outside of time?

In haste she left

and sealed the door.

There would be no clearing out

(except for one sweet apple

which she secreted away).

 .

© 2009, 2016  Betty Hayes Albright

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Forever in a Meadow (2011 posting)

Eternity

came mocking Time, one day

with her ageless face

and the sun in her eyes.

She laughed at the way

I danced to the ticking

of a mere clock,

and she said in a voice

that rang out like moon-chimes:

.

Come let me show you

the land of Right Now,

a place that is free

from the chains of your time.

It’s a world where light

shines out of Truth’s eye

and the smile on my face

will fill you with peace.

.

I started to follow

but just then a whistle

made me turn back –

it was noon in the valley

and I would be late!

Turning to look

at her beauty once more

I found she had vanished

into Everywhere.

.

(c) 1965 , 2014 Betty Hayes Albright

(Prose version written in 1965… revised into poem 1969)

Original pencil drawing (c) 1995, 2014

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