
Wildfires
©2021 Susan Noyes Anderson
The wildfires burn fuel to ashes. I’m melted
and homeless. Adrift in the redwoods,
resilience is theirs, not my own.
The wildfires burn fuel to ashes. I’m melted
and homeless. Adrift in the redwoods,
resilience is theirs, not my own.
The melancholy overlays each day,
a weeping willow branch shading bright blooms.
Reminders of you wind through all my rooms
in flowers, bright and dark along the way.
You looked at me through soft blue eyes,
expressions you did not disguise
of courage, anger, love and pain,
compassion, humor, wry disdain.
Grief was a ghost with an ache in her chest
and a lot of emotions that scared me to death.
She was love with no outlet and pain with too many…
had little control and less grace (scarcely any).
Her feelings exploded on walls and on ceilings
in chaos, a state not conducive to healing;
and even when she settled down for a while,
she could never be trusted. Her sad little smile
was a lid (a loose lid) on a cauldron of loss,
and she spent every moment just counting the cost.
Beauty is in the simple things
that ease into a willing heart:
Dusk falls, then calls forth starling wings
while sun and moon paint works of art.
My years of life have made me tough.
But lately, it’s been kinda rough.
I’ve rocked the highways, low ways, byways.
Nowadays, things seem sorta sideways.
I always was an early riser,
but I still enjoyed my bed.
Now I leap out like a rabbit,
scared a fox might have my head.
I wasn’t blind to them;
I saw your flaws.
But greatness was the thing that held my eye.