Category: poetry

When Does Time Begin

~ joanvinallcox ~ 4 Comments 
When does time begin?
September school or
Midnight at New Years?
Rosh Hashanah or Chinese New Year or Hijri?
Or Easter

With Basho’s “song in the heart while planting” 
or Oliver’s wild geese honking northward?

When the ovum engulfs the jetting sperm or
When the head crowns or when the cord Is cut?

When does TIME begin?
With the diagnosis or sentence or
the narrowing horizon of age or
the forever of following the hearse to a grave?

When I awoke with a poem pounding through me?
or when your eye kisses these words?

What Remains of My Parents

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment 
What remains of my parents
is buried
within my subconscious, 
opened by random impulses and
photos shared by algorithms 
in memory programs.

What remains of my parents
is buried
in a deserted graveyard,
silent except for the gravestones, 
close to my mother’s girlhood place
.
And far away.

Old Bone Tunnel

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment

“Old bone/ tunnel through which I came.”

– Margaret Atwood

Old woman in a blue dress
stands in the sun,
Stares at her grandmother’s old home
And the ancient ferns,

Wonders
what it will be like
to follow her.

Old Human Be-ing

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment 
Pervasive sadness wakes my nights
& smothers my days.
Nothing wrong except
the news of the world,
and circumstances. 

Against the fecund spring
with its greens and blossoms,
the gravestones announce
the coming winter freeze.

The shortening days
and path.
are hidden in the dark.

Little time left
to claim joy.

and just 
be.

Friendship

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment 
Friendship

Beauty assaults me,
                                       joy 
bounces into my hands,
                                      and my heart
at the long-absent voice. 

Like the greening and blossoms of spring ,
                                                             joy embraces
me, 
         sings to me, 
                                 grasps my hand.
I hear and feel
                               tenderness..

Pentecost Monday

~ joanvinallcox ~ 2 Comments 
Years have a shape; they throb and ache:
the daily step, the monthly debt.
Mornings rise and afternoons serve -
hidden tears and blazing joys. 

Wasted moments and Summers end,
Autumns harvest and Winters task - 
the long lost times dissolve, dissipate
and Springs secrete unburdened hope. 

Years have a shape and accumulate,
seasons repeat and propagate
the tears and joys that shape our lives,
the days and memories we consecrate.

Perception

~ joanvinallcox ~ 1 Comment
Memories and a locked chest
Sometimes the mirror moves
showing me what
I’d rather not see.

Memories shift and reform
revealing different stories,
painfully clear now.

We wear such narrow glasses
spotlighting one version,
blind to and blurring peripheral possibilities.