blue skies poetry

We have been enjoying all of the submissions sent in for Home & Away. Thank you! In the hope of inspiring even more submissions for the anthology, we would like to share two poems that would both fit the theme:

***

Our Empty, Empty Bed

After the last child is tucked in,
and the jumble is tamed into
a basket of neat laundry,
the tea long gone cold
and the late night news
fades to re-runs,

at the end of my list,
I huddle between pale sheets
that stay so smooth
during the endless echo
of your absences.

our bed so hollow,
in the ache of silence
devoid of your warmth
and the words we share
to tame our thoughts
tuck away the chaos of a day.

in your world
sandstorms swirl
across a desert
where machine guns
are carried like pocket knives
soldiers sleep at the edge
of your well sites
trigger fingers poised
for your safety.

bombs fall
in the lands just north of you,
military imprecision
fragmenting a fragile peace.
explosions rip me
from my dreams
heart pounding
I realize it is
not our babies
who are screaming.

I float alone in our bed,
so remote, so detached,
watch missiles flare
on the television’s night skies,
my words choked back,
loneliness like a slow poison,
the planet in turmoil,
and our safe little life fractured
into sitcoms of
time at home
and your time away.

~ Dymphny Dronyk (from Contrary Infatuations, Frontenac House, 2007)

***

Summer Away

After a week in London
I joke that my dream job
is to cut the grass
in Hyde Park, an oasis
in the grey jungle
of soot covered stone buildings,
the labyrinth of streets
that bears no resemblance
to maps in the A to Z.

Christina laughs
as we sit in the sun,
watch workers
drive mowers
across the expanse of green,
says,
you wouldn’t like it
when it rains.

So I give up the idea,
do what my friends do
and trudge each morning
to work, swallowed
by another dismal building
only to be spit back out
at five o’clock
to walk home through Hyde Park,
fresh clippings in my shoes.

~ Angela Kublik (previously published in The Prairie Journal, No. 50)

For more about submitting to the “Home & Away” project, click here.

Filed under: Angela Kublik, Dymphny Dronyk, Home & Away, News by akublik Date 25 January, 2009