Tag Archives: roadtrip

Bird Woman Falls is Weeping

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birdwomanfalls2

Bird Woman Falls ~ Glacier National Park ~ June 28, 2013 ~ Photo by Brenda Warren

Bird Woman Falls is Weeping

As light bends shadowed lanes across glacial faces,
my insignificance tumbles thoughts of self
through the hollow bones of birds
that hop in puddles through highway tunnels.

Unstable walls of ice edge stretches of the road,
forcing fallen streams of winter across our drive.

Beyond the vast and wild expanse,
Bird Woman Falls weeps showers of diamonds
over stone cliffs into a small steep meadow,
a glittering emerald island,
greened by melting glaciers
that carve a hanging valley
to feed Bird Woman’s flow.

The highway pivots mountains left and right,
a dizzying dazzling retreat for cars Going to the Sun
to bear witness to Bird Woman’s weeping
on this road that bridges canyons to heaven.

Brenda Warren 2013

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Visit The Sunday Whirl

Keeping Ahead of Jimmie

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for Thyra Louise

Most parents of deaf kids applaud conversation.
Your parents, grandparents, and family friends
paid for your silence with quarters in cars.
Soon, we collected bills,
and fanned them in front of your eyes.
After a specified amount of time,
we would rain dollars down on you
paying for quiet on long distance road trips,
where your incessant observations never ended.

Every now and then,
you’d ask us to slow down,
so your invisible friend Jimmie
could keep up with the car.

~~~~~~~~~

No wonder we left our family.
We both needed Len,
who told me once with jewels in his eyes,
“Everything children say is fascinating.”
He laughed, then added,
“How can anyone not listen?”

Years of your imagination were lost
in silent cars,
running down roads I don’t remember,
trying hard to keep ahead of Jimmie.

Brenda Warren 2013

trifecta

The prompt for this piece came from the Trifecta Challenge. Click on the tricycle to visit their site, and read some more pieces that used the word “rain” in a rather odd fashion. I will also share this at open link night at dVerse Poets Pub. Thanks for being there.

This is my third piece for April. Thyra likes it. I am grateful for her life, her wisdom, and her kindness.  Len is the light in my eyes; he inspires me to listen harder.

a season for trees

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Cold’s white mission frosts unfolding hills, muting the vanilla valley.
Crusted ice crystallizes prairie grasses into ivory luminescence
as darkness genuflects with subtle inklings toward dawn’s precipice.

Soon, Daystar swallows the moisture of night,
and flocked conifers melt, trickling wet rivulets
between bark’s incongruous trivets waiting for
the murderous onslaught of humans,
who arrive each year laden with hatchets and chainsaws,
chomping at the bit, eager to usher in December.

Brenda Warren 2011
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Process notes: Len and I had a roadtrip through Montana yesterday. We started early, and I wrote most of the piece in the morning, after driving through the Helena valley. Later in the day we drove through the Little Belt Mountains east of Great Falls, and saw vehicles laden with pine and fir trees, as families harvest them for Christmas. I finished the piece this morning.

This is a piece for the Sunday Whirl. The words were challenging this week, be sure to check out the work of other poets over at the Whirl.