Tuesday, January 29, 2019

OH THAT INSISTENT CRESCENT MOON! ~ New Poem


Fantasy Art Winter Moon, Public Domain, publicdomainpictures.net

Lunacy
by Judith Cullen
© 2019

The poem was waiting when I awoke
curtains reflecting the night's depth,
a beckoning glow through many folds
of lunar transit shifting soundlessly
from one to the other window.

What if I cast back the drapes, letting
the moonlight shine on my skin
as it drinks its way across the stars;
elixir of imagination, natural magic
conveyed in airborne beams.

What if I moved beyond the confines
of this definition, and that certitude;
allowing myself to drift without limits,
absorbing the languid enchantment of
a clear winter sky at three in the morning.

##

Saturday, January 12, 2019

SOMETIMES Poetry Becomes Real . . .


I've been trying to get out of the habit of commenting on my work - somehow explaining it in advance.  The work should speak for itself, yes?  But I do want to say that this poem was inspired by a real devil of a week, and a real late afternoon nap where I dreamed like I had not in well over a week. In that magical dreamworld, two dear friends came to me . . . 


Dream Therapy
by Judith Cullen
© 2019

Dragging the week behind,
doubt, fear, sorrow, and pain
thudding at each labored stair,
an accumulation of fighting
weighting every step, till I drop.

Subsiding into dreams, expecting
more monotone wanderings -
tears unexplained, unshed and
more steps, more labors till
somehow the fog would clear.

Sunday, January 6, 2019

POEM: The Inverse Laws of Nature



Inverse Laws of Nature
by Judith Cullen
© 2019

Nature is composed, we are taught
of immutable laws, immovable realities.
Change, challenge, departure are things
we impose using the tools of mortality:
desire, hubris, and occasionally need.

Limited options of docile acceptance,
or wrestling the universe into submission.
In our haste to control destiny, we miss
the perverse nature of the natural, choosing
to interpret bluntly, without nuance.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

FIRST POEM OF THE NEW YEAR: "Welcome to the Light"



Come to the Light
by Judith Cullen
©2019            

"Come to the light," they implored.
While I, blackened fog, lurked uncertain,
wrapped in blankets of complacencies,
familiarities, and chilling sufficiency leading
to the same inexorable cycling.

Reaching out from beneath the comforter
hands touch mine, "Come to the light,"
they repeat in chorus, "We miss you, join us."
They cannot pull me bodily from my gloom,
the impulse must be my own.