burning bright – Linda M. Crate

 

you wanted me to be seen not heard

to be a passive girl who hid behind

the beard of the sun and the skirts of

moonlight,

and to sit lonely perched on your pedestal

in the gilded cage of your love which

was really lust;

 

but i am the butterfly landing on clover

gentle yet still wild

refusing the confines and cages

of any net that would fall upon me because

i am not someone you’ll ever tame

where i prefer to be the butterfly i can also

be the unicorn or the wolf

 

i can be a harpy and a chimera

or the soft petals of persephone’s flowers

life is a matter of perspective,

and you refused to see the relevance of mine

rejecting what was not yours;

insisting that your reality must be mine,

too, but we were two different people looking

out to sea

 

you saw only dangers and threats

i saw only mermaids and love

wanted to swim beneath the jade sapphire

confines that knew no beginning or end

so deep they could understand

my intensity and depths but weak men

cannot handle the helm of strong women

we burn just a little too bright for their candles.

 

Linda M. Crate’s works have shown up in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She has four published poetry chapbooks the latest of which is If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). She is also the author of the Magic Series and two forthcoming chapbooks Wild Thing and My Wings Were Meant to Fly.

Advertisement

September 20, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bright, butterfly, cages, creative, creativity, danger, fauna, flight, flora, legend, life, Linda M. Crate, love, mythology, nature, perspective, poem, Poetry, sun, wild, wolf, world, writing Leave a comment

Homage To An Avuncular Neighbor – John Michael Flynn

 

At ten I brought him my new

Boy’s Life each month

to share a survival story or two.

 

He did the talking

mostly about the Pacific theatre.

He knew war, didn’t like or glean any sense from it.

 

I did more than listen to his silences.

I grew wiser within them.

I brought their lessons to my father.

 

On sunny days we mowed and raked his lawn.

All winter long I helped him

shovel his drive.

 

Today, I learned he died in bed

while his wife was baking zucchini bread

for an annual church function.

 

His daughters and grand-children

were far away.

No game on TV. No warning.

 

Just the week before, I’d held his ladder in place

while he’d nailed above his garage door

a big wooden yellow butterfly

 

that he’d cut, designed

and painted himself.

He called it Easter Light.

 

In 2015, John Michael Flynn was an English Language Fellow with the US State Department at the Far Eastern State University in Khabarovsk, Russia. He is now back home in Virginia, where he teaches English part-time at Piedmont Virginia Community College. His most recent poetry collection, Keepers Meet Questing Eyes, is available from Leaf Garden Press. You can learn more about John and his published work at www.basilrosa.com.

March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: butterfly, childhood, creative, death, family, humanity, John Michael Flynn, lessons, life, loss, memory, neighbor, past, poem, Poetry, seasons, silence, survival, US, VA, war, wisdom, writing, youth Leave a comment