In case you are wondering where I am

My summer vacation is now over.  It was more of a staycation really--
and tomorrow I head out for 11 day of teaching at a music camp.  I will be back here in a couple of weeks. And as I like to say to my students--"expect new things when I return"  --it is a time of rejuvenation for me-and a period of intense work.

See ya in a few

Time's Course

wikimedia commons

Nigerdelta, NASA

the branch of things moves silently

upon a river with no name.

i hold its ebb and flow

tightly within 

splayed fingers

unknowingly

spilling its heart in rivened tears

thinking that time will stand still.

each drop falls 

returning home

as it flows on

without me.

copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2014

posted for Poets United

Summer Mornings

Early Summer Morning

VSP 75th Anniversary Photo Contest Best in Show by Roderick Perkinson nsh
vastatepark staff
wikimendia commons

summer is a blanket of the softest down

settling upon morning's hours--

i bring myself to move

finally

as coffee

wafts up the stairs

pushing its way toward me--

one more industrious than i

performing the tasks

that mark morning

move me along

toward wakefulness

as

the sweetness of half dreams

recedes.


copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2014


Posted for Poets United Pantry

I feel the absence of my muse these days--so bear with me

Check Engine Again

How was it that a check engine light could create so much havoc?

I saw it blink at me

undermining the moment's plans,

an unlikely metaphor really.

Check fluids,

those vital to the smooth running of things

before breakdown.


What would have happened

had I done so

on that spring morning you died

would I have felt that loss less keenly I wonder,

would I feel it less now?


your death left me fractured,

ground at the edges like so much

sand

and once ground

those pieces never fit together again

so when that check engine light came on today

I pounded the steering wheel and cried

for both of us.


copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 22014

Posted for Poet's United Poetry Pantry

A Shiver in the Morning

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The Polish

Abstrakcyjna fotografia

i slowed myself down

to feel the trickle of you

beside my sleep

as five a.m. came and went

and when i mentioned my dream

your fingers floated in my hair

until i lost you again

a shiver in the morning

copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2014

Words and the Anomaly of Time, or Words Make Different Strings: Take Your Pick

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Exposition toute idée est bonne à prendre

lliscites

they say time heals all wounds,

but not really.

words fail to notice their spawn 

shivering alone in a pool of a lapsed moment

one targeted for the future,

date uncertain.

in those final hours,

in  moments  

stripped

of future,

it is only the pool of lapsed moments

separating the two mes.

and no words

can find her for me in the now.

it is a funny string of reality,

ties beginning to snarl in the possibilities,

each a different color.

copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2014

posted for Dverse



I am reading a book about time travel--not at all sure where the piece came from other than that--

Spring's Solace

wikimedia paintings

Hans am Ende

Maedchen auf der weise

I buried him long ago

during a spring much like this one,

on a day when shadows pierced the wind's cry.

A shore bird crossing the blue,

looking for leavings at the local McDonald's,

touching the periphery of my solitude,

the only marker of memory

worn like a chain

around my neck.


The call came through

much like they do now--

but I think

I had a princess phone then.  Tan with a retractable line.


Who expects bad news when the sun is shining?

Still, there is was,

hanging fully in the silence of her inhalation,

a tear through the fabric of my life--

one that resists patching even now.



So on days like today

I watch the butterflies against the blue

and wonder if pieces of his soul

continue on in the life around me-

in the bees that flit by me drunk on pollen

and in the leaves that grow so steadily

so rightly

from earth.


When my tears touch it,

I can almost smell him near me,

his aftershave a mix of the spice of heaven and earth.


copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2014

Posted for D'verse  Open Link Night