As we begin National Poetry Month, we ask: what is poetry and why is it important?
Tag Archives: poetry
A Prayer
by Laura Parker Roerden I am just human scaled, in a world that has become too big to hold. Here, this morning, a bird calls out to me, I look up and see an eastern bluebird alit on the fence. Its song is startling in the silence, as it has something urgent to convey. IContinue reading “A Prayer”
Dandelion Poem
Seeds, seeds, seeds. . .they are falling everywhere and landing on the ground. They are lit as if to not be missed. They will, come spring, throw shoots and grow where they have landed. And we will not be able to deny that we saw them as they fell.
The Fireflies
by Laura Parker Roerden Last night the stars made our hayfield into a bed. Twinkling and turning from light to dark, and back again to light in the dark tangle of knotted weeds and swords of grass, sometimes in synchrony, but often as chaos. The perfect flat disk of a full moon spilled shadow everywhere,Continue reading “The Fireflies”
A Good Friday
by Laura Parker Roerden I wrote a poem: it’s hard to say what it is. It’s small like a bird, but it has wings that open, wide enough to receive the shadow from starlight where monsters writhe and inform us of who we are through ancient story and song or simply the daily news. IContinue reading “A Good Friday”
All the Many Flowers
by Laura Parker Roerden A flower is not just a flower. It’s an invitation to dance, to fall into a time and a tempo not of your own wherein lies the meaning of being made of soil and sun, tapped lightly in place by fingers of rain. Don’t miss another post: including #FridayPoems and FromContinue reading “All the Many Flowers”
A Lonely Walk
by Laura Parker Roerden On a fine companioned afternoon, one never has to notice the stars shining side by side or a single blade of grass hunched over others, now safe as if the wind had thrown its weight, a thumb on a scale tipped for mercy. But in a stretch when lonely walks awayContinue reading “A Lonely Walk”
The Open Door
by Laura Parker Roerden There’s something available to us that sits beside hope, like an open door. Children know about it. You sometimes see them walk towards it. Often they carry it and place it on our laps, looking up at us with eyes flung wide open. “Here,” they seem to offer. “Take this.” I’veContinue reading “The Open Door”
A Barred Owl
by Laura Parker Roerden Several nights this week I have lain in bed listening to the call and response of three barred owls outlining each cardinal direction—save for the south— which is oddly missing in the chorus, as if the baritones had boarded a bus for Times Square for some dancing and Christmas lights, whileContinue reading “A Barred Owl”
The Ways of Water
by Laura Parker Roerden As a child, we had a hand pump over an artesian well by a white, double-decker chicken barn. It was the only water for hundreds of birds growing on that land. The pump required several hard thrusts of the handle to raise the water like spirit, to the surface. Then eachContinue reading “The Ways of Water”