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| Baby Feet Sweet baby feet touch the cool grass for the first time wiggling toes, feeling each blade of grass tickling: it makes the baby laugh. Now she must sit down and feel it between her fat little fingers. Rip it out, stand up and run New feet on a new spring lawn. |
| Poems by Deanna |
| Okefenokee I sing a song of trembling earth of long gone longleaf pine of cypress trees and cypress knees and rings sculpted slow by time. Gone in a flash as quick as lightning cracks apart the sky: The saw, the mill, the pioneer now comes the cracker profiteer what's left is a tidy lie. Here trees grow slow, and trees grow still; some row by row like corn. There is no mill. The need has long since passed. A fledgling forest stands forlorn, and a thousand years must come and go to turn future back to past. Still, otters splash in a giant stump, a craggy crown submerged in tea Black tea, this water seeps and strains and surges towards the sea. The water lilies bloom and die. The prairies burn The ospreys fly. A pitcher plant digests a fly. Amidst the music sung by frogs, alligators pretend that they are logs. I paddle through in my canoe. Someday, when Christ makes all things new, I hope that I will chance to see God's original Okefenokee. |
Imaginis (An Image of Heaven) - for Imogene A bright star in the heavens tonight shall direct me the way to a garden of flowers with blooms of white in a hedge dark green, such as no mortal man yet has seen. The winding path leads on to the gates which open, and I run all the way. My footsteps fresh and fast, I race to the inner garden of lilies and roses and orchids and azaleas and violets of everlasting bloom. My battered and broken body has been made anew. I smell fresh dew of morning, and I see you. My feet as swift birds deliver me to you, and we are met at last, never to be parted. We run like children flying home across fields of tall grass and wildflowers uphill and down without tiring. You know the way as we leap across a brook, and there sitting beneath a great ferned tree is my Lord. Oh rejoice! It is he! |
| Goodbye Barn Goodbye barn Goodbye sow Goodbye mule and goodbye, cow. Farewell to rafters fallen down, and tin rusted roof of burned brown. Farewell to fields of corn and clover. My days of trodding and plowing are over. Hello bus, and hello train, stretching pavement, and noisy plane. Hello city, hello cars. Goodbye night, and goodbye stars. Goodbye wagon, Goodbye clay. Dusty memories wash away. Photos fade of ages past. Nothing here was built to last. Goodbye crumbling, hulking car, drowned in kudzu. Hidden far beyond a pasture, I would run to see you in the burning sun. Goodbye paint, you've gone away. All your colors gone to gray, with flecks of blue as once was seen by eyes of brown in ancient scene. The city, sparkling, dirty, new, corrupted us to forsake you. Goodbye barn and mare in the stall. Goodbye scarlet leaves in fall. Hello condo, hello mall. Goodbye pipe, and goodbye gun. Goodbye simple country fun. Goodbye toil. Hello desk. Hello lights, and goodbye rest. My mind cannot be calmed down. Goodbye farm. Hello town. |
| Don't Forget Me Don't forget me, for I died with you standing by my side: the brother that I'd never known. We both came back, but I alone, and you would follow with the rest. Remember me now that you are home. You were the friend who knew me best. I know you won't forget the one whose name you gave to your firstborn son. Don't forget me, for I was lost, and you were the one to count the cost. Your name was written on my heart the day that I was blown apart. I promised I'd come home to you, a soldier's promise given true. A promise that I couldn't keep twas taken on the ocean deep, or stolen in a desert land, a jungle thick, a stretch of sand where waves beat fiercely on the shore, shot from the sky, no nevermore can I return, my love, to you. Not on this earth, but true and strong, our love won't keep from heaven long. You won't forget me, this I know, for I'm your son, and you loved me so. You let me go, but bid me stay, but you had raised me to be this way. You made a man and watched me leave, I'm so sorry that you have to grieve. I know that you'll remember well the son you loved, the son who fell. Don't forget me, because I went so that your son might not be sent. That he might grow up strong and well, and never know how war is hell. Your freedom cost me, and I paid a debt you never can repay. You never knew me, we never met. So I expect you may forget a man who gave his life for you, the one who signed and paid your due. They went with me, and they went before, and others will, and more and more. Do not forget them when they've gone. Remember, remember this fallen one. |