About

 

tattered papers drift
through the long-deserted streets
on hollow winds

 

During college and shortly after, about a 15-year span, I saved pages from lined spiral notebooks (my personal journals) to finish writing poems, revise some, and writing down ideas to come back to, later on. I never saved the journals themselves, but only pages from them, shredding or burning what I did not want to keep.

I find myself doing somewhat the same with blogs. I write in them, but at some point, pull pages to save to disk and delete the rest. Sometimes I regret for a little while the words and pictures I’ve deleted…but I have never stopped for long. I seldom look back on the years that I have, in effect, also deleted.

spectacles lie
beside closed books on a table
life’s endings

I had planned to remain alone for my entire life. This unexpected diversion from my expectations during these later years surprised me. That…that is something that I don’t have the precise words for, yet. Only that it is both unexpected and good.

 

From The Written Word Journal:

Tempted to Silence

as the years move on
as I move with them
or we go separate ways

I have less to say
there is less to hear
around me that inspires…

I don’t know what I miss—
words of kindness, uplifting
without self-serving thoughts

a different world, perhaps,
outside the door…with hope
for more than me and mine and yours

If I were alone, again
if there were no one to care
if I were there or here

I would take a lease
on a cabin in the woods
for enough years to die

listening to rain and bird calls
wind and ice and hearth fire
pencil scratching paper

the opening of a door

Copyright © 2018-04-18, by Liz Bennefeld.

 

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