Barbara's Meanderings

Don’t worry, coast

Banish worry and coast through
days like a skateboarder on a slick surface
Keep worry at bay
Open the gates for your favorites to attend
Float through your days without weights

April 7, 2011

Prompt: Use What if?

all the animals disappeared
and the world stood barren with
bare trees and rivers dried up
Becoming waddies in the middle of
deserts?

What if the water that plays
Over the smooth stones stopped
And there were no snow or rain
Where would the water now running
Freely through our pipes come from?

What if the abundant wheat and corn
Fields were plucked clean and the husks
Stood drying in the wind while the last
Ear of corn became more valuable than
Gold?

Would there be those who would pounce
Upon that ear or hold themselves in
check. aware that the wide arm of the
marauding hordes might sweep away the
entire tenuous house of cards upon which
we built our lives?




April 8. 2011

Prompt: Write a poem for celebration

September

On the trumpeted day
my words will fly across
the internet on their own
merit strong at last after
so many months spent honing
them and polishing until all
were as they should be
Alighting with their gemstone
brilliance upon websites to sit
and wait for eager readers –
Some fans have been there at the
gate cheering the fledgling
as she shed her unnecessary
baggage and prepared to move
Into the world in her awesome
cover dressed for success.



April 9, 2011

Prompt: Write a poem about a specific time

2:46 AM

Up again and the hour creeps ever later
as I play catch up with my fingers
Writing poems as if in a race
Hurrying to write for all the days
Hoping to pull ahead and at last be
side by side with each prompt
Poetry sliding out of me
My muse had flown away on
vacation for a few days
Maybe lying in that hospital bed
with Hal as he waits
Not sure if what he needs will mend
hhm back to the young man with
strong legs standing for hours.
My muse wraps its arms around me
aware I need the TLC and sheds its
aura upon the scene allowing a
chance to write while hope slips under
the covers.





April 10, 2011

Prompt: Write a poem with Never Again as your first line

Never again

Never again do I want to wake to the
sight of a building destroyed by an airplane
Horror scenes playing out in front of me on
my TV like a bad sci fi movie come to life
And though at the time never realized
Llfe changing in a moment
Becoming a security check for all
Fear replaced the glibness
Of the pre- 9/11 innocence
Like toddlers playing in a secluded safe
playground we never dreamed such a thing
could happen.





April 11, 2011

Prompt: Write a poem with the idea of Maybe

Maybe

All of those forwards bringing me news
of huge windfalls about to happen for me
If only I send out these photos to 7 or 10 or 12
friends who must do the same will work their magic?
Or perhaps Publisher’s Clearing House will show
Up outside my door with balloons and a giant check
made out to me?
Maybe the disaster at Fukushima won’t destroy a beautiful
creative and centered country so far across the world from
us and so burdened with nature’s growing pains

Maybe when my book is published
it will catch the interest of the girls who now follow
vampire’s lives and have forsaken the stories of girls like
themselves.
Maybe I’ll wake up and be ten pounds thinner, millions of dollars richer
and millions of brain cells brighter.
Or maybe the maybes will all go away
and I will learn to live in the yeses.




April 12, 2011

Write a form poem and/or a non-form poem for Two for Tuesday

Love’s Journey Sonnet

Love’s journey takes you down a long road
Upon which you stumble and fall
Unsure of the length and the size of your load
All you can do is is stand in thrall

Wrapped in your lover’s arms
You don’t move beyond to the after
You’re sure he will block all harms
And you drown out your fears with laughter

Time wounds all heels
As love pares away
Your life has been a series of reels
As day follows day follows day

Though you wished for magic
Most of it was just tragic



Wind

I wanted to write a form poem
About the wind, but the form
Stifled my words as if a noose
Were around my fingers
Keeping them from tripping across
The keys creating them
And I realized with a deep felt sigh
My muse does not like being locked
In a form of any kind
But like breasts after a long day
Must swing free to expand its
Essence

The wind’s howl wraps around
the bricked space and ricochets
toward the lonely expanse of water
Back and forth like a ghostly game of
ping pong the wind screams its eerie song
Whoooooo, whooooooo, whooooo
And I imagine abandoned ships run aground
With the trapped souls of the unfortunate
Victims yelling for release
Bringing goose bumps all over my body
Forcing me to hide beneath covers and stop
Up my ears to keep out the crazed sound of the wind.

Prompt: Write a postcard about where you are now.

My Home Now

A few steps from my door
I see the abandoned pool
Covered now, but soon it will
be filled with the sound of
raucous voices and the water
will lap at its sides
Beckoning me to lay on the
chaise lounge and sun myself
until the sun warms me forcing
my heated body into the cool of the
Water.

Behind the iron gate, is the path
following the shore and the sand
beach reserved for the egrets and
water birds who flock there each spring
and summer and the ducks and swans
who raise their young among the tall reeds
growing there too.

Last year I wandered over the boardwalk and
beheld a mother swan giving lessons to her
brood and the surprise blew away the feelings
for which I had walked to the shore
bringing peace to my mind and erasing the
source of distress for a few moments

This place is now my home with its twin
four story apartment buildings and small patios
where some go to smoke.
I love the freedom to walk outside any time
I wish, and at last the spring has arrived
Soon I will walk the paths to observe maybe
a rabbit or perhaps another mother swan.
The serendipity of such a moment leaves me
Breathless.
copyright 2011 by Barbara Ehrentreu

April 3, 2011

Write a poem in which you imagine the world without you.

Would you miss me?

If when you went to Joanne’s house I hadn’t been there
would you have found another
whose lips fit perfectly with yours?
Whose mind twisted in the same patterns?
Whose soul intertwined with yours and
who considered you home no matter where we landed?

Would you have found another dreaming wanderer
a thin skinned crazy person who continued to
feel you were the one way past the time another
might have left to find a more sedate conformist?
What would have become of the unborn children?
Maybe they would have been happy born to another
success laying across their 2 piece suited lives.
Happiness etched across their faces.

What would the countless children have done
without me?
How many would have trudged through school without
my help?
What about the ones who hovered on the edges of passing?
Would they have found the teacher who really cared like I did?
Or would they have lost out and fallen to the wayside?

How would your life have been without me?
Perhaps you would have found the woman who
took care of your needs and then walked away leaving
you to enjoy your own company.
Maybe you would have stayed unmarried for the lack of a
kindred soul – forty-six years nonexistent
For you would not have stayed with someone like that.

And what of the joy we shared? Would you have found this
With another? Or would you have gone through your life
constantly searching and wondering why you hadn’t found
the one?