the sun hangs stranded
atop the horizon
time suspended
golden light
like a jazz coronet
singing out that one warm note
into eternity
Pamela Olson, 1/15/2012
For River of Stones
at Writing Our Way Home
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a red trickling stream
washes from rivet-broken
seals and protective paint
sluicing around the sharp edges
of I-beam and struts
down the slick-sided cement
broader and wilder as it runs
down and down
toward the rushing traffic
Pamela Olson, 1/10/2012
For River of Stones
at Writing Our Way Home
the sky has doused itself
in lavender and gray
clouds the color of your face
days before dying
drawn and parched
tired of breath and food
wisps of cloud line the horizon
like soft down on a newborn’s head
fragile
capturing light and shadows
in soft curls and shallow breaths
endings and beginnings
this poem asks for pen and paper
the feel of desire placed
word by word in a textural interplay
longing for light and darkness
slipping between this world
and the next
the awful certainty of life, death,
and the sky’s fading light
Pamela Olson, 1/6/2012
For River of Stones
at Writing Our Way Home
black velvet branches
catch the sunset
like a young girl
showing her petticoat
somber color
gives way to brilliance
Pamela Olson, 1/5/2012
For River of Stones at
Writing Our Way Home
darkness removes itself from hiding
between trunks and branches
of the long-leaf pine
out from the hole the dogs are digging
expanding across the yard
from dusky fence-lines— until
until the pines are subsumed
and the fences darken
until all is gone and disappeared
except this night
Pamela Olson, 1/3/2012
For River of Stones at
Writing Our Way Home
resetting my internal alarm
wake at 6:30 am– still a musty darkness
the dogs yawn and stretch
apple pie cools
ham in the oven
the dogs sit-sentinel in the sun
reading, writing,
tv parade watching
and the day seeps by
Pamela Olson, 1/2/2012
For River of Stones
at Writing Our Way Home
a crow sits solo
in a bare-branched tree
black against a silvered sky
caw and branch creaking
sighing in a wintery bleakness
Pamela Olson, 1/1/2012
For Writing Our Way Home’s
River of Stones challenge
The poet stands in the lessening night
grass stems bent to greet the dawn
and watches the shadows
as the blue pines part
she and the two soft-footed deer
write a poem of the breaking day
forming syllables in the briefest glance
deer to poet to deer
slowly the sun washes over the field
an hourglass of light
its beams falling one by one
on grass, on poet, on deer
then comes the parting
they to the woods
she to her house
thinking about prayer
Pamela Olson, 11/13/2011
For One Single Impression‘s
prompt, hourglass
surely the weight of grief
settles the bones and flesh
deep into their resting place
my grandfather once piled stones
a mass so heavy
it seemed to bind his daughter
to the earth
to this place
no way to rise and walk elsewhere
but I have been pressed by grief
into a two-dimensional life
and know that you cannot sojourn
sorrow’s burdens encumber
the soul so it cannot rise
and yet . . . . you haunt me so
Pamela Olson, 10/2/2011
For One Single Impression’s
prompt, “language”
and The Gooseberry Garden’s
prompt, “love and loss”
“In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
like coarsest clothes against the cold”
the spinner takes her woven words
filled with coarsest grief
plaiting them with hemp and tweed
rough cotton with hard sepals caught
quick within the sullied strands
fingers bleeding as she pens
loss like a winter storm
grays and blacks fill her page
she loosens the wire binding
page upon page of her grief
weaving it among her words
to wear this book as her weeds
Pamela Olson, 9/11/2011
For One Single Impression’s
prompts, “notebook” and “weed”
From In Memoriam by Alfred Tennyson