Writer's Block on a Monday

Why do I write in the dark of night,
In the downtime, when sleep should hold sway?
Why does my might recoil from that fight,
When I'm active -- enduring the day?
Why do my words just lie there like turds,
Stale and impotent as last month's rent?
Why do I save the whey, not the curds,
Preserved as though they were heaven sent?
Why do I press, my focus transgress,
To totter on wandering pathways?
Why does my best work fail to impress
Those friends who remember my good days?
The answer's sold in the dark and cold,
Where the once-bold grow tired and old.

Mick McKellar
February 2019

Some days the search for the profound is simply a visit to the lost and found.

Mick

The Gift Perilous

I apologize, my grandkids, again.
We are leaving you a planet in pain!
Our world of wonder is weathered and worn;
Our sweet promises are tattered and torn;
Our pilgrimage broken by profit's grift.

We were given keys to golden gardens;
Given second chances, even pardons
For wasting the fruits of our rights of birth.
But in poisoning the bounty of Earth,
We've set your future afire and adrift!

Often I weep in my pillow at night.
I dream that, somehow, we can put it right;
If we bypass greed, ignorance, and hate...
Do you think, maybe, we are not too late,
To save our precious and perilous gift?

Mick McKellar
February 2019

I was wondering what I would say to my grandchildren, to explain what we've done to their inheritance…

Mick

Keweenaw Spring

January's a long year,
February is dark.
March is full of snow fear,
April's so damn stark.
May will tease us often,
June's rain bugs will bring.
When July's winds soften,
Maybe we'll get Spring!

Mick McKellar
February 2019

I first saw a meme today which said: "January is a long year."

Mick

Colloquy

The fire in my belly grows dim.

My chill flesh remembers

Bright embers, within.

Yet, as memory fades,

As the spark we fed

With each hungry breath

Drifts near death;

Famished, urgent, wishing

For the heartfelt touch of another mind,

For the God-food of intuition,

For the fuel of cognition;

We hurtle, to hie to conflagration,

And flare into wildfire of repartee.

We sing a song of solitude,

And lend loneliness its long farewell.

Mick McKellar

January 2019

Solitude is sitting silently in a boat on a sea of friends.

Loneliness is sitting on a yacht in a vast, empty parking lot.

Mick

Each Road is a Wall

When roads rise up and seek to block our way,
When forceful flowers grow and bar our path,
When shrieking wind demands to have its say;
We'll taste the bitterness of Earthen wrath.
Too long ignored, the death of common sense,
Let slip the fantasy of greed's sweet taste:
A recipe that profit beckons, hence
The surfeit's rise in toxins, trash, and waste.
When life itself is bartered on the scale,
And children caged to bargain on the floor,
The Earth itself, enraged beyond the pale,
Will rise in judgment, crying out: "No more!"
Don't think to run...and thus avoid the test:
Each road is a wall, lain down for a rest.

Mick McKellar
January 2019

Some actions are so heinous that the Earth itself may take note and endeavor to remedy the situation.

Mick

January Snow

The breath of Winter's frozen heart released.
Shifting, sonorous, soft blanket of death,
Your grasping samite desert unappeased,
As all fall prey to creeping icy breath.
Your susurration sings of silent sleep,
And icy dreams cascading through the night.
Your shifting dunes on silent cat paws creep,
To sift and drift o'er landscapes lost from sight.
You fill the land -- a vast and soundless sea;
As muted, faint, and hushed, your rivers flow --
And dammed, your frost spray stings, when passing me
On winter winds that always seem to blow.
Your coverlet of frigid, frozen fleece,
Gives all about an icy sense of peace.

Mick McKellar
January 2019

I said to myself: "Say something nice about snow!" Imagine my surprise when I received a reply...

Mick

Shall We Prey?

White is the winter of twenty-nineteen,
Wherein the wolves -- pale polemics faint hide.
Dancing in gales grey and circling unseen,
Gauging what cover the news squalls provide.
Gone are old coordinated swift strikes.
Gone are lost chances to weather the gale.
Gone are discussions and simple dislikes.
Truth is prey predators swiftly assail.
Blinded by silvery frost from the skies,
As wisdom whispers insight with a hiss;
Torn in the tempest, the whisper soon dies,
Caught in the monochromatic abyss.
Frightened to death, hear humanity cry,
Left in the dark as the maelstrom roars by.

Mick McKellar
January 2019

I sense that we, the people, are under attack and as I read the news, I see only storm clouds and shadows of fear.

Mick