If you haven’t lost the love of your life
In the late Summertime
As a jewel-toned magic carpet pulled
From ‘neath your soaring heart
As your jump rope stolen
Whilst you sang from the deep
Then you cannot have been my best friend
In this, our late lifetime
A Cardinal, spying from the pow’r lines by my kitchen window, acts tempestuously
As if he cannot resist me
Truth be told, I’m fond of him, too
Remarkable as he is — less a vivid red than most, and volume missing in the tufts of his shaggy cone
I know the migration he’s been through, and he needs that
Unafraid to ask, I say, “What is it you want?”
His response…be still, my heart!
I won’t betray his confidence, but we see eye-to-eye
It’s the reason he finds himself landing in my backyard peach tree at every possible opportunity
Poking around in the Echinacea, for calm
Glad I give him refuge, I leave open the door
Talking with him like this, leaves me wanting more
Right this
Take us back to the shallow meeting place
To before the gravity of what was never a simple baseball game
Delete January
My I Love You
Your I Do Love You Too
Swipe left on me
Be unaccountable, actually
Take us to before November
To when we were less than digital
To when I was not here alone in your deep
Strung, as crystalline beads
On a fine gold thread
Our days
One by one together
We charted a more kind pattern
Planned
Colors, something beautiful
All our own
To be complete
Tied with an unbreakable knot
This time
Worn boldly and proud
But for the masked marauder
Disguised as difficult conversation
Arriving in broad daylight
Ripping this treasure from us
A new family heirloom
We’d have created
This man I’ve not met
Wielding a wellspring of hope
Bring him to me, God
I know this night
Allow me to define
Temperature just right
Songbirds dancing in the dusk
A perfect ambiance
I know this night well, I say!
Yet still unready to admit
The aloneness of it
The how I see clearly
The what that she has that I should have
Trepidation as stars begin their show
Is all the what that I have
My big, demure eyes
My young, smooth skin
I’d trade her for her treasure
Then maybe in the mirror see
Somebody you love
Happy birthday
On this eve
America, lovely and tall
You will always be my Home
You are what delights me so
America, tho’ gone astray
I believe in you
I ask of you
America, make things right
Were I God, I’d think to define, “win”
When creatures, injured, question lover’s sin
“Do hollow smiles somehow qualify?
Or emptiness so plain behind those eyes?”
“A hardened heart, absent a joy-filled beat
Make clear to me he re-mains incomplete”
“Your love, be sure it lingers on his soul
He dreads the days without you he grows old”
“He tallies daily losing you again
Discarded Darling, You were his sole “win””
(America has a birthday coming up.
I’m never one to want to miss a birthday — but how to offer celebratory wishes, given our current state of disunity?
The child of God in me has the utmost hope that Our Nation will heal and become unified. And, the child of God in me sees, too, that what America is holding right now is an over-rated, wrinkly, old flag.
But, Happy Birthday, America.
I love you.
-Lisa Mae
Photo Credit: Lisa Rosier;
American flag flying aboard the USS Lexington when Japan surrendered in 1945; On display at the National Naval Aviation Museum, Alabama)

I tried, I swear I tried
To stop loving the Blue Mountains you swept me away to
To stop seeing them through your grey-green eyes
I prayed endlessly
Extend your hand once more to me down those towered hiking trails
Let me see heaven in your saunter again
I allowed foreign kisses
Fill this Orion-shaped wound, I vowed — still I stand, hollow
Waiting for your fix, for our paths to merge as you promised
