home – Knot to Be Undone

From Versailles to Valdosta

When potentates arrived at Louie’s gate
they frequently
were treated decently
from carriage to the crux of the estate
through spacious links to be
connected to the presence on the throne
that blanketed the monarchy alone.

But only those whose social pedigree
was highest shelf
according to their wealth
were met with individual esprit
and ushered by the king himself
through each palatial post from in to out
at every station on the winding route.

A remnant of the ritual remains,
a quiddity
that, like a whispered plea,
still echoes from the rural Georgia plains
with matchless hospitality
in gracious deference to who you are:
“Allow me to escort you to your car.”

2020 Mary Boren
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Absent

You’re as easy as a recipe for jello
running fifty fathoms deep beneath the foam,
an exasperating, independent fellow
as familiar as the road that leads to home.

At the door, anticipation is supplanted
by the telltale disappointment in a dog
when the one for whom he’s waited, pranced and panted
isn’t coming home tonight to lift the fog.

When I reach across the bed and find it empty,
it’s a pressing emptiness that’s amplified
by the silence in the darkness, and I simply
cannot rest until we’re sleeping side by side.

Over breakfast, hovering across the table
in the place of grizzled cheeks and tousled hair
is a multi-headed vacuum on a cable
sucking all the effervescence from the air.

So I’m sending you this telepathic summons:
Get your stuff together, put it in a sack,
hold your ear next to the ground and hear the rumblin’s
of how thoroughly you’re missed. Now hurry back!

2016 Mary Boren
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Passing Through

“We’re all just walking each other home.” -Ram Dass

We are fashioned of stardust and moonbeams,
with each particle numbered and weighed
in the heart of Creation’s unwavering flow
where the substance of everything’s made.

Then we’re hurtled unborn through the cosmos
to be nurtured and challenged and taught,
with our origin mostly forgotten except
when ethereal whispers are caught.

We experience natural beauty
tinged with sorrow and pain as we burn
with unquenchable passion for clues to explain
our existence. We long to return.

But that glorious lightness of being
in the lap of eternity’s source,
is reserved for escape from the passage of time
with a watchful, benevolent force.

If a tiger jumps out of the jungle,
or a bear charges out of the blue,
or a mugger gives chase down a dark city street,
they’re just doing what animals do.

I will not live in fear for my safety
or let cruelty alter my pace.
There’s a balance in nature that cradles us all
on this rock in the vastness of space.

Whether fluttering, tethered in tandem,
or with feet planted firm in the loam,
I am here with my brothers and sisters for now,
and we’re walking each other back home.

2014 Mary Boren
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The Call of Home

I’d love to travel astrally,
projecting past the sun and moon
into the realm beyond the bounds
of brick and mortar, blood and bone.

When carried on a single thought
aloft, my busy brain would cease
its constant chattering while I
enjoy the panoramic view.

But for the needs of day to day
existence in a mortal shell,
there’s no place I would rather live
than here at home on Planet Earth.

Let not her strength and beauty fade
because we failed to heed her cry.

———

2013 Mary Boren
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