Category: Creative Writing

For I have never read a poem with such grace
Whose words caress every inch of my mouth
As I slowly roll each line over my tongue
While every phoneme beautifully distributed throughout
Creates a distinguishable awe of insight into others’ lives
And I sit and gasp in ecstasy as I eat my pierogies
Turning over the fabric of these works in my mind –
Elusively escaping from my memory in time.
Every fortnight I await their return –
These enticing specimens of wisdom and experience!
Yet although I realize there must be more to these stories
I abstain from discovering their secrets –
And the poet whose name is never revealed
Beckons to my curiosity as I lie awake at night in angst.
Who are these penetrating minds hiding behind the lines?
How do they know the exact words to use –
To lure me into their world of insight and verse?
Titillating temptation to join them overpowers my reluctance;
I long to exist side-by-side, line-by-line, with them –
Perhaps subconsciously wishing our stanzas will touch.
And I can endure the enlightenment and obscure awakening
Which has brought these men and women into a new world
Where Milton is lost and MacFlecknoe can reign,
And shrewd poets like me have much more to feign.

~ c.p.grisold

© 1998

I could swim in those eyes, I
drown in their verdant sea
swimmingly

~ c.p.grisold

© 2005

Mid-September and mass exodus
as if they had it all thought out
booked by an efficient travel agent
organized by a group leader
or perhaps a volunteer swallowtail

I saw the monarchs congregating
on wildflowers near the railroad tracks
and the noonday sky never looked so blue
as behind those butterflies
their tint of Autumn

Does the monarch migration
signal the true end of summer
and not as we suspected
the return of the Ex or of the refusal
to wear white after Labour Day?

I want to wear orange
rich deep burnt-orange with black trim
and make the journey to Mexico
with them

~ c.p.grisold

© 2007

The feather falls fleetingly to the floor.
Hopefully Heather holds her husband’s hand.
She sees the small soft streak it struck in the sand
Covering the carpet in the couple’s cabin,
And realizes she really should ring out the rug
Before the bugs begin to burrow beneath the bed.
Instead opening the oval window she outwardly opines
To take the token back to Toronto but her husband says no.
So Heather holds the fallen feather in her other hand and carefully coaxes it out the open window
Into a world ready to receive it.

~ c.p.grisold

© 2013

This river, this river
this river flows into me
out from you
and no
it is not the river I stand in
it is the river I step in
into, over, through
on my way to someplace else
somewhere else
someone else

I step over you and you
in turn
step back and I am taken aback
confused and lost
in deep waters
waters not my own
unfamiliar waters
dark, cold, forceful waters

this river I step in pulls me downstream
with such power
I long to release myself
into it and let it
carry me away…

resistance takes all my strength
strength set on remembering

this river I step in is not the river I stand in

the river I stand in
is much
much
deeper
yet not as cold
in it I stand alone
and am only carried away
by my own steps
towards
you

~ c.p.grisold

© 1998