Grief – This Jolly Beggar

Tanka: Ginkgo (1)

The ginkgo fans green
Spring blows soft upon your face
Sleep has come too soon
In a place where leaves open
To dream under the full moon

My thoughts go to a friend who lost his mother a year ago this month. This same month a friend died at the age of 91 who had been as a second father to me. Yet May is a merry month, reminding us that a new life awaits us where death no more reigns.

For Cee's Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD): "Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts leaves and berries as well as flowers."

“She said if a red fox had crossed somewhere, that area was safe”

When I left her yesterday
the black was in her hair
the gold was in her eyes
and she spoke of fathers
and unmourned sons
but now she freezes the air
like a stray from bygone forests
and primordial paths
looking at me like a traveler
she’d warned before
of hazardous roads
and one in particular
where red foxes
appear to startle the unwary
from perilous paths
and slipping slopes of memory
but for the shibboleth:
Mother?
You’re safe.

I somehow missed posting on this prompt from Sarah of dVerse who chose quotes from a book for us to use as poem titles.
"She said if a red fox had crossed somewhere, that area was safe" was the one I chose. 
Click on Mr. Linky for more.
Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/mother-and-daughter-on-grass-1683975/

Letter to No Lycidas

Genre: Poetry 
Word count: 100 
written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers 
click on the friendly frog for more tales of a hundred words or less 
& join the fun!

Letter to No Lycidas

No Lycidas are you, my son,
no watery bier nor desert grave
holds you. But in the crisp
of autumn air, your countenance
lights a distant town, another’s home
a place where you from me remain.
Yet I wonder, pray one day I’ll see
you striding back to see me here;
that one day that old mailbox
will find you on a daily chore
or whether the woods beyond will gape
to hear your lusty songs of praise
to the God of miracles and a Son
who freeing the soul from evil design
heals faultless the sutures of the mind.

September Hope by Candlelight

Broken shadows across the cracked ground
your grave day lost in flurried words
like September leaves across
yesterday’s hallowed ground
grief yet uninterred:
you six years gone
from my sight
till Day
breaks.