leaves dance on the wind
celebrating with the snow
winter’s scattered art
Copyright © 2019-12-20, by Elizabeth Bennefeld.
All rights reserved.
BIRTHDAYS
measuring time—
twenty-five or thirty-some years
yet to go … or less
looking at past records
of family births and deathsmy dad felt a hundred years
was too long to stick around for
my mother thought that ninety-four
was quite a bit too short
neither was pleaseddon’t know what I’ll think
when my world and I transform
when time becomes eternity
maybe I’ll notice, or perhaps I’ll
forget what came before
Copyright © 2019-11-29, by Liz Bennefeld. All rights reserved.
cloudy skies
threatening late-autumn snow
leaves on the windmemories of butterflies
flower pollen, gentle breeze
Copyright © by Lizl Bennefeld,
2019-11-24. All rights reserved.
no more ideas
nothing to be done with that
but to keep still
listening from my silence
to the heartbeat of the world
Copyright © 2019-11-23, by Lizl Bennefeld. All rights reserved.
in-between weather
too warm to wear the snow boots…
too cold for slippers
Copyright © 2019-11-22, by Liz Bennefeld.
powdered-sugar snow
too small to descend slowly
tumbles through the wind
blowing under inside doors
filling outside’s tiny cracks
Copyright © 2019-11-21, by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld.
leaves in the front yard
brown, windblown collages
snow melted and gonelooking forward once again
to icy streets and soft snow
[tanka.] Copyright © 2019-11-18, Liz Bennefeld. All rights reserved.
Filling in for a missing day.
a
from the mountaintop
I was always looking down
in dells I look up
peaks provide a heady view
but in valleys, heaven’s light
[tanka]. Copyright © 2019-11-18, by Liz Bennefeld.
Written to #RonovanWrites #Haiku weekly challenge prompt: Valley & Peak
“Catching Up With Mother”
I woke up thinking, “I should call Mom, today”,
forgetting that she died three years ago this week.
Forgetting that she had not taken a call from me
at least half a year before I got called to have
the ambulance tear her from her only home.I still want to call her and ask about her week
and the previous years since we last caught up.
I don’t know where she’s sitting, or if she wants
to walk with me along a pasture fence
in a place not new to her…or one not new to me.If I go ahead and start a new conversation,
should I pause between my sentences?
to see if she will answer me or make
a comment of her own? She liked to talk to me
but she didn’t always listen. Now, I wouldn’t care.I have looked through all the emails. Of course,
none are new, and the last that were coherent
were sent a year before she died. I hadn’t,
really hadn’t noticed how far things had gone.
Or feeling bewildered, I didn’t want to see.When Mother wasn’t panicking, she took me
as she found me, loving me all the while
she wondered why I wanted to be me
and not the daughter that she’d wanted. But
she still trusted me to do what must be done.I can feel her arms around me, giving me a hug.
I can’t hear her voice, but she knows when I cry.
She can hear me talk to her and read what I write.
I know that she and God are always present to my life.
The separation that I feel is just an odd notion in my mind.
Copyright © 2019-11-17, by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld.
puppies on my bed
keeping warm my feet and heart
sheltered from the cold
[senryu.] Copyright © 2019-11-17, Liz Bennefeld. All rights reserved.
Prompt for day 5: “pleasure” poem
A bit of catch-up, here. Still behind more than a few prompts.