Miracle

 

Will it take a miracle

(they asked)

for me to get my head out

of my vast

open

spaces?

It would be a miracle

(they said)

if I ever

got ahead

with my dreamy dumbbell drifting ways.

All roads lead to Rome

(I answered)

for me and all my sister

second chancers

sobering up

right under your noses.

There is no miracle

(they insisted)

that could drive home the wisdom 

you've resisted 

until you see how

we only diss you 

because we love you,

silly cow.

The only miracle 

I find in it

is that they may all

eat sh--

elled peanuts without me 

at the circus I miraculously

ran like hell from.

______ _

For What's Going On?--Miracles.

Music: Entry of the Gladiators 

The Goblin Girl (A Child's Fairy Story)

 

image by Gustaf Teggren

The Goblin Girl is cursed and wanders

over stubbled fields and passes under

the riven bridge that ice has split

and counts herself the cause of it.

Should the Goblin Girl admire the arc

of a lofty bird it misses its mark--

falters and falls like an iron omen

to fall at her feet in evening gloaming.

On thorny brambles she lays her head

with moon for pillow and stone for bed

to dream of peacocks and peahens crying

for the bride whose lily is cut and dying.

Who laid the wicked curse upon her?

Perhaps some coward behind a mask?

Or was it the smug and well-dressed hunter

who cradles his gun and ready flask?

Who burned her image and let the milk curdle

as done to them by an earlier other?

Why, the very one who rocked the cradle--

the Goblin Girl's Janus-faced mother.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Christina Rossetti. The poem is, in style, an homage.

For more about the two-faced god Janus, look HERE. 

Music: Sarah McLachlan "In The Arms Of An Angel"