Visions of Paullina, Iowa
Behold the red sun
with ripe corona and radiant vestment,
A blazing ball bouncing lyrical reprise in scripted reflection:
word for word, shade for shade
Skywriting the liturgy of the hours, the hope of the heart in
vigil lights over fruitful fields
Where wheat wisps waltz to cornstalk crackles
while soybeans lay low as sleeping hens
Next to tractors, timid and tentative Deere idling
near Black Angus, tarpaper cutouts stuck to horizon fences
Family farm folk pass Communion bread
from generation to generation
Heaving beneath a yoke of burdens and a pile of debts,
the faithful plant seed money in sacrosanct soil
baptized by tears of toil
Keeping and tilling, bending and yielding to the will of something larger
Looking up to see the message, to swallow the magic and
choke back the wonder
Taking direction from the four winds
By Linda L. Bielowski, Ph.D.
Inside Out
Apron pockets turned inside out----
Spilling the contents,
Speaking the chapters
Of a life lived simply and fully and well
Springs forth a rag doll's blind button eye,
Scraps of Proverbs pages,
Sticky lollipop papers stuck to pieces of remembrance card
From the baby stillborn with breath sifted like fine flour----
A crisp hankie, framed in embroidered filigree,
Cradling the locket of mustard seed faith
Warmed by hands holding firm to the gospel plow
Through struggles that bake and stretch the apple core of belief
Until hope browns and sizzles like succulent sausages in the frying pan,
Like buckwheat cakes spreading smiling faces on the griddle,
Against a backdrop of banjos and fiddles playing rhythm for the chorale of singing prairie grasses,
Swaying beyond the Brown Eyed Susans, tender shoots who grow from the mystery below the thawing ground,
Sleepy eyed and winking at the porch gathering of leapfrogging souls
Basking in the marvel of a Sunday morning
Slain by the spirit----
Spinning and turning time upside down
By Linda L. Bielowski, Ph.D.
Hollow Houses' Lament
Do sealed, sentient houses lament past lives?
Weeping and wailing in woeful loneliness and hollow longing
to be entered and touched
Humid tears drip, dripping from crossbeams and
running down scraped wallpaper in rivulets
that water thirsty roses, shriveled and bleeding stigmata.
Fueled by fervid expectancy,
duped by Faustian desire,
Bereft houses barter enduring rock foundations
for spurious sandcastle promises
Of feeling familiar footsteps on splintered floorboards,
and hearing laughter lilting through the echo chambers
in locked rooms,
While heat pipe organs thump in cadence and cadenza
to melt the ice pond quiet, deep and deadening.
Watchful and waiting for company returning
from whence they have wandered
with time and time, seemingly endless: vast, vacuous, and void
Memories' sepia leftovers crusting on chipped, bone china plates left from the last supper.
By Linda L. Bielowski, Ph.D.
