Tag Archive | morning

Empty Glass by the Open Window

If you were lucky
your eyelids were thick
heavy with yesterday
when the light of morning
tried weakly
to poke you
but mine were thinly
veiled gossamer
just wispy covers
disguised by lashes
when a tender breeze
stirred up trouble
as the light of morning
angrily flooded in
pouring over me
like yesterday’s guilt
and turning my back

only widened the shadow

Early Riser

Thousands
of mornings
have started the same
where you sleep warm
and yet
I rise
the quiet day
nudging me
with gentle thoughts
forcefully pulling
my covers off
and yet
I don’t feel
like rhyming today
where rules
must count
and lines
be broken
so the naked
truth
must spill
or spray
or drip
and dry
until my secret’s
clean
and the mist
of it
forms in the steam
and yet again
I trace
my heart
on the mirror
cold
while in your dreams
you must decide
if you’ll wake
in time
to see.

Morning Has Broken

I tried
this and that
to elude
the sleep
I knew
must come
but distractions
fell
one lash
by lash
until the dreaded
dark
the sinister
softness
of my pillow
with its
gentle-nodding
eyelid-pulling
beguiling
cotton guise
taunted me
with memories
I couldn’t
know
hours of dreams
I couldn’t
live
till sunlight
shutter crashed
my fluttered lashes
my tossing
and turning
on the light
may have saved me
once again

6/17/2015 – Patricia A. Hawkenson’s Reflections – Whether Vain

Whether Vain

I wake today
with the seed
of a fertile memory
and hope
the morning’s
translucent sun
will dance
its laughter
upon my tears
swirling
like a whirligig
and lift it
as leaves
in an October
breeze
upward to kiss
the branch that
wisely let go
yet the haunting
dreams that colored
my damp pillow
and clung the bits
of mixed emotions
into my tousled hair
can’t be brushed
away

4/1/2015 – Patricia A. Hawkenson’s Reflections – Dreamweaver

Poetic Asides – Day 1 – Resistance Poem 2

Dreamweaver

Sleep begins
to seduce me
with the quiet promise
that I might hide
within the darkened warps
between the stars.

But self-induced
insomnia
is as necessary
as the tense shuttle
of my arm
blocking the murky
shadows
of my fears.

For there is no rest
in flying,
in running
within the twisted,
warping mazes
where distorted images
are thrown across
my dreams.

I tangle every
sheet and doubt
till only morning
covers me,
and what I thought
I knew
unravels
in the light.

4/09/10 Patricia A. Hawkenson’s Reflections – Schooled

Schooled

PROMPT 9: Write a self-portrait poem.

Schooled

I have tossed aside my cover
to let the cool morning air
wake my skin,
my muscles,
my bones.

I stand.

In this moment,
this is all I am.

Later,
there can be organization,
a back up plan,
a process,
a sharing of my knowledge,
my theories,
my self.

Later,
students can prop up their heads,
upon their palms
interested, disinterested,
until the bell
or their blood
falls asleep
or wakes them up.

But in this moment,
this is all I am.

I have tossed aside my cover.

4/05/10 Patricia A. Hawkenson’s Reflections – My Glass Was Filled Again

My Forgetfullness

PROMPT 5: Write a poem about too much information.

My Glass Was Filled Again

Covers rolled over me
clouds billowed past
my distortion of day,
my mixing of night.

Dreams dropped the words
that slumber used to describe
my mixing of people,
my confusion of time.

Somewhere in the pillow
that holds my jumbled words
my poem was left in pieces,
my frustration wakes again.

I thought I would remember
all the feelings of the dream
my clarity of morning,
my forgetfulness of you.

4/03/10 Patricia A. Hawkenson’s Reflections – Partly Showered

Partly 2

PROMPT 3: Partly ___________.

Partly Showered

Enclosed within the span
my arms can touch,
my eyes are closed
to effort of standing.
There are no rubber grips
beneath my slippery feet.

Naked vulnerability exposed,
I step out into my morning
pushing aside condensation
till drops cry down my arm.
Through my veil of Vicodin,
I’m only partly afraid to live.

3/13/10 Patricia A. Hawkenson’s Reflections – Waiting for His Return

Waiting

Waiting for His Return

How still the morning,
with the air not yet awake
to move our curtains.

In my husband’s chair
the cat is deaf to the sound
of my slippers.

He waits in a curl,
his head tucked into a memory
of my grandmother’s fox collar.
She pinched its jaw to bite its tail,
fur hiding cracks in her old chin.

In my husband’s chair
a slight fanning of matted fur
sinking,
lifting,
allows my breath
to slip in through my fingers.

I had thought him dead.

But he pinched another day
out of his old bones.