Once, I thought the desert barren,
a lifeless, stagnant place
of no particular beauty or worth,
but as the years roll by,
and I, too, approach a desert
solely mine,
I find, to my delight, an oasis
of bittersweet contradictions:
life in constant motion,
whose sandy floor bears footprints
just as easily erased
as they were stamped on my soul
by eager visitors.

Posted for NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal All Rights Reserved

Q – Qui? Si, sono qui!

Here? Yes, I am here!
A tiny grape hanging
tenaciously on the vines of life
and though perhaps
I’ll resemble a wrinkled raisin
than a juicy fruit at the end,
Inniskillin will be salivating
for the sweetness made sweeter
by troubles and suffering.

**An ode to the eiswein or ice wine. 🙂 I’m also running out of steam for the A-Z Challenge, and the hardest letters are coming up! So, I have to apologize to everyone for not visiting as many blogs as I should and/or responding late to comments and for writing silly poems which attempt to quilt together seemingly unrelated cultures/languages/topics. 😦 Oh, wait! Q for quilt!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge: Q and NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal All Rights Reserved

Light peeks from behind
night’s shroud, blinking sleepily.
New day. More chances.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge: P, and NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal All Rights Reserved

Fog swallowed the road,
shrouding in opaque cerecloth
the only way out,
and the visitors panicked
while the locals visited.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge: O and NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal All Rights Reserved

N – Not Since I Stepped Out My Door

I used to think beauty
as apart from me,
an exotic thing
only seen in magazines.
Not now. Not anymore.
Not since I stepped out my door
and really looked around.
Beauty abounds!
For even a common housefly
catches the eye
when sunning itself
on a luminous, green shelf.
So in the mirror I now gaze
with nary a nasty phrase
and wish for you the same:
beauty, claimed!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge: N and NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal All Rights Reserved

Like a magician
in mercurial splendor,
the desert’s mood swings
and we shelter or parade,
completely at its mercy.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge: M and NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal All Rights Reserved

L – Lost and Found

For years, I roamed,
chasing an unknown
to fill a mysterious hole
in my hungry soul
but when I stilled
and let the silence build,
I realized my mistake.
For goodness’s sake,
it was always there,
inside, and if I dared,
I would have seen
what’s always been:
fields of flowers
nurtured by manure.

**It sounds a little depressing at the end, but it’s meant to be the opposite – an example of life’s yin yang.**

Posted for the A-Z Challenge: L and NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal

K – Kindling

Disappointments crunched underfoot,
paining the feet mightily,
so at first I feared the journey
with its sharp little switches
but later learned to repurpose,
and now at night, when the heat
dissipates into coolness,
a fiery blaze bellows
from kindling found
crushed on the ground.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge: K and NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal All Rights Reserved

Do you think
Shangri-la lies
beyond this empty stop?
March onwards and look!
Through deserts and jungles
during heat waves and rainstorms
despite the uncertainty,
for just suppose
it’s really there
and here you stayed, cowardly?
What’s ever certain, anyway,
besides night and day?

 

Posted for the A-Z Challenge: J and NaPoWriMo
©2015 V. del Casal All Rights Reserved