Poems by Beverly M. Collins

Moss

 

Walls covered in a green growth that moves

Slow and clings due to code. Land barnacles,

much like those found in the ocean,

alive and holding on. Present but fearful that

to float or sail would spell a sure end.

What is the human expression of fear/cling?

Does it show itself only in intention?

Is it quietness when there is much to express, or

laughter in moments that are without humor?

Is it to be tender yet secretly ashamed of

one’s own tenderness or an impulse to cling

to ideas that may render oneself undone?

Hold-on, be quiet-green-mush until smeared.

Then, get mashed over sustained silliness.

 

Fly

There are some days I wish I could fly

higher than an airplane with my wings.

I’d look down and see land masses as tiny

uninhabitable shapes.

See struggles within them, like the view of

invisible clay, minute and voiceless.

The unrest, that mirrors 1,000-years-ago, of

the fair and unfair, those that shoved and the

put-upon, would be wind-swept.

I would stare eye to eye with eagles, on my journey

up, stroke the throat of thunder and link my arms

softly with lightening.

I would move like my wings were monuments meant

To shape clouds.

And when my flight was over, I could return to

this walkable space with new appreciation for all the

energy above me. With acceptance of the un-solidness

of ground where sudden shift rules and no crust is

uncrackable, where all vines are breakable

and every bang of a nail, reversable.

Where shedding is an unapologetic king

welding evolution’s wand. The most sacred

law is movement and the muscle it creates.

And I’d then say… Amen!

 

Dust

 

Mankind is like dust blown in the eyes

of Mother Earth. She bats her lashes

and cries her cleansing tears.

Earth watches mankind battle like ants to build

reckless hills from which humans can one

day be banished.

Man’s view is blind to the signs of a growing

fire…Heat from foolishness scorches greedy

palms.  Some groan, yet hold true to entrench

behaviors.

Mother earth looks on. Her gaze is steady.

Her timer ticks…ticks…ticks.

 

Beverly M. Collins’ work has previously been published in California Quarterly, The Journal of Modern Poetry, The Altadena Poetry Review, The Hidden and Divine Female voices in Ireland, Spectrum and many others.