Tempo Rubato

Piano-forte, does it matter?
Soft or loud?  Press down
   and the keys push back.
Resistance.
   God in the machine
   Good in the person
Press on.

The work gets harder.
The noise is harsh.
The keys hold the power.
In the center lies the music, that sweet spot - freedom.
Press on!

© Gay Reiser Cannnon - 3-8-18
All Rights Reserved

When Time Stops and Nothing Breathes

Today's drizzle
projected my sadness
onto my garden.
Rose petals shed
shamelessly in the breeze.
Seasons stopped in
gray seriousness;
music ceased.
Grisly clouds crouched
near the fence, as the
cats cowered and
forgot to breathe.
I turned back
counting my steps
and shuddered.

(c) Gay Reiser Cannon - 4.10.17
posted @dversepoets for 44 word
Quadrille

Another Change

I am making another change;
doing the same but better...
a move toward diligence

Practicing piano with care, cleaning,
writing a little more, and reading too.
Details managed to allow a
proper finish, a happier soul --
to hope for an occasional
shimmer of perfection.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 4/5/16 * All Rights Reserved

Running Late

"I'm running late"
that once was always the case..
sleeping late, rounding up the skates,
the skaters, the cases, the guards,
the instant breakfasts and snacks,
off to a rink at 5..should have been 5
to make a 6 o'clock patch - figures and
freeskates..each with different coaces,
often different rinks, round them up
back to school, to committee meetings,
to luncheons, to preparations, to shop for
supper, get skaters back for afternoon
training, home, supper, dishes, a cuddle,
to sleep and to start again next days..next years
and then it stopped ..first one and then another
graduation, college, marriage, and I'm at work
and traffic..running late again and not my fault.
I'm home late and it's just the cat and me.
Now it's just me and I'm never late..on time
for appointments, mostly doctors. On time
with the bills, the taxes, the parties, the presents,
the birthday cards...it was more fun running late
I think.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 4/4/2016

Why July?

Why July?
When July had always been nights of fireworks
Why July?
When July was the time of flashing blades
Why July?
When that was the month of celebrations
hot, sultry, a time of dragonflies and drum of
compressors and the thrum of air-conditioning
Songs soared to the rooftops - Tchaikovsky
alternating with Willie Nelson, dogs herding
playing pitch with the boys in the park
Why July?
The tiger lily grabbed you in mid sentence
and now
you're
gone...

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 4.3.2016 * All Rights Reserved

And that was last year - before I ran away to London
Because I will (if I can) always run away to London.
Because I knew Donald Trump would win
and freedoms would fade. There had been Nice,
with a truck killing dozens, but unfazed
I would have London and she gave herself to me.
The Thames, the Squares, the Circuses, the museums,
The West End shows and then I came home.
Husband gone in July '91; best friend then in August '16.
Yes that was last year.

Here...July '17, just begun and this one week, five deaths.
A nephew, 43, survived by two children and a distraught wife;
three friends younger than I am, fathers of skaters,
gone in a flash. A woman I barely knew but tied together
by a man who supported us both by friendship and employment.
And now today, my son's father-in-law. A long hard death
after a long illness. Summer deaths, I learn, may come quick
or agonize past the time life should have ended - wearing the
quick to the bone.

At 20 life looks like a highway that runs beyond all that's known.
It's a faster drive than we thought. The towns fly by -- the beauty,
the countryside, the transitory shells, the sand, mountains, trees, change
and then it's finished. The trip is over. Finito. We believe, we hold...
that the Spirit travels on.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 7.2.17 * All Rights Reserved

Aging

April 2 - National Poetry Month - prompt Aging

AGING

Old lady - when did I first think I was old?
Around twelve perhaps..old enough
to have little jobs, pay bills, support;
and then twenty one - married, pregnant,
grown up, responsible, and somehow not.
Forty-eight and widowed that was the point.
I would never be older than that.

I find that aging since that event,  I've stretched
toward innocence. I know others try to
remain young, bawdy, sinful; but it's
easier to revert to an innocence of childhood
with calm thoughts, diligence, and an
aim toward kindness and altruism.

Flowers and children's voices touch me
but I seek the narrow path - a walk to the sea,
a stroll in a park, sewing a garment, mending
a tear, watching a sunset, preparing a meal.
Simple things bring pleasure. The appreciation
of excellence thrills but the need to exceed
one's current state diminishes. Satisfaction's
found in still being both able and capable.

When I Was Ten

April 1 - First Poem

Black as the night that ruled my day,
a habitually mean scare-crow nun
tortured my tenth year by terrorizing
my fifth grade days and nights and
more in the nightmares that followed.

The single ray of light that year
occurred when I was released
to take piano lesson. Her retribution
took form in winds of hate that
directed manic strikes with a hickory stick.
It shred my hands and arms, at any
time almost always for imagined
infractions of some unspecified law.

No recourse, no mercy, and no understanding
and now I feel the same for that institution
that preaches love and practices hate.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 4.1.16 * All Rights Reserved

3 IMagy Poems

I

pigeons thunder roof to 

ground no way to get unwound 

more all the time out of reason 

full of sound -- sleeping, waking,

coming 'round every day

II

Sailing the night on silver

slipping silent then slow later on 

feel the wind blow then quicker 

as only you & the water 

& the stars hear the sound

III

hall and inward to the branch 

forward then to the dark space 

by the stair later on you'll hear 

a clock take three steps back 

try not to fall

One Part Invention

 The earth leans,
the waves rise up,
the raindrops fall,
the snow piles.
We feel nature's push
and metronomically
the reassurance of
steady Bach measures
in perfect interweaving
of chordal harmonies
fortify our spirit.
Patterns ever changing,
while repeating,
calm and comfort us
with the same warmth
and reassurance
as home baked strudel
or apple pie.
Our spirits lift.
We forge ahead.

(c) Gay Reiser Cannon * All Rights Reserved * 2.28.15

By Design

I am an architect of poetry.
Each idea designed as a house
conceived as spaces living within me.

I research the empty benches of my soul
discover a rooms full of chrysanthemums.
Each color a shaded nuance as petals unfold.

I measure words in sets of columns, stanzas of lifted lines,
that result in a drawing of emotions. I plan heavy with passion,
yet yield delicate blueprints where hidden closets may be discovered.

The poem becomes a park filled with dreams, of memories
measured by clouds, rain, and sunny days, planned with care
tinted in pastels - from land and lake to the hedges with fountains.

Its foundation are the trees whose winter lines seem like
those traced upon my palms elevated to a metaphor for life
executed in relief upon the soft clouds of a winter sky.

Nouns; house, painting, closets, chrysanthemums, park, cloud, trees, bench, fountains
Verbs:  create, discover, conceive, fill, research, design, measure, draw, elevate, execute
for Connect the Dots @dVersepoets pub - today hosted by Claudia

(c) Gay Reiser Cannon * 2.6.15 * All Rights Reserved