Categories
Poems

The Mountain – A Villanelle

The Mountain
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.
At the mountain’s foot are crows, black as coal;
hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.

The dawn of the trial holds its mystique:
a challenge to pioneers who are bold.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.

The trailblazer starts with certain technique,
but must break himself to make himself whole:
hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.

By dusk of the trial, the sun seems weak.
The long day has grown dark, starless, and cold.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.

But fight on, through the pain, the doubt, and shrieks.
Fight on, through the dismantling of your soul.
Hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.

Keep hope inside when you’re too tired to speak,
and pay with your spirit every steep toll.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.
Hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.

Categories
Poems

The Ghost

A poem about lovemaking, which is like a ghost that lives in a home.

Maria Kreyn - Ghosts
Maria Kreyn – Ghosts

Lovemaking haunts our spirits,
The way a phantom inhabits a home.
The sex is at first tormenting,
A rattling of the pots and cabinet doors of our hearts.
What could cause our bodies to shake so?
We curse, not knowing quite what shakes us.
Then when the lovemaking, the phantom, is gone—
We miss it, we desire it.
We silently invite it back.
We miss the banging, the crashing, the confusion,
The chaos—all that the ghost, the sex, has brought.
Where could that spirit have gone?
We wonder, arbitrarily, if the ghost, the lovemaking,
Has gone to inhabit someone else’s home.
We shiver, thinking, “Someone else is fucking—and it’s not me!”
Jealousy invades our hearts,
Then we whisk the jealousy away again.
We think, “It is not productive to have such thoughts.
Not when there is work to be done—
There are chores to be attended to,
Families to be raised, and
Things to do. There’s no time to be thinking about sex.”
But still, like the phantom in our homes,
Unseen, the lovemaking anguishes our spirits.
Where could that ghost of lovemaking have gone?
And when at last we find it again,
We are soothed, for a brief moment,
And we leave our suffering, for a while,
Abandoned next to our clothes,
And we embrace the spirit, the lovemaking,
In an exultation of joy and delight.