A Woman's View of Cattails

by SL Ruth

I sit alone on the windswept deck
my rocker soothing the emptiness
in my heart; inches from my bare feet
wild cattails, rooted at water's edge,
browned velvet cylindrical tubes,
shimmy immodestly as they launch
wispy, fertile spores in the rosy
blush of the rising sun, sowing their
seeds on the glow of the pink morning.

Sun warms, penetrates my cold body
and the evaporating mist rises
lifting off the glistening lake;
thick tufts of virgin cat fur play
dancing on thermals, swirling, spinning,
like passengers on a carousel
riding rhythms from a calliope.

Fuzzed spermatophytes, seek new life,
hesitate, almost flirting with earth
before commencing the spiral that
sends them plummeting down, softly down,
toward the embracing flush of earth;
soldiers projectiled on one single
flight in tiny and frayed hot air
balloons that drift, drift, drift then alight

Licking and coating all the wet world
with a downy gauze of pristene white,
the feathered, fairy seeds pirouette,
stick in my hair, and on my cheeks,
on gentle currents of dark water,
roughened cypress bark, or mossy bank,
in the beautiful ritual born
of summer's heat, and a natural
passion that leaves me breathless.

The wanton cattails sway seductively
with no signs of fear, or loneliness.
I see all, rocking still, as a fresh
breeze lifts the ruffle on my nightgown
to bare my lily knees and impart
an envy that leaves me a warmed,
but reluctant witness of life's
eternal round even for cattails.

A Young Girl's Voyage

by SL Ruth

Blue faded flowers curl and lap at a chair
anchored to a rug in the young girl's room;
she's an island adrift on a sea of despair,
she sits without rudder, alone and marooned.
She treads deep waters that are not her own,
her slender knees drawn up to her chest,
her eyes set on places far from her home,
her arms, muscles knotted, dam her unrest.
Slats dig her back leaving wakes of cloth foam,
eddies of breath disguise sighs from her crib;
she struggles to fight welling torrents unknown
pressing her lungs with swelling salt jibes.
Yet sailing, like tears, for fear's foreign shores,
must flow from one's heart to open closed doors.

A Survivor

by SL Ruth

An ancient mighty oak
lifts burned branches aloft
bereft of leaves,
like an ancient Menorah
trailing wisps of smoke,
whispering secrets of wrongs;
wicks, not quite through burning,
from the candlesticks, melted
hot in sooty embrace of ash,
cover the field once lush with grass and flower.

The oak, all that remains of the green that was,
the lone sentinal to guard what is,
against the fire that begs for more;
unquenched tongues lick out searching,
threathening, but the Menorah
stands firm in charred and silken splendor.

No fire could destroy those strong roots,
a symbol of hope and courage,
the future can be seen through the tree
with stubbed branches still raised high
a survivor for the forest that will come again.