Debt by Shirley Rickett

 

How can I make it up to you?
What water shall newly baptize us?
Which dream will not leave a nightmare?

The sky soothes me, the mockingbird
saves me. When they are gone, absent
like stars everyone knows should be there,

my footing fails, and I try to patch up
the earth and sky for the millionth time.
The Lakota say all roads are good.

I wave to you from my new trail.

 

__________

Shirley Rickett has been writing for longer than she cares to remember. She and husband Charles left their lifetime home in Kansas City to retire to South Texas in 2006.  She is the author of three chapbooks, “A Minute of Arc,” Dam Poets Press (out of print), Dinner in Oslo, Ardvaark Global Publishing, poems based on interviews with the children of Nazis, “Love:  Poems for Vintage Song Titles,”  Finishing Line Press, and a full length book of poems, Transplant, FlowerSong Books  Her work has appeared in over thirty anthologies, journals, and other publications and one of her poems was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A work in progress:  A Parachute of Broken Things.

Evening News by Shirley Rickett

At the end of the news
comes the pictures
and bios too short
to mention a life
or even to say
he was here, she was here.

Proud or funny faces,
often a uniform,
sometimes not,
when grieving hands
can’t find that photo.
If you squint
you might see them
playing with a dog,

holding a baby,
perhaps at a graduation
a camera in hand,
or at a reunion
the glass of wine
a few inches from the lips.