July 6, 2018

Three Poems by Donna Monday: "Pools of Blood, Oozing", "My Winter Star" and "Daffodils in the Moonlight"

Donna Monday, a native of Greenfield, IN, is a Hanover College graduate, a former teacher, a former newspaper editor, and a retired car salesperson. In 2017 she helped create the first ever “Step-on-Us Sidewalk Poetry Contest” in Zionsville. She is the mother of two and grandmother of six and, in addition to writing poetry, occasionally pens a column for the Zionsville Current. She is a past recipient of the prestigious “Town Crier Award,” presented by the Greater Zionsville Chamber of Commerce. She is the author of Dancing in the Alley, and was published in Diamonds, an anthology of the Poetry Society of Indiana. She took second place in the Riley Days Festival Spoken Poetry Contest in Greenfield.






Pools of Blood, Oozing…

"I hope that nigger dies,"
She said when the bulletin
Came across the TV screen.
Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot.

I just looked at her.
There were no words.
Then came the update.
He was dead.

"Hope you are happy,"
I spat at her and ran upstairs,
Where I threw myself
Face-down on the bed.

I didn't cry.
Cry is not the word.
I sobbed and I sobbed
And sobbed.
I sobbed until the bed shook
And the sheets were wet.

I had given birth
Just two weeks before,
And the wet sheets
Were like a woman's water
Had broken
And it had,
From deep inside me.

How dare he die?
He wasn't the only one
With a dream.
His dream was contagious.
I had it.

So did my baby boy.
He'd caught it in utero.
He'd heard the songs, the marches,
The speeches.
From inside my body
He'd witnessed it all.

We all had the dream.

And that dream took a bullet
On April 4, 1968.

It took another on June 6, 1968.

One more pool of blood oozing,
One more dream defusing.

And look at us.
50 years--
Pools of blood
Here, there and everywhere.

Oozing,
Defusing,
The dream,
The dreamers.




My Winter Star

Every year it doth appear
In the December sky.
No, not in Bethlehem;
It's where I am,
On Cooper Road,
On the fringe
Of suburbia,
And hangs
Below the moon,
Above the cornfields.

It has no stable.
But there's a barn.
And every year
The farmer
Makes his way
Up some high ladder,
Cherry picker,
Or some sort of
Sky climber
To attach the star,
To reign
Over the fields,
And me.

Me and my lowly
Taurus,
My old
High-mileage Taurus,
Sort of the mechanized donkey
Of Cooper Road.
Wending our way
Between the neons
Of here and there,
Hoping to come
Someday,
Somewhere,
Upon the Christ child
Waiting there,
Between the city
And the suburbs,
The malls
And the barns,
Past the star
That some sweet farmer
Was kind enough,
Strong enough,
Faithful enough
To hang
In the winter sky.




Daffodils in the Moonlight

Daffodils
In the moonlight,
How different
Than at noon,

Noon time finds them
Gathered "round a blue gazing ball,
Nodding at one another,
Like bridesmaids
At a garden party,
Nodding and chatting,
Chatting and nodding,
Waiting for the bride.

Night falls.
The moon erupts,
Showering beams,
Like April rain,
A sweet soft pelting,
On their fragile heads.

The party is over.
The bride has left.
The daffodils stand silent,
No longer nodding,
No longer chatting.

Standing sentinel,
Quiet,
Alert,
Alert as a yellow flower
In springtime,
Can be.

Nobody's warrior,
Everybody's fool.
A fool for love,
A daffodil in the moonlight.




Donna Monday



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