Pink Caladium-Watercolor © by Marilyn Peretti

Lichen

Lichen slides
across this branch
like skin, thin blue waves
of dry watery ripples,

fragile dimples sleeping
over scaley bark
for years and years,
so subtle I pass it by,

so bold it creeps along
where nothing else will grow,
blanketing a hard cold stone,
or carressing deep crevices

of the cottonwood, glazing
the trunk in crinkeld silk,
ocean’s greens and blues
far from the sea.

Buckeyes, watercolor by Marilyn Peretti

Second Inauguration

Their coats vivid cerise and hyacinth
shown like flowers in the winter cold.
Second Inauguration Day. Two slender girls
with perfectly presidential parents.

I caught them on screen in early morning
entering the small yellow church, St. John’s,
the place to set the pace of blessing
for the gift of leading a unique nation
across the next four years,
writing history with every step.

Pomegranates, watercolor by Marilyn Peretti

Dark Moaning

And now December
After changing the clock
This deep gray sky
This dark moaning day
This cold wind and threat

From which will come
the light
From which will come
the music
From which will come
the hope

Houses in Haiti

After walls shook to cracks
or fell in heaps,
blue plastic tent-towns
bloomed in open fields.

Who has now decided
tents should vanish,
“temporary homes” revert
to scarred land or naked hillsides?

Home calls them in their sleep.
A perilous walk takes them
back to those familiar walls,
still askew, plaster crumbling.

How can they bear this risk?
Who will brace the doorframe,
secure the roof? Who cares enough
to save their battered souls?

________
From book “To Remember, To Hope”
2012 Blurb.com Bookstore