Moriah LaChapell – Two poems

Moriah LaChapell is an editor at The Blue Hour an online magazine and small press publisher.  Her writing has appeared in Front Porch Review, Vox Poetica and other online and print poetry Anthologies. She lives in Oregon with her daughter and husband.  She writes occasionally at moriahlachapell.wordpress.com

Puppets

My daughter plays with her shadow,
her hands flutter in the air like dove’s wings.
Making light of darkness and darkness light.
Until she falls asleep with the images of butterflies
and little birds in her sweet silvery dreams.

Long ago I stopped playing with shadow
because darkness was defined in sermons.
Men and women were partitioned to saint or sinner.
As the little bearded man preached his fervor.

Back we move as Mothers, to simpler times
and carry children like eggs in our aprons,
fearful to slip and crack their consciousness.
By trusting men with messages of hate
disguised in the clothes of God’s love.

Liriodendron

During dwindling days of summer,
yellow leaves fall from tulip trees
outside a window like Chanel scarves
fluttering in warm, dry wind.
It is the tree from which canoes are made
and some days, I’d like to drift away.
A dying server hums in this old mobile home.
My work desk is made of cheap laminate,
but the garden is outside is beautiful.
Walking over gravel or driving lonely dirt roads
passes time before summer quickly closes
the white, wood framed windows.