Three Poems by Jean P. Moore: Up on Church Road, Amber Eyes, In the garden of the biblioteca where I last saw you

Three Poems
by Jean P. Moore

Up on Church Road

Up on the hill by the church
lie the bones of soldiers.
Old or new they are eternity’s bones
paying the price for the tyranny and greed
of those who in life they believed.
Old bones or new mingling with tears
some long dry and turned to dust
others freshly placed.
Today is the Fourth of July.
We on Jerusalem Road
wait for fireworks.
Instead, encircling us
is the sparkle of fireflies
a barrage of light, like stars,
heaven come to earth
nothing else in sight
just the shimmer of these wild things
who know the tyranny of time
whose only greed is for life.

Amber Eyes

Who could resist those amber eyes?
In spite of the chromosomal divide,
he speaks to me, soothsaying
his message of accommodation. Let me sleep before
your fire, eat your scraps, and I will be there
when you are left, comfort you in grief, warm you
in the cold and keep harm from your door.

This was the pact made long ago before he
began to prowl among the appliances

In the garden of the biblioteca where I last saw you

Zapata with a black telephone and
a computer sat at the stone table
trying to make a connection.

Walt Whitman stood by him
putting his images
into a plastic bag

while nearby Lorca
with notebook and pen searched
for words to make it right.

A sailor looked up to the
mountains, shielding his
eyes from the sun,

and a young girl ran among the
columns playing hide and seek
alone.

Water bubbled up from the
fountain in the center of
the courtyard.

Two Americans sat drinking
water from plastic bottles,
escaping from the heat.

The bougainvillea goes unnoticed
while the juniper by the door
leans toward the light.

The courtyard fountain
whispers
your name.

Jean P.Moore’s work (poetry, fiction, and non-fiction) has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals such as upstreet, Distillery, Skirt, Long Island Woman, and the Hartford Courant. Several online journals including her fiction and non-fiction are Slow Trains and Persimmon Tree. Three of her poems can be found in 21st Century Women’s Voices, 2013, a publication of the Greenwich Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. Her novel, Water on the Moon, will be published by She Writes Press in June 2014 .

Copyright 2014, © Jean P.Moore. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.