I sit in my little cottage 

Surrounded by meager possessions 

And you reign in your high castle 

Surrounded by your golden pretties

Many times I feel the hungry mouth 

Devouring me bit by bit

While you gobble up 

The meanest of my wants and needs

You dressed in your whites and

Me digging through the dark 

Searching for a glimmer

Knowing full well that you own the sun

Sometimes a shadow that I chase blindly

Illuminates my way

But you take my shadows

And turn them to profits to sell back to me

My days are numbered by the hours of labor

My body must endure 

While you count the cost of my

Meanest drudge by the returns it brings

Janice Kuykendall

THOMAS HENRY

If I could hold a moment forever 

I’d hold your heart next to mine 

As I cradle you in my arms

Whispering my unending love 

I cry tears of grief so sharp

They take my breath away 

I relive moments lost forever 

Over and over in my mind 

I took for granted 

That time was kind 

But time stops for no one

And I lost you way too soon

I was wrapped up in every day things

Never thinking 

That you would leave so soon

Never guessing that time was my enemy

If I could hold a moment forever

I would give you the love

I so selfishly held back

Thinking there would be another day 

I miss you every day 

And for the rest of my life

I will regret the things

I could and should have done

Dear sweet one, I love you 

You will live on in my heart and memory forever.

Janice Kuykendall

DAYBREAK

The day is just beginning 

All soft and gray

My breath fogs the air 

The ground is hard 

The grass crunches beneath my feet 

The clouds hang low

Pulled like cotton candy 

Across the sky

Then I see it

Pearly pink and orange 

Just tipping the horizon 

Beginning to spread 

A watercolor sky at first 

Then golden shafts 

Spread like honey 

As the sun peeps over the horizon 

Painting the East in glorious hues

Then climbing higher 

It sets the sky ablaze 

In a riot of radiant color 

Janice Kuykendall

SECRETS

 

There is a tree in the park

                                                      It’s old and scarred

But, oh the stories it knows

Of secrets carved

In it’s grey, gnarled trunk

The shade beneath it’s bough 

Is cool and inviting 

The wind whispers softly 

Stop and rest awhile 

My shadow slips away 

As I sit in the sweet grass 

My fingers trace the old wounds 

Initials captured in a heart 

The words of love

The vows we made 

I imagine I hear the old tree sigh

I remember you 

Your secrets I know

Your secrets I keep 

Janice Kuykendall

Memory

Tonight I heard Hank Williams sing

“Cold, Cold Heart” 

and a blip in time

slipped through 

and made me cry

a little girl in a bar

listening to the jukebox 

with her smiling daddy

And it broke my heart 

to remember that daddy 

and that little girl

A memory as thin

as a gossamer curtain

haunts me still

when I hear Hank sing

And my daddy carries me back 

through the years

to that lonely little girl

wishing I could have seen

how it would break my heart 

and forever leave me lonely

Janice Kuykendall  

12/02/18

AT THE TOP

AT THE TOP

It's lonely at the top

The only ones who managed to hang on

rode with spurs dug in

I was too kind for spurs

I took the longer, gentler slope

While others rode straight up

But the uppermost top

was a slippery slope

and only the ones with claws

could hang on

and I was to timid for claws.

Janice Kuykendall

Morning!

Morning

The orange and yellow hues of morning sunrise
The sweet rubs and purring of my ginger cat
The smell of dark, rich coffee brewing
The ticking of the old clock on the wall
The soft whirr of the refrigerator
The strange absence of traffic noise
The scratching of my pencil on paper
The calling caw of a single bird
The morning air, cool and fresh on my cheek
These things start my new day

                             Janice Kuykendall March 2016