Category Archives: poetry

Road Trip

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Five sandy-colored cranes saunter through
a front yard in Manchester, Michigan
A dead coyote stretches across a lane
on a highway in the Montana sun
A white shape – a giant plastic bag maybe? –
sits in lily pads on a pond – and then
it fluffs its wings and it’s a swan!
In front of us, something tawny skips across the road
and into a root beer forest – a white-tailed fawn!
“RESIST HATE” reads a bumper sticker in Wisconsin
“THERE WILL BE A WALL” reads a tee shirt in S. Dak
“CA DRMN” reads a license plate in Michigan
“WALL DRUGS” reads a billboard in Idaho’s outback
A rangy motorcycling tourist in leather, his skin
weathered by rain and wind, sleet, sun and snow,
speaks with a Dutch accent or maybe German,
in the Crazy Horse exhibit, and does he know
that an American tourist is watching him and
he’s part of the exhibit for her, and does she know
that she’s part of the exhibit for the folks from France?
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

Can I Take Your Picture?

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Can I Take Your Picture?

“Can I take your picture?” I ask the folks who sit
in a line of rocking chairs in front of a Cracker Barrel
store in Indiana. And they grin for me and I click.
“Can I take your picture?” I ask Joanna and Mitch
in the Anoka Independent Grain and Feed and they
give me broad midwestern smiles and I click.
“Can I take your picture?” I ask the international students
in front of Mount Rushmore and they quickly
line up in rows for me and beam and give me hope
for the world – maybe we’ll survive after all – and I click.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

Folks in front of the Cracker Barrel in Hammond, Indiana.
Mitch and Joanne
International students at Mount Rushmore.

 

The Window’s Open

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The window’s open and a cool breeze and old memories
waft through the screen. The smells of dry grass and flowers
take me back to my youth. The window’s open there, too,
as I lay in bed in my childhood bedroom. That day I planted
a pansy my mother gave me – folded its roots into the rich
earth next to the birch tree. There’s the little building Dad put
together in the back yard so he could work on his maps and art
away from the hustle and noise of the rec room with its TV
shouting out Bewitched and Mighty Mouse and Get Smart.
The fence between our neighbors behind us and our backyard
blew down in the hurricane a while ago – Dad had been out
there, trying to hold the fence in place, when Mom called him
in because the hurricane lamp flared up. As soon as he left
the fence it tore apart into pieces that whipped away in the storm
and now we have neighbors behind us who weren’t neighbors
until the fence blew away and revealed us to each other.
For a while we play in the dirt with the neighbor children
who live behind us. But we soon lose interest in each other.
Maybe our loyalties to the neighbors to the right and left
have built another kind of fence between the backyard neighbors
and us.

We played TV tag in the front yard – yelling out the names of our
favorite TV shows before the tagger could tag us. And we rode our
bikes to the school so we could see the class list posted on the front
door and find out who our teacher would be next year. Then we
played hide and seek in the mounds and the scotch-broom
in the empty lot across the street.

The patio has a picnic table on it and I sit at it with a Pixie Stick
or my home-made juice Popsicle frozen in a Tupperware mold.
I step on a clover blossom and get my first bee sting which Mom
soothes with baking soda and water and love. I feel bad for the bee
after she tells me it died when it stung me. We pray for the bee
and for me and life goes on. We have these pipes that Dad put
up in the backyard for us to play on – two vertical pipes about six
feet tall and about five feet apart – with a horizontal pipe
connecting them at the top – and I get it in my noggin to wrap
a scarf around it and try to work my way along the top pipe
by holding onto either end of the scarf. But I let go of one end
of the scarf and land on my belly and experience getting the wind
knocked out of me for the first time. Dad’s got the bamboo high
jump set up for me and I jump and jump again until the sun
goes down – testing myself, wanting to go just a little bit higher
before it’s time to go inside and get ready for bed.

And I lay in bed at night, with a cool breeze wafting through
my bedroom window and wonder what tomorrow will bring.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

Time to Step Up

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And now a poem…

Time to Step Up

All my life I have been politely
moving aside for other people.
When I was young I moved aside
for older people with more experience.
As I got older I moved aside for younger
people to GIVE them experience.
And now I’m 62 and I don’t have time
to move aside for other people anymore.
There are things I need to do.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

Thinking About Cables in the Head

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A show on the radio talked about cables
coming out of a brain in the same way
cables come out of a computer –
and prosthetic hands feeling touch
like Luke Skywalker testing out his new
hand in the Star Wars movie –
thoughts from the brain transferring
to the hand to move the prosthetic
fingers – and that night I woke up from
a dream about cables coming
out of a head – my sleeping self
trying to process brains and computers,
cables and touch and movement –
and technological improvement.

And I thought: If Consciousness is infinite –
fills all space – and if our bodies are just
the manifestations – the forms – of infinite
Consciousness – then why couldn’t a robot
be just another form – another expression,
idea and manifestation of Consciousness?
Why couldn’t a robot reflect Soul?
What makes human bodies any more Soul-
filled and Soul-reflecting than the form
of a metallic hand, a robot, or an earthworm?
I’m thinking Consciousness isn’t any more
housed in a brain and a flesh-body, than it is
in a robot body and a computer chip.

Yeah. This is the kind of stuff I think about
sometimes when I take myself on a mental trip.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [LOVE] for ever.”
– from Mary Baker Eddy’s interpretation of Psalm 23

Assurances

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Assurances
a shooting star
a blue butterfly
a golden sunrise
a paperclip
All is well
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

 

Frog Song

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The earth is alive! –
the air filled with the aroma
of blossoms and freshly-cut grass
and vibrating with frog song
The day’s tension eases from me
and I feel myself falling gently
into the soft mother’s arms of spring –
my thoughts opening up, blooming
with the joy of the evening.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

(Click here to hear tonight’s frog song in our backyard.)

Let’s Start Over…

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I just posted a poem that had lots of fun words in it
and some politics, too. I was pretty pleased with myself.
But then I read it again and asked myself, “Self,
is this helpful to the world in any way?” And myself
told me no, not really. So dang. Let’s start over…

What can I give to the world today that will be helpful?
I can bring patience when I’m in traffic on my way to work.
I can give a smile to my fellow travelers.
I can bring intelligence to my students and help them
learn a new concept in math or English or science
or social studies or art. I can be kind to my colleagues.
I can be honest. I can be joyful. I can share beauty.

There. That’s better.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

rainbow padilla bay 7 this one really

Boondoggle Chicanery Fricassee Frack

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boondoggle chicanery fricassee frack
we’re treating our planet like it’s mere bric-a-brac
brouhaha blunderbuss balderdash trump
are the politicos shrewd or just foolish chumps?
shenanigans skiddaddle kerfuffle flummoxed
some leave with stealth; some because they’re fuxed
cacophony kiester debacle folderol
the last thing we need is to build a wall.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

earth NASA

The Good You Seek

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The Good You Seek

I want to take a break, I said.
Can I step out of life for a moment,
or maybe stay in bed?
Can things go on without me?
Can you just pretend I’m not here?
For life is a messy business
and I’m tired and I’m weary
I’ve made too many mistakes to count today
And I’d like to not make anymore, not any.

And the still small voice reached into my thought
– gentle, peaceable benediction –
“All the good you seek and all that you’ve sought
you can claim right now – and that’s no fiction –
for Love is yours to express, to feel, and to be
– you are wealthy beyond description.
Nothing else matters, there’s no other power
no warring opinions, no need to cower
You are loved and you’re loving
and that’s all there is to it
Love’s loving child, and there’s nothing else
but loving, simply nothing.”
– Karen Molenaar Terrell, *A Poem Lives on My Windowsill*

A_Poem_Lives_On_My_W_Cover_for_Kindle