AMusing Marilyn

Tag: poem

  • Florida Sunset

    sunset over the pacific

    This is not a Florida sunset; this photo was taken from a freighter in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I tried valiantly to capture more than one sunset as we headed SW toward New Zealand.

    So different from the one in the poem and from the one in this site’s banner. That “Pink Beauty” deserves a poem of her own. She was captured from our rooftop dining area of our rental in Comares, Spain, in May 2006.

    A spiritual man
asked for words
to tell of this night,
when He chose to
wipe the horizon
with hands oiled
in bright reds and
a touch of umber.

Nearby, a girl
wondered if her
battered camera
could get those
long, greasy,
red-fingered lines
scrawled across
the horizon.

Standing in silence
in the parking lot,
unaware of the other,
or of the woman
by the door,
with the brush
dripping red
by her side.

A bird's
thrilled call
broke the hush
and each turned away;
as if in unison
they knew the futility
of even trying to
capture this beauty.

    Republished in 2020 by Marilyn Paluszak. This poem was originally written after bearing witness to a spectacular sunset from a Walmart parking lot in July 2011.

  • Tree

    Silver shantung-like tree in a ruin at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

    Who could resist falling in love with this tree? I took this photo while viewing some of the temples in the Angkor Wat complex, Cambodia (2006). 

    This is a tree,
its limbs reaching high.
Once it flourished,
now it's doomed to die.

The buds sprouted early,
then the leaves -- red and orange
Brought color to the tree,
that mighty, solid, symbol of me.

Yes, symbol I say,
for I too stand
Quietly peeping
at that thing called Man.

My leaves fell away,
blew to distant lands.
There to be picked at
by unfamiliar hands.

I too stand naked
in the breezy night air.
Gazing at the stars above,
striving for the beauty
so far out of reach.

All gnarled and dry,
it heaves a mighty sigh.
We're one, that tree and I,
for both are doomed to die.

    Republished by Marilyn Paluszak in 2020 from my original poem written to accompany a college writing assignment in 1966.