Russian Dolls
My dear matryoshka,
Your flowery sarafan exposed
Split from your psyche
All lined up in a row
Like layers of a piquant bulb
Peeled away from its pungent soul.
A secret within a secret
Inside a regret we try to forget;
Like a net inside a fish, inside a net.
Yet, the infant inside our core won’t let
My babushka rest and keep closed
Little matron’s bones nested
Inside my tiny closet.
Narcissus
Gazing narcissists cannot resist,
Admiring the two-faced affections
Of their own rippling reflections,
While drinking from vernal pools
Whirling with whispering echoes
Of loved ones eternally disdained.
Lingering in lonesome glades,
Hanging our huddled heads in shame,
Life lessons we must learn again –
Vanity, humanity and mortality
Are facets of reality testing our will;
We are all fragile daffodils, straining
To raise our dainty coronas to the Sun.
Thinly-fleshed tepals frayed and bruised
From pollen grains and drops of dew,
Stifling our triumphant trumpets that once blew.
Some bells will crumple and fold
With the weight of the turbulent world,
Dully clanging as the death knell tolls.
Alas, when the reaper’s book is closed
And town criers have stopped taking score,
The hunters who survive the spring mist,
Will sound their enduring chimes one more.
Briar Moon is LGBTQ+ poet who lives in New Hampshire with an adoring spouse, two cats and a miniature poodle. Briar is a former award-winning journalist with the New England Press Association and defense/aerospace quality engineer.
The Literary Forest Poetry Magazine 