Tag Archives: free verse

day 226

Dog Days of Summer a la Gabby
dog days

a few months from now
I’ll be thinking of summer
these long hot days…and spring,
the warmth that it brings

when the trees are stripped bare
I’ll be longing for green, with dreams
of cool rain, and flower dense plains

from beneath woolen layers
of long-johns and sweaters
I’ll peer out my window to bleak,
with little to do but drift off to sleep

the heat swelt of summer
is making me wonder when
this fierce inferno will end…

come brief autumn respite,
though lovely you’ll exit
too soon for my liking
for now temps are spiking

I shouldn’t complain
there’s nothing to gain
by wishing away
these hot humid days

with hummingbirds chirping
and spring babies growing
the Tom’s, Jennie’s, deer and the crows

though summer drags on
winter, likewise will tarry
each extreme has its cons and its pros

I would miss each one’s splendor
might as well just surrender
to sweat and to shiver
with grace through it all

~kat

The summer heat has been exhausting. I sometimes wonder if it is my advancing age which makes me less tolerant, but I have never been a summer girl. Give me a cool dark corner, a fan and a good book and I am quite content to wile the hours away until dusk comes with a blessed relief to the heat of the sun. 

Contrarily, in winter after the first snow, hopefully on a weekend when I have nowhere to go and can view the wonderland through the window…I’m not a real fan of long winters either. 

I prefer the in between seasons. But it occurs to me as I get older that wishing away one extreme season for the other is actually wishing precious time away.

How many seasons more do I have? Definitely less than I have drudged through up to now. It has caused me to have a new appreciation for the wonders of each, however small. With little time to spare I am determined to savor every moment. But can I at least say…it is a blasted inferno out there!!! Followed by a deeply felt uggghhhh!?!!!!

Summer and I have moved on in our love-hate relationship to a mutual place of respect I think. I promise to stop saying I hate summer, and summer for its part will do its best not to give me heat stroke…at least that’s my spin on our negotiation. 

Much love, peace, and cool glimmers to you. 

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


day 221

accountability 

they spit this word
at wide-eyed apertures
to the invisible throngs
of loyal lemmings
as if words matter

like thoughts and prayers
mumbled post mass-slaughter,
canned comfort facilitating
a contemptible exit,
accountability averted…

for, or as penance,
it rolls off the tongue
like salty retch
but their putrid hot
breath, reeking of bile,
reveals their vapid souls

accountable to none
impossible to hold
to or for while stripping
away autonomy
tipping liberty’s scales
drawing lines in the sand
encroaching decency
rendering those seeking
to hold them accountable
voiceless, vulnerable, voteless…

accountability is just a word

~kat

I had written this yesterday morning, tweaking it a bit, but had not managed to get photos of the most wonderful glimmers…a half dozen or so young turkeys running circles around the deer and older turkeys in my yard at the woods edge…and the emergence of an old friend…a lame doe who has wandered through for several years now, with a fawn in tow. There was also a glimmer from my youngest…a few actual snapshots of her youngest heading off to preschool!

All fine glimmers. All much needed glimmers on a foreboding day of unsettling events…our leader announcing Marshall law in essence in the capital city over a trumped up declaration of urgency employing a fantastical skewing of the facts. He is dictator itching to deploy troops to a city, a state, the country to terrorize the people into submission. I am late to posting, not because I ran out of daylight this time, but because I needed time and a few winks to make sense of it all.

There were such wonderful glimmers presenting themselves to me. They drew me in and held me…searing a memory into me that perhaps was not meant to be captured by a photograph. The young turkeys who I had feared gone, lost to predators, seem to be alive and well, full of life and joyful mischief. I hope you can imagine it. It was a delightful sight to see. And then my dear tripod doe with fawn in tow…hope, joy, resilience…relaying just a few messages, very much needed messages, to snap me back from the edge.

To witness the stunning unraveling of this country at the hands of a madman and his growing army of miscreants, with seemingly no end in sight and no one to stop them, feels like a nightmare…if only it was just a nightmare. Destruction amidst a growing number of people going through the motions of normal, working, playing, shopping, laughing feels a little crazy. It is a little crazy.

While I will have fond memories only (and no photos to burn up memory on my phone) of the visitors to my peaceful oasis…the turkey teens and the doe and her fawn, there were photos captured of my youngest grandson, full of joy, excitement and life! I’ll leave you with a glimpse of those here as a reminder. This is why we can’t give up trying…why we can’t stop fighting for justice.

First Day

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you.

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


day 209

lightening in the distance ~kat
death of an experiment

so this is what it feels like to exist
at a time of history repeating,
to wonder who they will come for
next; to resist hate in a world
where kindness and compassion
are revolutionary acts, where caring
is a liability, where the words on
my cell phone are an indictment,
where it’s just a matter of time
before they find me out…well…
I’m not hiding…like mercury colliding…
I refuse to blend into oblivion
with those who sleep through this
nightmare while innocents suffer…
I read today, the bees are dying
someone should do something, but
the inconvenient truth of the matter
is, someone is me, and I don’t know
what to do, except to shine a light,
to tell you, to tell anyone who’ll listen,
the bees are dying…because
I think you should know

~kat

Today’s poem speaks for itself.  That said, I present to you today’s glimmer…literally, lightning in the distance and the sounds of midsummer nights in the foothills of Bramlett Mountain. Even while the world sleeps, the forest sings, for the trees perhaps? Another lesson to consider from these woods that I call home. 

much love, peace, and glimmers to you. 

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨

Night sounds on Bramlett Mountain ~kat

day 204

switching to survival mode

I know how to survive, how to
stretch a few leftovers into more
how to add water to milk
to make it last one day longer…
when I was a girl my family lived
in a motel with a kidney-shaped pool
a few steps away from the interstate,
from an underpass where others lived,
who weren’t as fortunate as we
I know where to find pennies,
enough buy fast food dollar meals,
how to barter for groceries,
taking care of someone else’s kid
so mine could eat, how to resurrect
hand-me downs to clothe us, sewing
squares of well-worn fabric into colorful
quilts to brighten our space, oh I know…

someone told me the other day,
you’ve done a lot of things in your life…
I have, I smiled…I wanted to say
it’s called survival, but only other
survivors understand that you do
the jobs no one else will do, building
experience and skills to gain
a few more pennies, moving from job
to job, several at a time, as time
sifts through your life like sand.
i can make do and make work
the crumbs and scraps of life,
things others toss in the trash
keeping us just shy of enough…
it’s been decades now…decades…

I still keep a jar of spare change
always at the ready just in case,
I hunt for bogo sales at the market
stocking my pantry with one extra
I keep clothes patched and useful
long after they’ve gone out of style
and yet…and yet
I wake each morning grateful for the sun
and the rain, and this blessed life,
my greatest accomplishments are
my children and their children and theirs

they say the tariffs will raise the cost
of living for those of us who pay to live…I’m ready, though I wish we didn’t
need to be…I know how to survive
in the best and the worst of times.
as long as i can keep a pot of soup
simmering, there will always be
plenty enough to share and room for one,
or two, or a few more at my table
this is how we survive…together

much love, light, and glimmers to you…

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨

day 169 ~ happy solstice

Mid-summer’s Eve in the Bramlett Mountain Foothills ~ Photo by Kat Myrman 2025
fantastical indulgences 
on a mid-summer night

if I never filled another
feeder with sunflower seeds,
millet, fruit and wheat berries,
if I never broke bits of bread
tossing them into the back yard
for the crows…or laid peanuts
on the edge of the covered porch
deck for squirrels to snatch …
if I never scattered feed corn for
the deer and wild turkeys who
meander by each day at dawn
and dusk, or never dissolved
white sugar in warm water
for the hummingbird jars
hanging just outside my window…

the birds on this acre
on the edge of the woods
would still go to sleep
bellies plump and satiated,
the crows would have plenty
to feast on…nuts, insects, eggs,
and even carrion, the squirrels
would happily gather hickory nuts,
grains, berries and seeds,
the deer would munch on
juniper berries and graze on
clover with the rabbits, the turkeys
would busy themselves plucking
grubs and mites from the red dust,
and seeds from the soil, and the
hummingbirds would sip sweet
nectar from flower cups alongside
the butterflies and honeybees

these gentle friends don’t need me
life will go on when I am gone,
but oh, how I’d miss the little
community we’ve built, a utopia
based on kindness and respect
in this shared green space
that we all call home sweet home…
and I’d like to imagine that they
would miss me and my rambling
one-sided conversations too.
I wonder if they’d miss the
moments that we share space
and breath and eye contact
wrapped in grace and trust…
I like to imagine that they would

~much love, peace and glimmers to you!

✨✨✨💚kat💚✨✨✨

Today’s lovely glimmers…