Poetry: Selections from Frea Wooten

That Futile Thunder Echoes

Living years in the mountains 
have been like crashing waves 
trying to expand
 
That futile thunder echoes 
again and again 
The rippling water is tussled
 
Dusty fragments fall with each push
giving a hint of possible surrender
 
It’s a useless combat though,
the death 
going on inside of its body
 
The ammo; an unyielding homily 
to hold its chaos between the cliffs
 
Disturbance flows deep red 
Boiling like a bitter toxin in a pot
 
Yet, the battle continues
The only victor is the eyes 
which blindly witness such a storm
 
How it slowly tears down the rock
until the cliffs collapse, or the water 
stills
 
and the war zone goes quiet
because there’s no way out 
when the radiant sky and bottom
of the canyon are so far apart
 
the flipping wave becomes a divider
between the elevation and the shallows
It’s how anxiety manages to linger
flooding the bone, thriving in the marrow and hammering the lungs
Stone barriers control the body
as it gets battered by efforts 
drawn from hope
 
That futile thunder echoes
Again and again
The rippling water is tussled



Echoes that Never Cease

Life used to be more than anxieties.
I wish I could rewind time, just go back
 
They say that history repeats itself.
People claim, nothing’s new beneath the sun.
 
Nothing is new. Not love, crime, death, or pain.
Not rainbows that dive behind clouds and haze
 
Not even upside down rain can be made fresh.
It just waits somewhere in folds of twilight
 
I’ve read oaths to balloons in poetry
And lived long enough to watch things replay
 
I’ve witnessed senseless shootings and wildfires
They spread out like plagues and just kept coming
 
I hear talk about wars, even zombies
Said to be products of a lost nations
 
I hear and see stranger things by the day
Like weather claiming life across the world
 
No wonder we live more like caged birds now
Society crumbles more as it breaths
 
I recall when Mother left doors open
Her biggest concern was ironing shirts
 
I would disappear into neighborhoods
Rode my bike for hours with no worries
 
I wish only the good things repeated
Not the things that break us into pieces
 
But rainbows will dive behind clouds and haze
Doors will lock and history will replay
 
I keep thirsting for inspiration too
Not things borrowed, or blue as if that’s luck
 
I sit on my deck repeating this too,
Life used to be more than anxieties…





Frea Wooten is an Appallachian writer living in the Virginia mountains. Nature and every day living inspires her work.

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