Susan Black Allen Poems
My Wild Winged Heart
I am less afraid of jumping out of a plane
than I am of falling in love.
I have done latter several times.
The former, only once.
Both are exhilarating free falls,
spiraling descents.
Adrenaline, endorphins -
sanity bent.
A skydiving accident,
however rare,
will likely kill you.
But sudden death seems more appealing
than my co-pilot ditching and disabling the plane.
Or messy missions repeatedly aborted mid-ascent.
There’s less potential wreckage
when you simply jump.
But then again,
I am Phoenix,
shiny with silvery ashes.
If I can grow new wings,
there’s still hope
for my heart.
Balls Will Be Lost
I have a dog that will chase
ball, after ball, after ball.
She will run herself into the ground.
It’s fun to watch.
Even more fun to inflict,
since she’s usually the one
running me into the ground.
Sharp, insistent, Why-the-heck
are you barking?
Dawn and dusk
enough already zoomies.
At the park, love is tossed
with a chaser of revenge.
Then a ball goes over the fence
into the thick brambles.
She looks at me
confused, expectant.
Not one to disappoint,
I climb along a steep slope through prickly brambles in platform sandals.
Common sense,
apparently,
is easily lost, too.
Love Remains
After everything is gone, love remains.
Love lives in the air that you once exhaled.
It grows in the grass you danced across.
It hides behind downcast eyes and glows in laughing ones.
Love flows like water from the tap filling and overflowing,
forming rivulets that quench dry, thirsty places.
Places where fire has left sleeping seeds awaiting your touch.
Love flutters like Monarchs that somehow know
where their delicate, determined wings must go.
That which once lived in you, now lives in me.
It breathes life into everyone who chooses to notice.
Like Roses
Like Roses
I embrace you.
All of you.
Your soft and tender places.
The ones you bury, deep and dark.
Your glassy shards and cactus thorns.
I gather them into my arms like roses.
And we bleed together
Until the bleeding stops.
​
—Susan Black Allen
previously published in the
2020-2021 San Diego Annual Poetry Anthology
A Whole New Story Line
Enter stage left,
Handsome blue-eyed, bearded cartoonist.
What will you be to me:
A paragraph or two?
An explanatory, exploratory footnote?
I’m rooting for a whole new story line.
Cue dashes of the divine.
Where will our pencils take us?
Will our lines intertwine?
Continue to mesh and bless us over time?
My pencil is sharpened and ready.
The paper is fresh and white.
I’ve used a lot of erasers lately.
Let it be write.