CYNTHIA PITMAN - POEMS

Cynthia Pitman, a retired English teacher, has been published in Scarlet Leaf, Literary Yard Ariel Chart, Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine, Pain and Renewal Anthology, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem Contest finalist), Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Arts (Pushcart Prize nominee, 2019), Amethyst Review, Ariel Chart, Ekphrastic Review, Adelaide Literary Review, Right Hand Pointing, Dual Coast Magazine, Red Fez (Story of the Week) and others. Her first poetry collection, The White Room, was published in 2020).

Raindrops
​

​Just as the silicon in the sand
sparkles in the sun
as it swirls in a desert dust storm,
so the raindrops sparkle
as they filter through the lamplight
reflected in the windowpane.
These raindrops,
these tiny falling stars,
urge me to make tiny wishes.
Just tiny wishes –
not life-changing pleas,
not cosmic entreaties,
not immense proposals.
Just tiny wishes –
the sound of a whispered dream,
the taste of carnal ambrosia,
the touch of a butterfly wing
powdered with velvet color –
tiny wishes that will flutter
with the wind
to the sparkling raindrops,
the tiny falling stars,
then shower down again
where I wait for them
to never come true.

 

Pareidolia: The Filtered Truth
​

​Open your eyes, but not too wide.
Let your eyelashes lushly fall
and form a filter.
Look through them at the trees,
whose leaves block all
but occasional blue chips
of the crowning bright sky.
If your eyes blur, a vision will emerge:
faces and traces of long-gone dreams
hiding in the leaves.
But blur your eyes further,
perhaps with your tears;
another pattern appears.
The tree leaves
shrink into the background
and become solid black,
and here and there
a shard of the sky shines through –
the pattern now a darkened sky
with bursts of sun-stars in shapes and sizes
that swallow the known
and reveal the unknown.
Hold this vision,
this other-worldly view.
Soon, too soon, this other-world
will unblur and break.
The darkened sky will fade
and focus back into green leaves
on trees below the sky –
a sky once again blue and bright.
The known patterns we call the real
will again conceal the unknown patterns
that reveal the truth.

The Secret
​

​She holds her secret to her chest,
as if it were her infant child.
Only this secret can hear her heartbeat,
burrowed as it is between her breasts,
her arms curled around it, tight.
She longs to stretch her arms,
reach high, spread the sky,
and touch the angels’ feathered wings.
She aches to have her breasts breathe free,
to have her heart beat unbound.
But the secret cannot be loosed
lest it be lost, allowing the world
to hear the sound of her heart
as it weeps and falls to the ground.

The Silver Urn
​

​Inside this run-down house
we call our home
hides a sterling silver urn.
Seen or unseen, it casts its lethal spell
on all Innocence that enters here.
Breathing an ominous chill,
its malice weaves through the rooms,
embracing all Innocence.
This circling stealth malice makes it clear:
there is no escape.
Innocence,
held by the spell of the silver urn,
will soon wither and diminish
into nothing.

A Scenic View: Zoom In
​

​First, the bucolic scene:
a bungalow
wrapped in bougainvillea.
Next, the shadowed sanctuary:
dark corners
trembling with fear.
Then the whistle of the teakettle:        
brittle air breaking,
shards carving flesh.
Finally, the hearth of the fire:
ashes,
dust.