MOIRA E. CROLEY - POEMS

Moira E. Croley is a poet and writer from the United States, who is currently living in Europe. She is a United States Veteran, and served in the United States Navy, Navy Reserve, Indiana Army National Guard, and US Army, in that order. She worked as an Aviation Structural Mechanic Hydraulics, Combat Medic, and Transportation Management Coordinator. After her retirement, she earned an Associate of Science Degree in Paralegal Studies from Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana in 2005, and a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from Purdue University in 2011 She spends her time running a writing workshop, writing poetry and fiction, attending and reading at poetry open mics, teaching English, and learning about European culture and society through experience, and meeting new people.

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Home
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​Flowers and fire lost in the thoughts of rainclouds
While of light we are blind to life
The world is standing on dying shores
Hands seek the way among mazes of darkness
In the aftermath of anthems laughter knows no language
Wishes of wisdom
 
The neurons of jasmine warm, sense
In the skin’s air no hand remains
The weakness to raise weapons of war for life is joy
The lines on the face of nations is not young or old,
Every Border holds the age of the moment
 
We cannot pick cherries from public trees
Yet we are a million blue lights on a hill
We see the Shores lost in unending reflections
In facing soldier mirrors we blind ourselves
Heroes who taste the bitter that is lost by infinite images
 
Life is worthwhile in walls
Where fledgling doves alight on the wings of winds
Anthems sung in shadows hone hatred
While wind blows among the snow shrouded Buddha’s burden
Tear down this wall
And build a new wall
 
It is the wind that breathes when bombs fall
When Rain thinks for the living
The synapse that fuels the flesh
Skin exposes the soul
Victory is whale songs sweet
 
On the hill summer’s early shade
Monuments contest the past
While debate lies in history
And mystery past and future
Eyes alight on the moment
 
What is written in ink
Draws the shape of being
There is no need for a needle
The written voice leaves us numb
On high alert among a million lights
 
Music flies in the face of ways to love
Its power sways with every note
Lyrics leave us open wounds
Melodies feed the nightshade of time
Nuance amplifies the oblivion
 
What comes can only be the sun
Paved in stones of monuments
History is etched in bones and fascia
Blood runs among all seas
Ends in soil that begins anew
 
Words left speechless
On breezes wiping out sound and song
Refrained in hearts and verse of who and how we love
Left alone to grow or die
Deter the final note to hope
 
 

Glossolalia
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​Painted random graces drawn
Splintered rain on faces, shadows
Grey evokes talismans, the oracles
Of forms of humans in stone on churches set in
 
Contemplation reminds us of a sucker punch
Our state when we saw the light, Seen 
by the blind, found Answers to lies 
In true graffiti silver
 
Tongues and blue face
Man in paint the untamed kiss
Sucker punched by a dove
Who alights when anger seeps from blood
 
Of the soul of the soil
There is nowhere left for home,
The striation of stone reveals in grains alone opaque 
That is nowhere is all that is home
 
Opaque stones laid in grids and onyx porous to rain
Our hearts keep beating, plugged in
Power is nothing more than a promised disconnect
And they keep coming where hope has run away, and homeless
 
Spaces where leaves hang on to the living trees in the wind twisted
Rattled, turns, pulled and pushed for the life of us lets go
The earth beneath the grid of opaque onyx path of stones,
Follow the sidewalks of Prague and still we don’t know
 
Roots and rain the blood of the soil
Bends and rises and falls going on
A sucker punch, they keep coming home
We have run out of room for hope
 
All we have are humans written in the falling of stone carved rains 
 

Seagull
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​Flies in the turbulent atmosphere
Beneath a radiant star
In air and memory
Particles of the past
Black rain
And infrasonic echoes
The gull climbs toward
A singular star
An eye bent toward inaudible sound
The sound the people below
On the pier
With their fish and chips
And malt vinegar and salt
Who cannot hear from the history
The vision of mushroom clouds
In war rooms
The water beneath
Black rain that rains
And rains
What makes water black
In the atmosphere of future children
Born in a contaminated cloud
Of napalm
And a picture burned on flesh
The flickering image twice removed
Knowing
Seagull sees
A graceful swoon dancing in the wind
And turns an eye
Wings shift
The body sways
And rises
And floats resting
A falling leaf
Dives
The wings spread
The seagull nears the sound
Final surrender
Draws the wings
Streamline the nose
Pierce the green water
Falling with the gray
It is raining Seagulls
 

Airedale ​

​In Broken seas severs the ever seamless,
Wind rings the bottles true

Strewn in surfs sands
Hourglasses winding waves smooth 

The pulse a Choir ringing shards 
You stand tall and are sweet warm earth

Were you held up by wings made of the broken wind?
Held only by the weightlessness of water in the cells of you

Did you hold on the tips of jagged translucent infant finger tips 
Shards traced in the shadowed veins of the palm of your hand

is the knowledge of the last sunrise seen by you, with last human eyes
Unrequited in the first cool red light born to be

The sun rays which began at dusk
and forever the coldness of morning’s red light,
 
Falling into a golden dark transcendent
Flutters felt in the womb among catacombs

The seed, rooted, curled and warmed in a day of light, 
Caught, rising stem, rolling curls leaves 

The wideness of blossoms found 
Set ablaze by sails, flung open singing,
Set to the rhythm of the eternal waters and winds dance
 
 

Chesapeake
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​For a moment I believed
I believed you
 
Believed the air, earth, sun and water are the world
the moment a magnolia blooms open
 
Water flows tributaries to a bay before oceans into hope transcends what
 begins and ends but not seen in my living and all  life now
 
First moment in true Spring pink, white, fascia cherry blossoms
Cold blue sky hangs above amber grasses
 
That in this fucked up world that is ending
There is something else
 
That thing that air, earth, sun and water has
When the thing beyond my own life
 
Gives me something of hope in it is what it is
I believed for a moment not knowing is the answer
 
To let it be is alright
For a moment I believed
 
The random Potomac, James, Susquehanna, Tappahannock, 
One saw me. Not the mirror picture reflection in water, though all I am is of water
 
That part of me inside that blooms shades pink,
 White, and shadows blue silver among grass gold earth streams mirror the sun
 
The magnolia petal touched one by one
In the light of sight
 
In the cool of water
In the warmth of earth
 
Sea grass fingers flutter gentle turbulent tides
Where rivers and bay Tangle salt and silt
 
In the flow of breath
I believed you wanted to know
 
Even though I knew you never could
I believed maybe
 
And took a step towards trust
To begin learning free freedom
Currents change and open: river, estuary, bay, oceans
 
That there is one place among cherry and magnolias, sea grass, seaweed, mollusks
One space beyond will, free will at its limits, and nothing else is only hope
 
I believed for a moment
The scales of being
 
Might measure what I am
The weight of love
 
All I know is I am love
 
 I believed you knew you are love
And for a moment because of you
 
I am the bloom of the sun
The food of bay and earth
 
Breathing alive
For a moment I believed
 
It’s alright forever