Jan 15, 2021Generation XWe were tie dyed and punked out, mohawk wearing swearing in Bad English, totally radical dudes carrying house keys in our hip pockets and settling down for toons after school. We were Swatch Watched rebels in class watching the Berlin wall come down. We were the United Colors of Benetton, prepped out and propped up with Aqua Net and lost in technicolor dreams. We just didn’t care except when we did. We were the world.Poetry1 min readPoetry1 min read
Jul 31, 2020The BalladIn your absence it is my companion a lover whose passion fills the room with electricity who has come home from a war ragged with raw instinct who wraps his arms around my waist and peers into my soul whose hands stroke my hair and who leans in to give a kiss on the forehead uttering the words “You’ll never be alone”. ~Melissa Carpenter www.treasureoftradition.comPoetry1 min readPoetry1 min read
Jul 8, 2020Emerald Isle at Sunsetnight falls on the sound --silence ~Melissa CarpenterPoetry1 min readPoetry1 min read
Jul 8, 2020Soliloquythe stars climb the dark night weaving their illumination into the trellis of the sky and I rooted to the earth like a rose blushed by the morning sun crawl toward the light then curl into myself at dusk away from the shadows that leave me exposed ~Melissa Carpenter treasureoftradition.comPoetry1 min readPoetry1 min read
Jun 13, 2020Good IntentionsIt was a hot day in early September, a day when the air stood heavy around the wide railed porch where Oliver Birch sat in his usual spot, a white spindle backed rocking chair with Irena, his wife of 51 years, beside him. …Short Story6 min readShort Story6 min read
Jun 13, 2020Soul MusicI’m told if your child listens to classical music he will know beauty as he grows and his mind will drift to heaven. This is what I want for you, my son. When you gaze into the sky one autumn evening and see the starlings climb above the horizon their…Poetry1 min readPoetry1 min read
May 9, 2020Young DreamsWhen I was young I dreamt of this place, of sweet evenings by the fire the father of our sons stoking the wood cracking under blue flames while I wrap them in hand-sewn quilts covering them in folds of generations who knew simple love distilled from the complexity of motherhood. We grow older together like maples wearing new foliage each season. Yet we remain a refuge for the birds who build their nests in spring and take leave each winter into the foreshortened sky only to return.Poetry1 min readPoetry1 min read
Apr 21, 2020Antique StoreA man behind the counter hides behind a leafy newspaper oblivious to our disposable world. Wandering across waxy wood floors the scent of old days and dust permeates our souls. On the back wall stand three cuckoo clocks, dark and lean with only the past to mark, mechanisms broken and hands stuck at once upon a…Poetry2 min readPoetry2 min read
Apr 6, 2020Potato HarvestThe paper blossoms with their amber eyes have withered; their bodies collapsed on their hills; their earthen wombs swollen and expectant planted by those with wisdom to sow. We wait until the sun leans westward then pull the brown vines from their hills shaking the small tubers from the roots; the larger ones…Poetry1 min readPoetry1 min read
Mar 26, 2020Winter at HomeIn the lead of winter bleak trees stand like forks in clotted cream about to fall from the weight on their branches. There is only darkness when we wake. Even the promise of the solstice doesn’t resurrect the feeling of hope we had last spring. It seems never to come and mired in our world without miracles we cannot see past the shadows that fall outside the windows. The world is a specter that sweeps past us without notice in a corridor filled with doors leading to nowhere but here. We are haunted by the silent snow that drifts against the door falling over the threshold when we try to leave.Poet1 min readPoet1 min read