SUCCESS

Numbers increasing in size on
white paper inside my
bank book:
your name and title engraved in gold on
the plaque on your
office door;
your BMW parked for show on
the driveway of your
oversized house for your
undersized family;
last years fashions sent to the
goodwill as my closet fills up
with the newest fashions;
consuming whatever novelty is in at
the time;
the cruses, the flights to paradise,
the weekend get-a-ways;
the envy of others:
Is success really what we have
or wear or show or is
success not more than a
Western Philosophy?

© Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck

GHOST HAND

Find a cardboard box -
line it with all the cards and
letters of our romance.
Stack up the photographs that mime
butterfly wings in your
mind -
cover them all with the nick-knacks you
received from my hand - the hand
you once held - the same
hand that rested on your heart -
that needed to feel your life beat through -
that hand is now a ghost hand -
it is time to place the
ghost hand in the box with
all it touched -
time to seal and store
the box -
time to store the box
away.

© Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck

LOVE'S RESUSCITATION

Love - the soft sweet scented glue that bonds
Love - the arms that securely hold through
hard to swallow and stomach
churning times
Love - the hands that reach out and never
stop giving like incoming ocean waves
Love - the emotion that plants joy and grows smiles
Love - the lace of poetry
the soul of songs
the heartbeat of life
Love - the glue that bonds is seldom pasted to
newspaper pages
Love is good news and bad news sells
But Love makes a profit:
Love is CPR -
an everlasting resuscitation from all
that tries to kill

© Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck