Fear wears a different face each day.
Sometimes it’s deadlines or bills to pay.
Sometimes it’s sickness or being alone.
Sometimes it comes by letter or phone.
Sometimes it comes on the six o’clock news.
Often it tells me how much I can lose.

The face of the fear is never the same.
But the fact is, the face is just part of the game.
For when I face not the face but the fear
I feel every frightening face disappear.
And once that I know it’s a game, I don’t run
And facing my fears is becomes part of the fun.

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 1988

I am a sailor.
You are a dancer.
We sail and we dance along.
I, to the beat of the thundering waves.
You, to the waves of your own heartstrings’ song.

Living to me is the life of the sea.
And the life that I live is just where I belong.
I steer by the stars and I rise with the sun
While you dance and you sing to your own heartstrings’ song.

I won’t ask you to wait.
You can’t ask me to change.
But I hope that our hearts will beat strong.
Mine, to the crash of the thundering waves.
Yours, to the time of your own heartstrings’ song.

For true love can be like a ship on the sea.
It can sail between loving hearts parted so long.
So I’ll steer by your passion, you’ll dance to my touch
And we’ll thrill to the tune of our own heartstrings’ song.

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 1993

Rolling over in bed on a hot summer night,
Feeling the ceiling fan caress my back with a gentle breeze,
And the delicious delight of coolness tickling my sweat-kissed skin,
I recognize the combined miracle of perspiration and evaporation
And wonder how anyone could doubt “Intelligent Design”.

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 2015

I saw some spiders on a wall
They did not see me there at all
Or else they would have run away
And I’d not have got to see them play

Yes, playing they were, or seemed to be
Upon the wall sat on by me.
Push-ups they did or dancing it was
But whatever it was, I kept watching because

Altogether as one
In a rhythmic bounce
And though each little one
Didn’t weigh quite an ounce

Together in motion
As one and alone
The tee-ninesy spiders
Were pushing the stone

And I saw as I sat there
That the spiders would win
For the wall made of stone
Would one day give in

And as I watched them work and play
Upon that wall of stone and clay
I knew that in a little bit
There’d be no wall on which to sit

I know you think this can’t be so
But I will tell you what I know:
If any creatures, great or small
Decide to topple down a wall

They only need to see it done
And unify themselves as one
Then work and live and laugh and play
And walls will tumble down one day

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 1988

Sometimes it’s fun
To sleep in our clothes.
We just slip off our stockings
And wiggle our toes.

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 1988

(for Tom and for Sr. Rose, who replaced Mrs. Rice)

I love to write
I love to sing
I love to dance
I love to swing
A bat that goes “craaack” when it hits a ball
I love the springtime
I love the fall

I love my birthday
I love my name
I love to laugh
I love a game
Of Clue with people who like to play
I love the nighttime
I love the day

I love my family
I love my friends
I love my lover
Who always sends
Me flowers and smiles
When he mows the lawn
I love to sneeze
I love to yawn

I love the sunrise
I love the set
I love the moon
I love to get
Snuggled in covers
When the nights get cold
I loved being young
I love getting old

Whenever I think
I’m not happy enough
I try to remember
The marvelous stuff
Like a beach or a rose
Or some simple thing
That makes me write
And makes me sing!

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 2007

Who but the wisest soul
Could convincingly portray the fool?

Who but the most loving heart
Would dare portray the hateful?

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 1981

The trick is to give
Without getting got.
To give what we want
And not what we ought.

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 1988

Mid-September
Cool and hot
Blue and not
Wishing things would change
Feeling life rearrange itself
Around the changing world
And me

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 1988

(From Three Nights of a Broken Heart)

My lover said goodbye on the phone.
I didn’t speak again – ever
So that my last words:  “I love you”
Would not be profaned.

**********

If they came today
And tore me limb from limb
It would hurt me no more
Than your silence.
It would, in fact,
Be a relief.

**********

I have moved you from the realm
Of reality to fantasy
Where you can break my heart
Without doing so much damage.

**********

Tears are how a broken heart bleeds
Sometimes I believe I will bleed to death through my tears
But the bleeding stops, for a while
And I’m fine, for a while…
Then something touches my mending heart
A flower, a poem, a memory
And I collapse in a pool of tear-blood
My eyes, two hemophiliacs, pouring out warm sorrow onto the floor.

©Patricia Rose Grigadean, 1996