The Poetry: These Lyrics of Love and Pain

Here, the poems of Mildred Michelle Barlow-Espree gather like pages in a beloved journal a quiet place to linger with language, memory, and song. Each piece waits to be discovered, carrying its own small music of the heart.

Grappling Lines

Let your curiosity choose the path: click a title to be carried straight to that poem, or simply wander and read as the spirit leads you.

Restoration Song
Living in My Here and Now
Dubious Thoughts About Choices
A Prayer for Wellness
Bare Perhaps: -A Meditation on Isaiah 1:33
PENANCE: October 30

Restoration Song

by Mildred Espree

Curious and open

on an evening near dusk,

I am Homed.

Closing my eyes to rest them, 

— this mere fluttering heart,

breathing in the rhythm,

My tongue and lips moved in tandem

And beat softly

As I began to play,

In prayer.

My East Top harp trilled with Daddy’s.

ancient songs, as I breathed in and out,

October chords were learned by ear.

Like him.

As I sensed my ribs release their air, 

There was no strain.

I forced my chest wall,

toward my heart scars,

Then exhaled outward 

toward the trees —

This time it was a wind song

blowing backward

into my Soul —

Alluring music, sentient,

whose harmonies and lyrics

My father learned from his.

among these same towering and

Luxuriant

East Texas pines,

at the Christian church

on Moss Hill in Woodville —

where reunions around

These winter trees rang with

gospel and country songs

whose pealing and chiming

were refashioned…

Now Melodic, these

ancient notes —

whose long-enslaved masters

Exported across time 

in the whispering breeze —

were Faithful,

loyal, and pliant, 

like willow trees,

their high and low sounds 

interposed beauty and courage

while syllables spoke out

Forcefully, with

Newer meanings.

I adjusted my head and heart

To the strain and joy in my songs.

Releasing brokenness.

As my freshest songs ended, 

I shed tears for early losses.

All mine.

For my sentient self,

formed through collisions.

It was never an accident.

Instead, God’s plan. 

This novel peace and pride

In me, my spirit and body, 

Where new roots grew,

Healed,

unburdened in Being.

Where never again to forget my trees,

Knowing my songs were always safe within this crown—

Always wholly mine.

My eyes opened again in the dusky dim,

Wizen.

I stared at the clouded

moonbeams,

and saw my reflection

in the still pools of rainwater

Near the graveyard.

From this profound, perpetuity

I appeared—

elusive and graceful. catholic,

no more a fragment —

but this small, penitent

Offspring of God.

Living in My Here and Now

By Mildred Espree

(in loving memory of Eunice Vitalee Delahoussaye Barlow — my Momma)

When summers came in my life, I became a body surfer,

a child of the Gulf of Mexico. Along the southeast Texas coast,

I slid parallel across the shallows on thin, wooden boards.

toward breaking chiclet waves, transparent on

That Surfside Beach —which I once traced

Like the blue-green veins on my aging father’s arms.

About a quarter mile out, I moved into the tempest,

the bar itself, then beyond it, only to plummet upward

over the rising waves and into

deep waters, bracing myself for my feckless

Return. I swam back to the sand bars — these small,

ocean isles that were also a warning — the edge of safety.

Then, I sailed into the high water as it folded into the shore.

There was a tumbling, roughhouse, rest and play,

in waves, bringing me home before sweltering

backward into that ocean so slashed and raw,

like my back on this full-day ruse, where the sun

Imprinted me.

It hurt as I slept and dreamed…

Night long, its waves were my cradle.

I heard them say, “Surfside is dangerous for undertows.”

After 10 years in the ocean, I never met one.

My mother quit coming to the beach because of it.

She said I was not afraid of anything, not even dying.

She had seen hurricanes and losses—

The family drowned and there were no more.

I did not understand. Nor would she,

except that she loved me.

As I peer backward now. I see that petite,

caramel lady in beige with her summer hat,

her dark hair folding down her back

In deeper waves than my ocean.

A 17, I did not realize she was my ocean,

my truer H2O.

When I was 41, my Momma died.

I felt her loss as a raw, full-body burn.

Worse than anything I had lived,

yet more than a flesh wound.

I cried for years. I could not

Weep that day.

Today, I am living in my moments.

Moving toward acceptance of waves,

Once willfully rejecting death,

now willing to embrace this frail body and remember.

The people, mine, who lived

near those waters on the

The mouth of that same Gulf.

Fully aware of what I must also leavebehind,

must keep—what can I take with me.

I long for Momma first and that seaport ocean again.

But I must live this Now for them—

My children are now 42 and 40.

And like She did — who, before she left us,

said, “I will never need medicine again.”

Teaching me how to end a song.

Her letting go was so faithful, so generous.

So hard.

She was the ocean that showed me God.

and the cradle who will

Rock me home.

My turn now.

Dubious Thought About Choices

By Mildred Espree

Ohhh. Just a little bit of terrorism…is it?

I say it’s rancid. I won’t endure this sordid air.

But, this is their Muse, and daily dream,

Of what was once a Southern coup

gone wrong in 1862—

Brought back, returning as a new secession

—A different kind, this Civil War.

Coming as the spirit of an angry God, manifest —

as Self-proclaimed, certain incendiary men

Try overthrowing the citadel.

These are America’s newest

spiked, hairy agonies,

where judges, educators, journalists, bureaucrats,

Congress, soldiers, immigrant minorities,

the natural-born, accountants, the opposition,

and all women must demur,

Yet even as our glory blurs, we are reticent,

afraid of being scarred, broken, beaten,

killed, and so, are paralyzed in open titular warfare,

as the insolent teardown

our nation’s columns, we, the human

Spoils of strange beasts celebrating profit,

spinning robust stories made of lies —must ask:

Is this our permanent Real, a new

who and what we ought to be—

as unwilling beneficiaries

Of these cunning weapons of mass ruin?

Truly enough! This is paranoia.

Right now, I’m scared, Still. Too.

A part of me wants to run away, but where,

to what refuge, another country not my own?

So I tell myself: Monde’ Creole—cher Black.

We are not just one crowd anymore.

All of us are culpable, all targets,

too weak, too afraid, too forgetful,

Incapable of warring, battling, or torn apart

Against despots in suits.

Shall we one day dream,

reliving America’s past,

Once platinum, our golden Camelot?

A Prayer for Wellness

Just now, a prayer for wellness

I, too, am a lover of trees,

Deep roots in soil carry

The transformed bodies of

ancient ancestors

I long to know.

My heart hurts for

history erased and

Stories untold

I never knew,

whole stories’

hints…

Respectfully, I

chant and pray for

clarity and hope

that I can create one

story, the one story,

My heart’s song of grace

and gravity, especially,

for myself, for those I know,

who, like me, long,

no yearn and grieve

for that fullness of life

In just being—

For Truth

In Spirit,

like those trees I love—

the birches, oaks, and cedar,

and myriad-colored

crepe myrtles whose

inner life, what’s inside,

mark themselves with

Rings of Eternal Reach,

like circles of the Saints.

My prayer, my chanted song:

A dream for the crafted skill

Just now, a prayer for wellness

I, too, am a lover of trees,

Deep roots in soil carry

The transformed bodies of

ancient ancestors

I long to know.

My heart hurts for

history erased and

Stories untold

I never knew,

whole stories’

hints…

Respectfully, I

chant and pray for

clarity and hope

that I can create one

story, the one story,

My heart’s song of grace

and gravity, especially,

for myself, for those I know,

who, like me, long-long,

for the fullness of life

In just being—

For Truth

In Spirit,

like those trees I love—

the birches, oaks, and cedar,

and myriad-colored

crepe myrtles whose

inner life, what’s inside,

mark themselves with

Rings of Eternal Reach,

like circles of the Saints.

My prayer, my chanted song:

A dream for the crafted skill to tell

My tales of those lost folks—mine

whose returned selves and souls

are welcome..

Add your poem here… Use this paragraph (and the one below) for the body of your poem.

Add another line or stanza of your poem here, or delete this paragraph if you only need one.

Bare Perhaps – a meditation on Isaiah 1:33

Bare Perhaps: A Meditation on Isaiah 1:33

Like Isaiah, I too,

Planted on the waters

Between years, I planted trees.

And then I have sat barren for years

While my fruits lay dormant

Like an embryo, stunted,

Destined to die

In utero…

In time, though withered, the roots

Of these germinating trees

Are straightening again

And running deep. Father.

My soul, my body —also sheds life in cycles —

Dies to me too, with certainty

only to bear and bloom again.

Perhaps. I am adept at this, too.

Yet I cannot control the direction of these winds.

Or where I dig in my ground or in other soils.

Yes. I know that even the oaks I planted on this simple

land, have roots in roaming systems too distant to grasp

Except for knowing that they are also mine.

I, who have planted my live oaks from the of the swamps,

And watched them grow for 40 years

Here on my native soul scapes, where I am fearless,

Unafraid of death, eternity, legacy

Just praying that my Isaiah trees,

Like those of the ancients, it shall not be moved.

Penance — October 30, 2025

by Mildred Espree

Epiphany, 2025

On this Feast Day of St. Andrew,

Apostle to Christ.

I wandered into heresy with my questioning.

And found another Catholic home.

Was Andrew a brother to Christ through Mary?

Once Perhaps,

I found in him my brother too,

As sister of His light and woman-born nobility.

Once before the dissolution of ties,

to me, this St. Andrew’s Church was extant and alive,

Where in this thickly airless,

East Houston, sea-level flatland

I had found My faith too.

But today, I scolded Andrew’s arrival, it, wearing me weary.

…these,

these moist winds’ atmosphere of condensation, and inner pressure,

Rendering both hardened rain and bitter tears.

Barely I remembered then,

All my whys…

that with these

Quickening in me—I whose dust will

Mingle with eternity—

I awoke to old fears that became wisdom now as I age.

Facing wintertime in sober recollection,

I recalled how once I claimed a stake—a home for my convictions.

And how once, toying with demons, I intuited the

essence of beasts.

And then, pleading to God, I confessed—

I am heartily sorry for my sins.

This revelation of humility, became a guilt unjustly claimed,

was misguidance, then reinterpreted.

I, too naive to know, too young to believe in my youthful innocence,

Faultily confused my epic learning with sin—human.

II. Today

Fifty years gone, still faithful.

I pray.

Still remembering how ages ago, certain men’s dogma and broken thinking—transformed God into punisher.

Found again in our time, these traumatized scriptural brothers are all still here, eons later.

They who never were the Christ.

These Sadducees and Pharisees, with fractured wisdom had goodness,

Yet their endless pursuit of works and faulty rules for redemption debilitated

Christ—alienated the gracious and the good, all redeemers, and me.

I who has witnessed this horror, in the persistence of

Flat-surfaced men,

Whose justified violence, hidden behind palpable, loving grins and platitudes

about its relevance to God and country—

Their greed and opulence ceaselessly destroy the souls of children.

All this occurs while the sacrifices of the devout and just are disregarded.

—these Fallen angels, in this world were grace and goodness.

It Means only those false histories—theirs—are cut by default.

Deflated and forlorn by this unexpectedly dense memory

—by consciousness realized,

I collapse and sleep fitfully.

Yet those 1990’s Bob Dylan lyrics rang on tenderly;

my hearing ears with their nuanced tones,

I heard him, as this rich, adroit tenor voice sang to me…

“You’ve got to serve somebody.”

His words bespoke my prescient tears…

Yes, Dylan’s in my sunset.

He, whose often prosaic,

insistence

on a disarming chaos

was not by chance alone.

Like this folksy activist, I too

have danced with worms

Before smashing their heads.

Oh God!

I, too, am the reptile!

You made us snaked, light bearers, internally flawed,

Imperfect Angels.

My Questions

Trust? Mine is hopeful, yet shadowy, and rocky.

our Earth. Once plenitude, with simple creatures,

vegetation and a hard core, is now barren,

Diseased, polluted and dying

But we are casing the moon again, we are

With a manufactured mind—this mythos.

Human space truth—existential emptiness.

Is this God’s possibility for humankind?

to finally choose Life.

Or serve something else.

“It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta

serve somebody.”

Dylan was the church on the radio.

III. Today’s World

Where this substantive,

devious force sustains violence

akin to pest removal,

Where we become the exterminated—

Through explosions, jealousy, ignorance, silence, alienation.

a non-human knowledge controls us unwittingly,

dim our minds with emptiness, lulling consciousness

with potions made of weeds positioned to heal this

failed Human thing within us—we have become a nuisance.

All born of self-hatred of the Putins, Trumps, Netanyahu

all popular men who possess an unwitting despise of Others who are not themselves.

They who are drivers of our dying history, and sense of

place in a fallen world order, focused at least by democracy’s verities,

to care of We the People.

These unholy men are but muse and drivers

for all perpetrators of destruction.

Those who are yoked to dangerous,

Desperate tools of war, they who are

desperate mankind’s eternal quest for revenge.

All while our world quakes in desperation,

Echoes for help, relief, peace,

as aberration floods our children’s souls.

Profiteers sell media identity images

of a trendy and banal cool-styled

Wickedness while Ignorance of goodness fuels lawlessness.

—where misaligned passion controls the culture of simple people

Unaware of primal truth.

“Oh Jesus Lord, please Come”

For I am a mere perpetrator of instinctive sensibilities—

like all vertebrates—

Still cautiously praying for more than Mere survival,

I still believe that No one escapes.

Is lost culpability for our truest sin,

Of not needing anything but us

This world of artificial, rational machines is not God!

This sickly notion of eased living

has us enslaved—a spiritual

Acedia.

The monied and the powerful are bent on stealing our food and water supplies.

Wars, private surveillance, and all monied goods

Are now willing to cast all enemies and friends into bitter, nightly darkness and destruction.

A modern technology that is a Darwinian nightmare.

Again, we are attempting primacy over God. Such

delusions belong to Hell.

And we. After years of striving, sleep on.

Exhausted. Confused.

Some sleeping.

Others dreaming.

God alone heals.

This, our Souls’ darkness, is

Just an old woman’s premonition, after all.

Nothing at all is like a warning.

Instead, merely fearful wisdom.

New Poem

How to add a new poem

This quiet corner is meant for the hands that tend the garden of these poems. It offers a gentle guide for adding new work, and is not part of the poetry itself.

In the editor, choose one of the poem sections above (for example, “Poem Title 1”) and duplicate it, as if you were opening a fresh page in the same beloved notebook.
Change the Heading 2 text to the new poem title, and gently update the anchor/ID if needed (for example, change poem-title-1 to something like sunrise-over-bayou). This helps readers leap directly to the poem you’ve named.
Replace the placeholder lines with the true voice of your poem, stanza by stanza, until it feels complete.
Update the copyright line so it reads © Mildred Michelle Barlow-Espree, [Year]. All rights reserved., using the current year when you are adding a new poem, or the original year for an older piece you are bringing into this collection. Keep the name exactly as written: “Mildred Michelle Barlow-Espree”.
Return to the “Poem Titles” list above, add a new list item with your new poem title, and link it to the matching anchor/ID (for example, #sunrise-over-bayou) so visitors can find it with a single click.