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Connection & Healing, Memory & Roots, Portraits & Human Connection

The Best Holiday of All

courtneybosworth

Summer has faded, the green fields are gone,

The leaves turn to embers as autumn moves on.

The air has grown crisp with the stealing of light,

As cool autumn afternoons yield to the night.

A collective excitement begins to awake

For the phantoms and witches the darkness will make.

Soon goblins and monsters will step from the shade,

To walk the wide earth where the memories fade.

The tables are turned and the season has woken,

In the Ides of the Fall when the silence is broken.

Though shadows may crowd and the twilight grows chill,

We huddle together, expectant and still.

The old warmth is put down as the wild things awaken—

For daylight has vanished; ’tis Halloween season.

Memory & Roots

The Chocolate Stash

courtneybosworth

The glass jars were scattered all over the house,

Stuffed full of sweetness and waiting for a mouth—

Not sugary confections, but cocoa and dark,

A chocolate sanctuary mother kept stocked.

The children would sweep through the rooms in a blur,

Emptying vessels without saying a word.

The chocolate would vanish, the glass would run bare,

And no guilty child would confess to be there.

But mother just smiled at the mystery case;

She expected the raid and accommodated the chase.

For high in the cabinet, tucked far out of sight,

Lay her private reserve for the quiet of night.

And if ever the kids breached that high, hidden shelf,

Mother still held a last hope for herself—

Safe in the pantry, bitter, unbothered, and raw,

Lay the baker’s square chocolate no child ever saw.

Memory & Roots

The Kansas Crown

courtneybosworth

They begin as all green living things do,

Sprouting from the earth in soft shoots of green.

Powered by the light, they reach for the sky,

Stretching tall toward the passing clouds.

Their buds widen and bloom into golden crowns,

Yellow petals encircling the heavy head of seed—

Just as a mother cradles her children in need.

The sunflower reigns as the royalty of the garden,

Rising up to match the height of a human frame.

One can only marvel at its glorious, golden power—

The flower of the Kansas soil,

The one my mother loved so.

Memory & Roots

The Architecture of Pages

courtneybosworth

My parents built a sanctuary out of ink and binding,

a house where libraries lived both upstairs and down.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves holding the weight of worlds,

every spare inch crowded with a quiet, infinite landscape.

There were heavy lexicons and columns of history,

leaving no excuse for an unanswered mind.

But beneath the rigorous architecture of the schoolwork,

the true inheritance was waiting in children’s bedrooms.

Towering bookcases standing guard beside our beds,

every shelf stacked tight with a private invitation to escape—

sailing away where the wild things run,

or drifting high upon a giant peach.

The rooms have changed, but the geography remains.

The greatest wealth they ever passed into my hands

was the quiet freedom of the page.

Craft & Classroom

Crafting an Ad – A Shakespearean Sonnet

courtneybosworth

We start our work to serve the target mind,

As every honest craft should always start;

We read the marketplace to see behind

The rivals who contend to win the heart.

A single, golden promise must be clear,

For none will buy if nothing moves the soul;

With striking art and words that draw them near,

We light a spark to reach the final goal.

The copy catches eyes without pretense,

A clever turn of phrase to pull them in;

Yet cleverness alone makes little sense,

Unless the product holds the power within.

For if the promise fails when choices lie, The spark will fade, and every ad will die.