Downslope

Surely it was inevitable,
This slowing down of yours,
Hands softer now for lack of labor
In your long-abandoned fields,
Muscles weaker, joints that
Creak and pop when flexed,
Clothes that hang just a whisper
Looser on your sloping frame.
And finally, you must admit,
You too are bound by all the
Bitter rules of human form,
You who always claimed that
A smart and cautious man who
Worked his mind and worked his body,
Religiously for eighty years or more,
Could hold at bay the clinging grasp
Of that withered hag, old age.
Maybe now you’ll take some time
To rest your weary feet -
There’s no shame in it, you know.

-~-~-~-~

Three Word Wednesday prompt: cautious, human, maybe

One Single Impression - Flowering

-~-~-~-~

Yellow jasmine scent
Lingers at the old porch swing
As I think of her

-~-~-~-~

Family connections
Grow fuller in our sorrow
Loss’s blossoming

-~-~-~-~

Midwestern transplant
Cannot wrap her mind around
Flowers in winter

-~-~-~-~

Reminiscing she
Breathes in the heady lilac
Scent of her childhood

-~-~-~-~

Delicate blossoms
In their transience teach us how
To love and let go

-~-~-~-~

-~-~-~-~

for One Single Impression

Revelations

 

 I don’t remember ever seeing
The joy that is reflected
So brightly in the picture -
The brilliant smiles and
Entwined hands,
The leaning into one another
That suggests an ease that
I surely never witnessed.
You buried your first husband
At the age of twenty four,
And then the second nearly
Died of drink at twenty eight,
In a coma three full weeks
Following the accident
While your three babies waited
For their daddy to come home.
Perhaps one day you finally
Decided that the world’s goodwill
Could not be counted on,
And so you chose to stop
Letting anything invade
Your sorely injured heart.
For years I wondered if
You loved each other at all,
But at the end I could see
That it was real. It was.

-~-~-~-~

Three Word Wednesday prompt: picture, reflected, stop
Read Write Poem prompt: oil and vinegar

Make a wish.

The Dandelion’s Reminder (oh infinite variety, oh endless beauty, given to us all if we but choose to look)

No Poems

So much for my big announcement that I’d write poetry every day this month.

I feel like I’ve been broken open and put back together in a new way – one that is very similar to what I was before, but different all the same. Remember The Wizard of Oz? The section that was always my very favorite part of the book when I was a kid was one that never made it into the movie – it’s the story of the land of the “china dolls,” with a princess who was so afraid of falling and breaking herself and marring her prettiness that she never did anything at all, and a clown who had been broken so many times and glued back together that his body was a maze of lines and cracks. And because of his brokenness and healing he was stronger than the princess could even imagine being. I think I’ve become that clown, just a little bit. I’ve had one big break, something that was at the same time the most painful but also the most beautiful and sacred thing I’ve ever experienced. And I don’t know what to do with that yet. I’m chewing on it constantly, but I can’t put any of it into pretty (or even not so pretty) words and post them as poems for other people to see. Maybe not ever, but at the very least not yet. But I can’t write (or hardly think) about anything else either. So for now, no poetry. Prose is all I can manage, and even that is hard.

A week ago I could still say that at thirty I still had all four of my grandparents.

My grandmother died exactly one week ago as I write this. One week ago we were losing her. In half an hour it will be one week since my grandfather asked us what time she died and we realized that none of us had been watching the clock so we weren’t sure exactly when – we just knew it had been a little while before. It’s been a week since I held her hand and kept my other hand on her shoulder as a circle of nine members of our family laid hands on her and told her that it was ok and that we loved her and then stayed with her as she left us. A week since I held her head and helped the hospice nurse dress her in a nice nightgown so she wouldn’t be taken to the funeral home in the old t-shirt she died in. A week since I sat with her in the bedroom as other family members moved in and out and waited for the people to come and take her body away, my hand on her arm keeping at least a small part of her warm for just a little longer, until I had to let go and leave the room so they could take her. A week since I watched my grandfather say goodbye to her, over and over again, every time we thought that this time was THE time, then as she was leaving, then after she died, then before the funeral home folks took her away, then as we went into the room for the viewing for the first time, and again and again as he moved toward her amidst the sea of visitors to see her just one more time, and then finally the morning of the funeral as our family said goodbye to her one last time before her casket was closed for good.

But a week ago I also watched our family grow closer and stronger than it has ever been. It’s been a week since I watched my grandfather begin to open up in a way that I’d never seen, openly showing emotion, hugging us back when we hugged him, telling stories about his childhood and life as a young man, smiling when we came in the room. This may be the first time in my life that I’ve felt that I have an actual relationship with my grandfather. It’s astounding and so, so beautiful to see. I’ve seen so many members of my family be real and genuine with one another in a way that I haven’t experienced before. Most of it I can’t figure out how to put into words, but I can say that this new closeness is a gift that my grandmother gave us. It feels good, even as it feels bad. You know?

This is new for me. It’s not new for most people, but it is for me. For now it stays inside where I can turn it over and over in my head, where I can replay it and think about what it means. For now I don’t try to make it sound nice or have a consistent rhythm or voice. It’s still too real for that. So no poetry yet.

On Belonging

Waving palm fronds may
Shade her brow today but
No matter where she goes
Her toes are sunk deep
In the red clay of Georgia.

Once you’ve lived there
It is in you always.

On Resilience

I’ve seen how the warmth returns,
When crocuses push through the frozen ground,
Their fragile spring-green arms raised parallel
To one another in their hopeful reaching for the sun
In answer to the earth’s mysterious call.
I’ve watched children on the playground
Toss a dodge ball back and forth -
Give it just one bounce and then it’s safe,
Gently cradled in your partner’s hands.
Then a moment later it’s careening back,
Doomed to strike the pavement yet again,
But once more it will rise up from its lowest point
And so will we, so will we.

-~-~-~-~

Three Word Wednesday prompt: parallel, bounce, mysterious

On Loss

She tried it on for size,
Testing out the shape of a world
One person lighter.

It wouldn’t button up,
The fit was far too snug,
The color, really, was all wrong,

And she’d never liked buttons anyway.
She wished it had a zipper but it didn’t and
She couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

She took it off and put it on
Frequently over the next few days,
As she waited for the call that would

Bind its collar tight around her throat for good.
It never felt quite right and she was sure it
Wouldn’t ever fit the way the old world had.

But she could tell that it would
Settle over her shoulders in time,
Stretching a little here and there,

And maybe one day it wouldn’t rub her
Quite as raw as it did today.
There was that, at least.

Drawing a Line in the Sand (NaPoWriMo)

Well, tomorrow begins National Poetry Writing Month, and I’ve decided at the last minute to take part.  As those of you who stop by from time to time no doubt have noticed, my posting frequency has taken a nosedive recently.  I’ve been overloaded. Overworked.  Overstressed.  Too many things all at once - one VERY good thing coming up, one very sad thing, two relatively neutral but high-intensity disruptions, two anxiety-inducing but ultimately out of my control stressors, and one big thing that’s both good and bad.  This is the first time I’ve ever had to juggle so many emotionally charged things at once, and I must admit that I don’t think I’m managing it all so very well.  And my writing has suffered.  It’s been hard to get started.  The words have been hard to find.  I don’t want to write about the BIG things, because they’re too raw still, or feel overly melodramatic when written down, or perhaps I’m just so exhausted by thinking about them all the time already that I don’t feel the urge to write about them too.  But on the other hand, my mind is so overfull with those things that I can’t concentrate on anything else, either.  What’s a girl to do?

 Well, I know the answer.  Just write anyway.  Do it, no matter what comes out.  Some of it will be swill.  Some of it won’t.  It doesn’t matter.  I just need to find the discipline somewhere in me to get it started, and I know that once I do, it will help me.  So, here goes.  Thought I’d better make a big freakin’ deal of announcing it or I’d almost certainly never get the oomph going to actually do it.  So…

For the month of April I will write one poem a day. 

I may not post every day - in fact, I almost certainly will not, because of one of the obliquely mentioned things above will take me out of town and away from the computer sometime this month.  But I will write every day.  I will.  I know I will, and now you do too.

That is all.  Carry on.