Posted in Uncategorized, tagged miracle, poem, poetry, rumplestiltskin on November 29, 2013| 4 Comments »
Corrupt, of course,
what all of them did,
bartering with daughters,
promising too big,
expecting too much,
skipping out on the bill,
wanting more than they needed,
telling tall tales,
but there’s one thing I learned
about gold being spun
out of straw, though strange,
it can be done.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratitude, love, poem, poetry, silence, thanksgiving on November 28, 2013| 5 Comments »
After the last dishes are done
and before we start the next thing to do,
this is a favorite time with you,
when we are almost lost in the house,
a bit purposeless. Our bellies satisfied,
our children asleep. That is when
we might sit side by side
on the couch, and curl into each other.
We don’t have to say anything at all.
Every breath is a bridge.
I feel you crossing over.
Such a subtle perfume, but there
it is, the scent of gratitude.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Power of Poetry, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, The Voices Project, women's poetry on November 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »
A Great Site for Women’s Voices
A couple summers ago I wrote this poem, published yesterday at The Voices Project, at a Ziggie’s Poetry Festival Workshop led by Rachel Kellem, a poem about writing poems and what is possible when we do write. Check out this site if you get a chance … it is the home for women to do exactly what my poem is wishing would be possible. Thank you Voices Project!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being present, going back, path, poem, poetry on November 27, 2013| 2 Comments »
Useless the trail
I thought would take me back—
the crumbs are still there
but I no longer believe
in going back
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dissolution of the separate self, poetry, short poem, wind on November 27, 2013| 1 Comment »
when left in wind
the cloth unravels until it becomes
the wind
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged long marriage, love, memory, poem, poetry on November 26, 2013| 3 Comments »
The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.
—Joyce Sutphen
Is it true the heart remembers
everything it loved and gave away?
Just today I recalled
that sweet Mormon boy
who I fell in love with
at a speech tournament,
perhaps in the final round when
he beat me. What was his name?
I recall how we ate
at a greasy spoon in Denver
late, late at night
but did we eat pancakes?
Or cupcakes? Or eggs?
He didn’t kiss me, did he?
Though I wanted him to.
He was slender
and had dark hair and such
sincere eyes, and I loved
to laugh at his clean, clean jokes.
You could argue he was found again
in the heart’s archives
after passing a late night restaurant
that reminded me of the one we liked,
but he is more forgotten to me
now than remembered.
What color were his eyes?
What country was he leaving for?
What was it he did
that made my heart thrill?
It is, perhaps, like
how my husband and I
now take our children
with us on trips to foreign lands.
I remember my husband’s mother saying,
You know he won’t remember Argentina,
speaking of my three-year-old boy.
And I thought, that is not the point.
The point is he learns early what it is
to be a citizen of the world.
And so it is he has grown to love
travel and people and learning new things
and seeing new landscapes and
saying thank you in other tongues.
And he does not remember
a thing about Argentina.
And so it is, perhaps, that
all of those lovers I don’t remember,
and the ones who I vaguely, sweetly do,
they were in their way
all preparing me to be a better
love to you. Although I have forgotten
names and conversations,
inside jokes and back alley kisses,
the heart perhaps remembers
how it opened then. It was practicing
the best it could to love you, now,
though the love we have is nothing
like what I thought love would be.
How simple it was before, a side
of maple syrup, a station wagon
with a full tank of gas
and a whole night that lasted
partway to forever.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged armageddon, family, gratitude, poetry, thanksgiving on November 25, 2013| 1 Comment »
It wasn’t today.
The plane took off.
Flew. Landed.
My brother arrived.
He drove us
through eight lanes of traffic
to a beautiful home
where it was so easy
to hug, to laugh,
to eat, to remember,
to relax, to not even
think that it
might have gone
another way, so easy
to smile, to give thanks.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, grief, poem, poetry on November 24, 2013| 1 Comment »
I tugged on the thread
of grief not knowing how
completely it had tangled
with all the other threads,
how without grief
there was no cloth.
*
Here, darling,
I cannot say
the words for you,
but I will listen
for the unspeakable
whether you say
the words
or not.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged coming of age, first kiss, innocence, poem, poetry, puberty on November 22, 2013| 3 Comments »
It was Sam who,
that summer before fourth grade,
danced with me
at the church camp dance
and asked me to walk
outside with him.
“It’s hot,” he said.
“Let’s go look at the stars.”
And I, who did not yet
understand the sweet cramping
that tendrilled deep in my gut when
Sam held my hand, said yes.
We stood there a long time,
me looking out at the stars
because that is what
we were there to do.
The night was the color
of Wisconsin violets, crushed,
and Sam, still holding
my hand murmured low, “Oh,
look over there,”
and, when I turned
my feathered head, he leaned
in quick and close
and kissed my astonished lips.
Even thirty-five years later,
I am still somewhat
unprepared as I write
what happened next,
how he sprinted away,
a gleesome hart,
how I stood there, still,
my lips apart, the soft
hands of the night
still holding the most tender
parts of me as they spilled
like fruit no one knew
was yet ripe, and the sharp
stitch of longing
so new to me
sewed itself
into my breath.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, athena, mad, poem, poetry, suppression on November 21, 2013| 8 Comments »
Mom, says my little girl, how does mad
get in your body? Her voice
is so sincere, full of sock monkey
innocence, transparent as pink tutu.
She is, I marvel, so curious.
All day I’ve noticed the sand bags
I’ve hoarded to lean against my doors
in an effort to keep the mad out.
I have put up signs, No Anger Allowed,
along with dispensers of small black bags,
strategically placed along my perimeters,
so that others can clean up after their own anger.
Which they seldom do.
Though sometimes they leave behind
the small black bags, heavy and foul,
hidden in the grass for me to find later
and throw away myself.
Which I do,
grumbling beneath a pretense
of patience.
How does mad get in your body?
Through the cracks, I think, though the cracks
are smaller than I want to believe.
Eventually, the water is not held back
by sacks of sand. It seeps. It leaks. It trickles.
It pools. It touches everything.
Just as the scent escapes the dark bags.
The Greeks knew how Athena could,
in her rage, make the skies
turn black and the mountains tremble
and the flowers wilt, how she once turned
a young girl who challenged her talents
into the world’s first spider.
When I was a girl, I learned
an unwritten rule, a commandment
so powerful it need not be carved in stone:
Thou shalt not be mad.
Though today, it did not matter how many barriers
I put up, how many though shalts I did not say. I was angry
anyway, felt the dark seed sprout, then bloom its terrible putrid bloom
and then, as I watched it, wilt. And I did not need do anything
except stand by and watch, more amazed than in judgment,
watched with wonder, even.
How quickly it unfurled! How distrubingly beautiful
the misshapen flower. How quickly it flagged, it drooped, it faded to nothing.
I don’t know, I tell my daughter. How do you think it gets in?
She tells me she does not know.
I want to slash through any bags I might have left behind for her.
I want to make way for the mad to rush in, and then help her
hold the doors open so the mad might recede as swiftly as it came.
But it is not my job to do.
Open your own doors, I tell myself. Slash your own bags.
And get curious, I tell myself, very curious,
the skies above me already turning
a darker shade of gray.