standing at the door
of your heart, is that pounding
your pulse or my hand
Archive for January, 2015
It’s All I Hear
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, poem, poetry on January 12, 2015| 1 Comment »
Weather Report
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged long marriage, love, poem, poetry on January 11, 2015| 5 Comments »
Though they predicted gray and snow,
the sun grew warmer all day long,
the sky crescendoed blue—
how could I help but pinch myself
that’s how it’s been with me and you.
Block: The Reality TV Show for Housewives Who Want to Feel Productive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, poem, poetry, reality tv, writer's block on January 10, 2015| 4 Comments »
She is still sitting there at the green counter top.
Her white screen is still blank. In the last 14 minutes,
I’ve seen her type and delete a few words at least nine times.
I don’t think she has ever ironed that dress she is wearing.
Oh! Look! She got up and walked to the fridge. Got out
the eggnog. Ah, and the Southern Comfort. Swirling them
together in a glass. Gosh, her shelves sure are a mess.
Oh, some nutmeg on top. Nice touch.
Must be stiff, that drink. She winced a little before she smiled.
Okay, and she’s back to sitting down at her blank screen.
Twisting her hair. Nope. Chin in her hands.
Poor thing. I’ve gotten all my laundry folded, my dishes done,
my shelves organized and my windows washed
and all she’s managed to do is delete and get a drink.
Wait, is she typing? Yes. A couple lines, a stanza break,
and she’s going into the next couple lines, no, no,
her right pinkie finger is going for the delete button again …
and she’s up. Looking for something in the cupboard.
Potato chips. The kind with ridges. Is she really going to eat
that whole bowl? She didn’t even look at the nutrition panel
to see how many calories and how much sodium there might be
in those, what, five servings? And she’s about to sit, wait, no, that’s it?
The show is over? Some eggnog, some chips and a whole
lotta blank? Dang, I can’t wait to tune in tomorrow.
Only in Retrospect Can I See What I Did
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, blank page, expectation, poem, poetry, unfolding, vision on January 8, 2015| 5 Comments »
This blank page of a day.
Last night, I had already crumpled
up the paper and thrown it in the trash.
With twin fists, I made it so small,
told myself there were no stories
I was interested in knowing.
This morning, picking it up again,
I watched the paper unrumple itself,
and unfold and unfold until
it was a million million times larger
than any page I could imagine,
big enough to have any story
fit on it, any story at all, even
happily ever after.
On an Anxious Evening, I Remember Seventh Grade
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged junior high, life lessons, poem, poetry on January 8, 2015| 6 Comments »
Although I could likely have spelled and pronounced infelicitous,
could have used it in an essay or book report, I did not know, when reading
the names of the new student council members over the school’s
loudspeaker how to pronounce the last name of the boy
who had beaten me in my homeroom for the seat on the council.
Deutsch. And reading that long list of names, when I came to his,
I did not hesitate to pronounce it the way it looked on the page.
That’s when Cathy, reading beside me, burst into giggles, and I did, too,
and we had to turn off the PA system until we were sober enough
to read the menu for the day.
It was war. I never intended it that way.
Mispronouncing Gary’s name was a terrible,
sincere mistake. And it was war.
For the next two years, Gary called me names he knew I hated.
Rosie. Rosefairy. I’d like to think I didn’t mention
his last name.
He would come up behind me in Gifted and Talented,
and squeeze my skinny waist from behind. And always I would jump.
And curse him. And he’d laugh.
And then one day, just before summer, I said, “Gary, if you do that again,
I will throw you out that window.”
Gary did it again.
I did not mean to throw Gary out the window.
But the glass cracked and Gary cried and the whole room
stopped and stared. From somewhere outside of my body,
I stared, too, at the scrawny, mousy, over-achieving slip of a girl
who stood by the window, paralyzed in disbelief.
I think Mr. Foley laughed before he sent me to the vice-principal.
I think I cried. For days.
I paid for the window with my babysitting money.
Gary never squeezed my waist again.
I learned who I did not want to be.
It is funny now, when I tell my son. We giggle into his pillows,
and try not to wake his sister in the bed next to us.
I had forgotten Gary and his last name and the window until tonight
when I whispered to him in the dark before sleep,
“Sweetheart, It is going to be okay.
Everyone makes big mistakes sometimes. And we learn.”
“Even you, Mom?” he said, and I said, “Oh yes, there was one
particularly infelicitous day …”
Almost Full
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, moon, poem, poetry on January 7, 2015| 2 Comments »
oh that moon
on every wall of my grief
it tattoos light
And Burned My Own Fingers, Too
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry on January 6, 2015| 4 Comments »
how many times
I have burned it
that letter
you never
sent
You Ask Me How I’m Doing These Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged how are you, poem, poetry on January 4, 2015| 3 Comments »
More splash than still
more million than one,
more tiger than sparrow,
more emerald than moon,
and not enough carnival,
not enough kiss
too dinging much bell
too danging much wish,
oh spiral and tremble
jig and wrench,
splinter and wrestle
wobble, unend.
Yes, Everything
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, connection, ice skating, nature, poem, poetry, warmth on January 4, 2015| 5 Comments »
When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.
—John Muir
and so when I tug at the blue green ice
that marbles the top of the river, it’s no
surprise to find it connected to those mornings
when I was a girl and the lake was frozen
and I could skate all the way to the middle,
could follow the cracks and skate so far
I could hardly see my small yellow house.
I would lay down, face to the ice, and feel
the way the cold rose up to sting my check,
feel the chill seep through my winter clothes.
I would roll over and stare at the white sky
and wave my arms and legs in the angel pattern,
though there was no snow. And I’d stay there
a long, long time. In this way, I learned
it is possible to be warm even held by the cold,
and tugging at this, it is no surprise
to find it connects to everything.
Joseph, I Know It Is Meant to Be a Comfort, But I’m Tired of Stumbling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, body, gratitude, poem, poetry on January 3, 2015| 3 Comments »
Joseph, I Know It Is Meant to Be a Comfort, But I’m Tired of Stumbling
Where you stumble, there your treasure lies.
—Joseph Campbell
Oh body, this is your real destination,
the fall. The lurch. The blunder.
The stagger. The hobble. The trip.
Though I’ve practiced at grace
and balance, though I’ve rehearsed poise
and lifted weights and risen early to run, to ski,
you are destined to stumble, to teeter,
to drop, to collapse, to rot, and to call it good.
Though I eat kale and spirulina,
though I go to my physical every year,
though I think about taking my vitamins daily,
you are ordained to fail and somehow,
I am to find this failure favorable.
Every day I recognize you less—these wrinkles,
these curves, these aches, this gray—
and every day I treasure you more. Oh damn,
I guess that Campbell was right, then.
Here, at the altar of vulnerability, I have
fallen in love with you, the way you have
carried me through forests, up mountains,
across rivers and into ocean waves.
How you’ve lain in the blood of childbirth and joined
the miracle. You have kissed and fucked
and opened and spilled and arched and
writhed and pressed. You have leapt and swung
and spun and reached and nestled and
lunged and wept. And broken and crumpled, yes,
and stumbled over and over again. Oh what
a gift to have a body, to know it at all, to fall
and fall and fall in love with the falling,
to lose sense of where we begin and where
we are perfectly, terribly, wholly, richly, thank you, lost,
and from that grounded place
to reach out and serve the world again.