the elephant in the room—
giving him
the finest seat
Archive for July, 2019
One Approach
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cliche, communication, poem, poetry on July 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »
What I Did Not Write in the Card
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, friendship, love, poem, poetry on July 30, 2019| 6 Comments »
for S
I don’t want you to die.
I know that is selfish,
but it’s the truest thing.
I know we don’t speak of it.
I know I am supposed
to find acceptance,
to find metaphors about
rebirth and letting go—
the trees are always good that way—
but I don’t want to.
I hate that you are hurting.
I hate how far away you are.
You and I both know
that I would never write this
in your card. No, instead,
I send a metaphor about birds,
about resilience and
the gift of wings. Instead,
I tell you I love you.
It’s the other truest thing.
One Persistence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, poem, poetry, thoughts, weeds on July 30, 2019| 2 Comments »
in my thoughts
a tap-rooted weed
sometimes I notice
its beautiful pink blooms
before I pull it again
I Cried to Dream Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged betrayal, caliban, heart, love, poem, poetry, shakespeare, the tempest on July 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
title from William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act III, Scene II
I have a Caliban locked in my heart,
a child of the moon. He reminds me sometimes
of all the beautiful places he’s shown me—
the heart’s clear springs and its riches.
How we loved each other then.
There was a time he would offer
to lick my shoes. There was a time
I would follow him everywhere.
I invited him to sleep in my sheets.
I would rub his wild scruff till he purred.
I poured him my best wine in my best glass.
I sang him to sleep. There are some betrayals
we will never forgive. Or so
we tell ourselves. Now he is insolent.
Now I’ve built walls. Now he’s rebellious.
Now I’m master I’d rather not be.
It was so much more wonderful then
when we were friends, when I trusted him
and delighted in the most primal parts of me.
And though I lock him up now, he reminds me
through his cage of the sweet airs of the heart
and the music inside us that longs to be obeyed.
If Only All Change Were So Easy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, poem, poetry, rain, transformation on July 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Off the Path
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged certainty, journey, path, poem, poetry on July 26, 2019| 4 Comments »
On the path, I am the one
who forgets to look up—
the one who doesn’t see the mountain
because I am focused on the path.
I am the one who fears the dead end,
who worries and obsesses about it,
only to discover it wasn’t an end at all,
just a sharp turn, and the path goes on.
I am the one who fears she’s not good enough
for this path, who wonders if there’s another path
somewhere that I am supposed to be on.
Everyone else seems to know where they’re going.
I can’t even seem to spot the signs.
Confused, I stop, which allows me
to notice the weeds gone to seed,
notice their tiny white globes, notice
how good it feels to stop
and notice them. I am the one who
cares so much about the path and still
fails at staying on it. In fact,
the more I pay attention, the more
I am the one who forgets there is a path.
After Six Days of Holding It Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, daughter, grief, impermanence, parents, poem, poetry, tears, vulnerability on July 25, 2019| 9 Comments »
It wasn’t until I had passed through security
and found my way into Concourse B
that I found myself sinking into a chair
across from a giant Vienna Beef poster
and began to weep. And once they began,
the tears wouldn’t stop. Nor did I try
to stop them. I had wondered in the ICU
where they were. Had wondered
again at my parents’ home. It was strange
to be so level—not cold, really, and not numb,
but oddly steeled. It was a relief, really,
to sob into my hands. To let grief take over.
To be a maidservant to fragility.
What a gift to be sideswiped with the truth
of our vulnerability. What a blessing
to be baptized in my own helplessness.
Over the loudspeaker, they announced
that a plane was delayed. As if any of us
really know when we’ll depart, when we’ll arrive.
When the tears dried, I stood. Walked
to my gate recalibrated. Called my parents
again because I could. Because I could.
In the window, I smiled at my watery reflection,
how it almost wasn’t there at all.
Between the Chores and Doctor Calls
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged city, fountain, garden, poem, poetry, resilience, silence on July 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Amidst the sirens
and the horns,
tucked in between
the skyscrapers,
we found a garden
with a fountain
at its center
rung with trees
and lush green leaves
and purple hastas—
and there, inside
that sudden peace,
my dad and I
sat side by side
and didn’t solve
a goddammed thing
but listened to
the sound of water
falling, falling,
and watched it
rising up,
rising up again.
Floral Rx
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, flowers, help, helplessness, medicine, mother, poem, poetry on July 23, 2019| 5 Comments »
Because I cannot fix her heart,
I plant flowers in the two empty pots
on my mother’s high rise patio.
She’s always loved flowers around the house—
peonies and petunias in Wisconsin,
succulents and larkspur in Colorado.
She taught me when I was a girl
how to deadhead the plants
to produce more blooms,
how to make the snapdragon
open its reptilian mouth, how
to tell the story of Cinderella
by carefully dissecting the bleeding heart,
how to make touch me nots spit their seeds,
and how a few flowers around the home
bring immeasurable joy. And so
I pick out white and blue lobelia and
a soft gray vine and a hot pink begonia
and other flowers and vines I can’t name
and we sit on her patio together
in the late afternoon sun
and arrange the potted plants.
There is something about planting flowers
together that changes the way
you see the flowers—the same way
a soup tastes better when made
by someone who loves you—
and I thrill to think of her
looking out the window and seeing
the bright red geraniums surrounded
by purples and blues and greens
and thinking to herself, wow,
that girl really loves me, and
surely, surely, though it won’t
fix her heart, surely it will do some good,
those draping pink petunias
so familiar, so new.
In the Northwestern Hospital ICU
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, hospital, icu, love, mother, parents, poem, poetry on July 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
And as my mother steeped toward slumber,
her thin body wired to monitors,
there, surrounded by incessant beeping
and the red and green mountains and valleys
of pulse and pressure and the slow drip
of IV tubes finding her veins, yes,
there as her speech became mumbly and her
eye lids heavied, my father leaned over
the rails of the hospital bed to smooth
her gray hair and kiss her lips and whisper
I love you. And she rallied a smile and
whispered it back. And there, in the sterile room,
with all its instruments of cardiac measurement,
there was nothing, nothing that could chart
how open my heart, how—unable to hold
all the love I felt for them both—it broke
in the most beautiful way. How I prayed
it would stay that open, that broken, that whole.
**
Dear friends, thank you for all your good wishes. After having a heart surgery go wrong a few days ago, my mother was released today from the ICU and is now resting at home, and though she is not out of the woods yet, she is not in imminent danger. It’s been very scary and I thank you for all your thoughtful messages and prayers and thoughts. Rosemerry
*
In the Airport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, kindness, mother, poem, poetry, strangers, tenderness, travel on July 20, 2019| 10 Comments »
I wonder who else today
in Concourse A
is traveling to see their mom
in the hospital, who else
has a parent with a surgery
gone wrong? Who else
could use some tenderness—
perhaps that woman in green
on the transporter? Or maybe
the young mother chasing her child
on the moving walkway? Or
the middle-aged man deliberating
over snacks? Today, it seems
so obvious that all of us
need some tenderness—
regardless our story.
And so when the man
in 31 C offers to lift my suitcase
and fit it somehow
into the overhead bin,
I almost weep with relief,
but instead I smile and say
Thank you, yes, I need help.
All day, I think of how
one small generosity changes
the landscape of the heart.
All day, I am met with chances
to be grateful, to be kind.
Simple Tools
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, kitchen, poem, poetry, spatula, tool, unity on July 20, 2019| 9 Comments »
for Christie
I am so grateful for the rubber spatula,
the way it sits quietly in the drawer
yet is always ready for action—
is game to scrape the walls of the blender
or to fold chocolate chips into cookie dough.
It evens and swirls the frosting on cake
and welcomes the tongue
of a child. In a sharp world,
it knows the value of being blunt;
it knows that to smooth is a gift to the world.
Some people are knives, and
I thank them. Me, I want to belong
to the order of spatulas—those
who blend, who mix, who co-mingle
dissimilars to create a cohesive whole.
I want to spread sweetness, to be a workhorse
for beauty, to stir things up,
to clean things out. I want to be useful,
an instrument of unity, a means, a lever for life.
Bouquet of Poems from Camping
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged camping, poem, poetry, time on July 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I ask the earth
please, a little more time?
it spins on, spins on
*
finally dipping my toe
in the lap lane, already
I dream of the finish line
*
a bucket of anything
is best drunk a sip at a time—
even bliss
*
news from the heart—
it knows how to heal
its own holes
*
resolving to treat
all my concerns as poems—
now doubt, too, is beautiful
*
packing up the tent—
if only all habits could be folded,
bagged, stowed away
One Not So Secret
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, secret on July 13, 2019| Leave a Comment »
One Communion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, darkness, poem, poetry on July 13, 2019| Leave a Comment »
After Talking to My Teacher, I See the Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, failure, invitation, Joi Sharp, letting go, poem, poetry, teacher on July 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
What wants to happen?
—Joi Sharp
Today it is the tow truck
that leads me back to myself.
For though I call the driver
and though I receive
a text that says he is coming
and though I have paid
my AAA bill on time, the tow
truck does not arrive.
Though I did everything right.
Though the same actions have worked before.
Still the world has not turned out
the way I expected, the way
I want it to. The car
is still stranded. The tow truck
is still not here. Oh failure,
how clearly it shows my attachment
to outcome. How clearly it
shows me the world is in charge.
I look for more doors to knock on,
try to plan more ways to control.
Meanwhile, I am the door.
Meanwhile, this chance
to let go.
Not Really About Harvesting Radishes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, poem, poetry, radish, time, waiting on July 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Pulling the long red radish bulbs
from the garden, I marvel
at their pinkness, rub off the dirt,
bite into the crisp white flesh.
There are few tastes that bite
just right this way—make the mouth
happy to be a mouth and it teaches me,
without trying, that sometimes
when we wait too long,
a thing turns bitter. But oh, get
the timing right, my god, it’s sweet.
One Slowing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daisies, poem, poetry, time on July 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
One Rusty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, perfectionism, piano, poem, poetry on July 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
stumbling through
the Moonlight Sonata
while outside the window
a twilight birdsong—
not one note out of place