Tuesday's prayer (1221716)

122716

gratitude.  Yes.  Close my eyes and conjure.  Gratitude.  See the clearing beyond the row of palms along the freeway.  Yellows gold tans a drop of orange brown near white like corn husks and greens all shades... Gratitude.  Rain on the front windshield. Wipers suck.  Smear even in the hardest rain.  Doesn’t last long.  Windows back down.  Gratitude.

Be...
With...
Good good trip, all slights and almost misses notwithstanding
good
gratitude
almost right—close enough for Gratitude...
Now...then...Now...

Ambivalence.
Desire like craving.
Fear like deep sleep escape familiar stories comfort deadens desire.
Avoid it with certainty that nothing matters. Vanity...accusations of self pity.
Whatever.
Desire scares me.  Fear scares me. Deadening desire, escape, scares me.
Disappear into the characters I love with all my heart (and desire) ... scares me.
I live in the same decade of those who die young...just these last few weeks...
Bobby.  George Michaels.  Carrie Fisher.
If you’re gonna do it, do it now.  But it doesn’t matter. Nobody reads it.  Can’t finish it because nobody reads it.  So why is (she) afraid of it.  Nobody reads it.  Can’t sell hot chocolate to Eskimos.  Rather watch Bogey, Myrna Loy, Ray Burr, Barbie Hale, Bill Powell.... What difference does it make?

All I have are words.
Fear that I will spend my life into the words and it won’t matter.  The story won’t save me.  I will disappear.  Death comes ...

Too soon?  Too late?  Why am I caught in this quick sand of ... I’ve no word for it.

I’ve no word for it... it...  No word.

Reflection.
Recognition.
Resurrection?

Forgive me?
It’s not that I don’t believe...but that I fear.

Fear not...you say over and over and over.  How?

How do I fear not?
How do I do?
How do I believe it matters?
How do I move forward?

...I will lose again...

PROMISE ME
promise me...
Promise me you’ll come back.
Promise me all I have to do is look for you
promise me I’ll be there one day too
promise me
PROMISE ME
then keep your promise
keep your word
enable me to believe in the word again

I need the word.

It's really a lot of work having a poochieloochie...but then there are those moments when he's lying glued to the side of me on the sofa and then he puts his head on my knee. yeah...i know...it's endearing, isn't it? his 16th birthday is this weekend...as is my dad's birthday...bubbi was the love his life...

at 16 i wonder how much more the furry dude's got in him...one minute he has more energy than anyone i know or anything i've ever seen...then other times he looks at me with ancient, sad, cataract-covered eyes as if he's saying goodbye...

tonight was the first time...is the first time i found myself starting to say but couldn't say it aloud so i finished the sentence in my head...that even though he's a pain in the ass and a lot of work, when it's time for him (this is when my voice quit) to go Home to find Dad, i'll be okay (but i don't know that i believe that really)...

i miss Dad a lot.

080316 Awareness

This will come as a shock
so sit down.

You do not really matter
beyond the boundary of who you really are.

Not even the woman who gave birth to you
can love you
the way you need to be
consumed.

Consumed like a phoenix
to rise above the ashes of the futility
of everyone else’s dreams for you

and

where
where are you
clicking the heels that bring you
home
they’re your own
and those who love you
love you
but they cannot be the you
you need to be
to be better than
who you fear you are

this is not the time to be born
and not the time to be born again
when you feel
the need
to be in control of things you
can’t control

let go the fear

that’s all the control you really have

what you choose
to take hold of...
what you choose
to let go of...

palms up!
With gratitude
receive as gifts
all things that come
(even the scary, sticky, sad...)—
Only then will you recognize
what you need
who you are

He Watches Her Descend the Stairs

A look like
happily ever after
can intend but
go astray
when will the stars
chipped from the moon
sing the night back to me

no dawn breaks
the heart like
being the one who was awaited
and missed
missing

and what would it have hurt
for him to say
I am the luckiest man alive
to spend the evening with
the most beautiful woman in the world

but no
he only silently watches her descend the stairs
her tender heart expanding in his gaze
he lets her self-consciously bring up pedantic thoughts
that have no place in poetry
or beauty

(Not enough to live inside his eyes)

a tinder heart breaks into a million
fiery shining stars

“I see the moon
and the moon sees me
and the moon sees somebody that I can’t see
so God bless the moon
and God bless me
and God bless the somebody that I can’t see
If I get to heaven
before you do
I’ll make a hole and pull you through
and I’ll write your name
on every star
that way the world won’t seem so far.”*



* “I see the moon . . .” in part traditional, in part Sarah Kay

4th Day Poem challenge

040416

March caves in
caves into my annual calendar
like a florida sinkhole
having given one precious life
takes another
or year
or more
so much promise
pollinating all that is natural
with promise of Easter’s supernatural
hope in life hereafter
beyond the sinkhole
beyond the depth of fear
and the warmth
left on the sofa cushion
a minute only after rising

gratitude grows, cracks the seed of grief
Resurrection morning following on the cusp
of dead and buried

Family Portrait

040216

Family Portrait

I thought it turned out well
I was told, we were told, to put our arms around
her
our great grandmother

I am dark with emerald eyes
my younger blue-eyed sister
blond, her hair enchanting strands of honey and gold
she giggled, snaggle toothed
she had bangs
I had waves

Granny was iconic
ancient
sat on the front porch of the old, old house
her porch another room
three of its walls the centrifugal view of her garden
farm
mountains
sloping roof helped protect homemade popsickle stick frames
of children’s, grand children’s, great grand children’s drawings

two parakeets, now one.  Green and yellow headed Polly.
I loved the soft soft soft green grasses in the front yard to the stone wall
smelled so sweet, soft on feet, warmed by a sun
that only came into the yard a few hours each day

heavy red water pump on one side under the enormous homestead oak
follow around the house down its hill to the back cellar
bunny rabbits lived there once
another family photo with Dad and me and the rabbit on his knee

the cellar of canned food—magical and mesmerizing
Dad would tell stories of his Grandfather’s store
at the end of the lane to the road
how he’d be closed on Sunday but
if a neighbor needed medicine
he would give it to him—no charge

follow on around the house and laundry hung lines that
paralleled the vines
of mountain grapes
Uncle Lawrence’s goat would escape
his pen and come
eat laundry and nibble at the vines

I was tasked to drag it back (I was 6 and 7 and 8...)
Across the yard
over a little creek (run-off ditch)
down the path between two fields of crops
over another run-off creek
through the yard
knock on the door and tell Uncle Lawrence
the size of Paul Bunyan
Granny had it with his goat

but by the time I found my way back to the house
more often than not
the goat had somehow gotten there first
again

on around the house back to the porch
there we were some spring morning
probably Easter
the mountains springy in their bright green hues
homestead oak so huge and gnarly
dark and strong trunk and branches
gently steadfast as fragile tender bright green leaves unrolled
slight chill wafting on the morning breeze

I did what I was told with great joy to have the chance
to stretch my arms around my great grandmother
head upon her shoulder
my sister leaned in from the other side
happy happy girl smiling and laughing
her arm folded up along Granny's arm,
her hand timid on the nearest shoulder

a favorite photo
rich memories flow through that image
and I can almost be there again

the words said stinging
ringing in my head
came much later
when I was told
it looks like you are claiming her all to yourself
pulling her away from your sister
poor thing can’t even put her arms around her
yours are in the way

silent
for a long time
even as the words ring now
I gazed and gaze at that photo
I did what I was told
put your arms around your Granny
and I did
I loved her
but hugging or touching was so rare
I embraced her with all the years before
and after
I take responsibility for all of that
my sister did what she was told
in her way, more reserved
she could have reached across as I did
Granny had room to spare from my
skinny little arms
she could have reached across and over my arm
reaching toward me
as I had reached toward her

framing Light

sharp, bright, fierce moon
glorious replacement for the sun
i prefer your hopeful, quiet, tranquil light
playful clouds in your glow tease by

stay

or better...return

remind us all
there is life and balance
Easter comes rising from the hope of reflected light
Be Light
I will wait for you
like the evening star, the morning star, a planet...
darkness is but a frame for the Light

Suddenly Sunday

5:00 a.m.!!???  Sh*t! That is NOT enough time before going to school.  Hate when I oversleep like that. Quick to the bathroom. Quick to the kitchen–gotta take that allegra-D an hour before eating breakfast and this is cutting it close but...d*mn.  Chased the magic pill with a full big glass of water.  Filled the kettle.  Gotta get Bubbi up and out so he’ll eat.  Unbelievable.  5:10 already.  I just hate it, this is going to be a beast of a week as it is!...haven’t overslept like this in MONTHS!  Even fell asleep on the sofa, what, 7:30 last night?  Don’t even remember transitioning from sofa to bed.

Hold up.

As the kettle started to exhale more and more loudly, a nagging thought wailed more and more loudly until I plucked it ripe and juicy into coherent translation: it’s * only * Sunday.

Yeah baby.  Sometimes it’s soooo good to be wrong.  Just because it isn’t a surprise doesn’t mean it isn’t a surprise.

Still don’t like to oversleep—in some ways more so on the weekends...but...hey, the whole day suddenly unrolled before me like red carpet to royalty I’m in heaven and there’s no more rush hallelujah it’s Sunday come!

not all corn fields are alike...not all houses are home

the image (why has this popped up into my head? I have no idea) is of me as a young teenager—was I 13? Standing in a second story bedroom looking out the window across a lonely country road at miles and miles ... or should I say acres and acres of very flat treeless fields of ripe corn.  Standing and staring at it like that was so different from driving past it.  It was so different from walking the wavy golden path at my Aunt Jean’s house alongside the wavy fields of waving corn or whatever crop they were growing at the time.  How I loved the two giant trees (oak?) on either side of that path—such delicious cool shade and the rattling of leaves in a near constant lilting breeze--- just before the path turned to see the house shaded at one end by trees and flanked at the corner with an enchanting azalea and dogwood garden.  Loved it there so much.  Loved that you couldn’t see the house from the road and how the world changed from the drive out of town into a whole other world when you turned on the path (before the gate was put up) and then it changed again over the crest under the trees and the house was on that slope down to the lake with all the cypress.  The most enchanting lake ever.  So when I stood in that bedroom in house with a small yard and no trees and looked out over the hot, parched, flat corn field it wasn’t right, it wasn’t alluring, it wasn’t home.  But the realtor and mom and dad all misunderstood my gazing silence.  I vaguely remember mom or dad mentioning what a beautiful view and how much I would love that and the realtor, bless him, said he had to be honest.  That land over there would very likely be bought soon by developers and in a short time the view would be the construction of houses like these.  Dad said well that will definitely not work.  She has always wept over the cutting down of trees and the loss of landscapes like this.  I still said nothing because it was true and even though I didn’t particularly like that view, I also didn’t particularly like that house, and I didn’t particularly like that sometimes it seemed somehow some things were either up to me or blamed on me and neither was particularly fair.  I was glad not to move there, though.  Funny how that’s the only house ever that I remember touring...and we moved every two or three years all my life (until this last decade) and I’ve been in hundreds and hundreds of prospective houses.  But that is the only one I remember.