For Kate on her Sixteenth Birthday

Kate turned 16 on Sunday. Time is turbo-speeding! I can't believe she's just two short years from graduating from high school. Will you please stop growing, already? Anyway, I thought I'd post the poem I wrote for her special, coming-of-age day. I sure love her with all my heart, which was recently fixed, by the way. Maybe I'll write a post about that someday soon.

For Kate on her Sixteenth Birthday

She sits lotus-style on her bed,
grasshopper legs
and angled elbows
softened by a wide raspberry smile
and Jersey-calf eyes.
And though she's stunning
by the pickiest standards,
her playful, childlike demeanor says
her physical beauty
is almost an afterthought
(or a parenthetical phrase)
which serves to enhance--
never to define.

"Jump on me, Mom!"
She's almost sixteen,
could pass for a college student
now that the braces are off,
but still my little girl.
I leap onto her bed,
and she flails out her skinny arms and legs,
squealing as she flattens beneath me.
I roll over and we lie side by side,
laughing and talking
like young friends.

If I could have chosen each of her qualities,
if I could have designed her like I would a dress
or a quilt, if I could have genetically engineered
each detail to create the perfect daughter,
the limits of my wildest dreams would have prevented
my ability to produce
you,
my dear, beautiful girl.

Echo

It was a miracle, the first time

I saw a beating heart:

a gray and white, fuzzy-grained rhythmic 

splotch of light in the core of the silhouette 

of my perfectly formed 20-week fetus.

My own heart flopped in my chest

as the evidence of life traveled

to my view through sound, gel,

and the skill of a chatty technician.

I had never seen something so

beautiful as the living, beating organ

of life I held inside me.

The dim room, the hospital gown,

even the cool gel on the ultrasound

wand became symbols of the living

love inside my womb. And that heart,

oldest of all symbols, held a life-

time of its own love to give and receive.

Today I enter a dim room

and lie down on my side, hospital

gown open in front. The gel

seems colder, the technician more subdued,

the wand without the magic it held years ago.

Through it, an image travels,

but this time, my body holds

only one heart. The arrhythmic splotch

of gray and white light on the screen 

holds my emotions hostage.

April 18

So why can’t I think of anything to write

today when my mind’s eye is so dynamic.
Creative plots weave themselves with
twists and spirals, knots and dead ends,
which of course is a just a morbid pun.
But I can’t write about those.

The unknown factor is what chills me most.

If there were a timeline, for example, or
an itinerary, I could wrap my head around that
and free up the space that’s giving birth
to its own outcomes, few of which diminish
the tension in this headache behind my eye.

Or the thudding in my chest.

Titles are like hors d’oeuvres.
They’re supposed to perk up the appetite,
get the glands prepped so they’re
ready to digest the main course,
the substance of the meal.
But if you know a little French,
hours d’oeuvre literally means
“outside of the work.”
And if you’re anything like me,
if it’s a good one, you eat far more than you should,
and you’re left with a diminished appetite
rather than a heightened one.
I lose steam a few bites in, and
dinner is downgraded to doggy bag status.

I’d rather save it for later.

A nice spot of crème brulee after
the meat and potatoes have had time to digest,
after the blank page that signifies The End.
Only three or four spoons full.
Just enough to close your eyes,
lean you back in the chair
and evoke a sigh.

Or best yet, leave it until the dishes

are cleared away, if it’s a good one.
 

“The After Dinner Mint”

Getaway

Silver folded icing coats an Alpine lake

sitting at the base of a bald, bearded,
ice-capped mountain backdrop.

The whispering wind wishes I were there.

My murmuring heart longs to belong
to this landscape, to escape from the
drudgery of here and now.
Lungs, still coated with winter’s murky offerings,
ache for a cleansing peppermint breeze.

Take me away to dip my feet in the run-off waters,

to renew my soul as we wander along
pine needled grounds, unmarred by
foot-trodden paths.

Writer's Block

I can feel them getting fidgety

in huddled groups, making sloppy signs

and plans for picket line chants.
They’re sick of being used,
stretched, and sometimes sacked
if they underperform on the job.
They’ve had enough, and they’re
not going to take it anymore.

I megaphone my message:
Words are cheap! If you won’t do the job
I know where I can get a thousand more
just like you who will literally work for free.

What are you going to do? They mock.

Outsource? A collective guffaw ripples
around the periphery of the right side
of my brain. And the truth is I do need them.

Without words, I am alone in my silence.

The Greeter

You gotta give the guy some props.

Anyone whose vocal cords can endure an entire day of,

“Helloooo, and welcome tooooo

Waaalllll*maaarrt!”

spouted off with religious zeal

to the incoming herds, their heads and eyes down

as they grab their carts and stampede

past, avoiding the guy like he’s

calling them to repentance instead

of greeting them at the store’s entrance.

I’m sure he’s a nice enough guy,

but he sounds more like a sports announcer

pumping up the enthusiasm in the arena

at the beginning of a game

than a geriatric has-been whose retirement

benefits just won’t cover his medical bills

or his wife’s prescriptions. Or maybe

his wife is gone now,

and he doesn’t have anyone to come home to

or to greet when she comes through the front door

at the end of a busy day.

 

Note to self:

You probably will regret it,
so quit saying, "Ah, what the hell."

Laundry does not do itself.
But somehow it still manages
to multiply and replenish
all over the laundry room floor
when left unchaperoned.

It takes the right kind of hard work
to get what you want.
Frantic work doesn't get you
anything but frazzled.

Cynicism, like smoking, can be thoroughly
satisfying, and may even make
you seem cool. But in the end, a daily
habit will lead to loss of friends
and possible cancer of the soul.

John was wrong. In the end, the love you
take is not equal to the love you make.
In the present, the love you receive
is greater than the love you give.
So love.

The blank screen

with the blinking vertical line,

a portal from the space beyond

or the place behind.

It dares you to discover what word

may slide out from its hiding space,

only one sideways step

away from immortality.

Find me, it blinks, and if you

stare at it long enough, you will.

The Faith of a Child

On the Christmas Eve when I was seven,

after the excitement had faded

into murmured breaths and

turn-tossed tangles of blankets and legs,

I awoke and remembered in a moment

of chest-squeezing panic

that I had neglected to ask Santa for

a pad of paper and colored pencils.

It was a by-the-way request

I had intended to include

along with the toys on my list.

But instead, it fell by the wayside.

Desired, but not so intensely that it stayed put

in my young mind when I was

confronted with the task of

reciting my hopes and dreams

to the white-bearded man at the mall,

who I knew to have the power to make me happy.

A pad of paper and colored pencils.

Simple, to be sure. No big deal, really.

An easy gift for Santa to come by.

So I did what any other church-going

seven-year old with a very basic

understanding of making requests

to powerful beings would do.

I prayed to Santa to bring me

A pad of paper and colored pencils.

Satisfied, I rolled over with a bit of covers

clutched in my hand, which my sister

promptly yanked back into its proper place,

never quickening her steady breaths,

and I went back to sleep, so sure my

prayer to Santa would be answered

with a pad of paper and colored pencils

poking out of the top of my stocking

come waking time.

I smile now at my childhood simplicity.

But still, I pray.

And that pad of paper and colored pencils

remain elusive as they were that

decades-ago Christmas morn.

Ode to Hope

Oh hope, you false-feathered thing,

we are too intimate. You’ve been

my bedfellow far too long,

and I think it’s time for me

to meet someone new.

Really, it’s not me, it’s you.

And no, I don’t want to stay friends.

I’m done, actually.

I’m tired of you leaving me hanging

for days, even weeks at a time

only to disappear with a phone call,

an email, or the ubiquitous text message.

You’ve bailed on me one too many times.

But you always come back under the

guise of fresh starts and clean slates.

No more. There’s the door,

so use it!

And when you meet reality lugging his

suitcase in to fill the drawers I’ve emptied

of your things, don’t bother saying a word.

Because he doesn’t even know you exist.

Someone needs a hug!

I love embracing when it involves

another human. Wait, I must qualify:

when it reciprocally involves a human

I love, embracing

is a fine way to share a moment.

But when it comes to embracing my grays

or my age, or even my inner child?

Not so much.

An embrace should be a mutual exchange,

not a surrender to the inevitable.

Maybe my birth certificate reveals that

I am firmly entrenched in Middle Age,

but why should that dictate the kind of

clothing I wear or my activity level?

And just because I like to dye my gray hairs

doesn’t mean I’m afraid of who

I’m becoming. Or dissatisfied with who I am.

It might be different if those things had

something to give me in return.

Wait, I must qualify:  give me

something I enjoy in return.

But no. Gray clashes with my skin tone.

Age attempts to steal my grace, not enhanced it.

And my inner child? She throws way too many

temper tantrums.

So it’s been decided. I won’t embrace anything

Until it can embrace me back.

April 8

If you want to get rid of undue stress in your life,

it’s simple! Just stop doing things that stress you out.

Like laundry and cleaning the cat box,

or hearing the shrieking blare of your alarm clock.

Just go ahead and turn it off—

No harm, no foul.

Stop feeding the dog and the kids as well.

Eschewing the critical thinking skills that go into

dinner decisions can save any dozen

skipped heart beats in the five o’clock hour alone.

Work is no longer an option,

which is good since the alarm clock now

rests in pieces on the floor below the big hole

in the wall you’re not going to have to fix

now that you’ve eliminated the tension in your life.

And that tax check that’s due next week—

the one you haven’t had the courage to write?

No worries! Just shove your money concerns out the

door with civic responsibilities and

that dinner you volunteered to coordinate for the

elderly folks in your church.

I’m sure they won’t mind.

The kids don’t need lessons or help with their homework.

If they can’t do it themselves by now,

there’s not much hope for their futures anyway.

So don’t worry!

And most important of all, get yourself some duct tape

to plaster over the miniscule mouth out of which that

bothersome voice in your head that keeps nagging

you to write a poem a day.

What was I thinking?

Ten points for each allusion you can find!

How can I say I love you when
it's all been said before?
No new and clever turn of phrase
will prove I love you more.

What metaphor of summer's day
or red, red rose will show
the magnitude of love that burns
within my heart and soul?

I will not count the ways I love
or miss you when you're gone.
Nor shall I weave with golden threads
a mat you'll walk upon.

And yet, by heav'n I do believe
my love for you is rare,
though sonnet-pleading fantasies
suggest none else compare.

I only know I love you! though
my words fall short of depth.
Accept my oath: that I will love
you better after death.

April 6

I was out of town for the weekend, so I'm posting yesterday's poem today. Yeah, it's haiku--but did you happen to notice that it's spring outside! Haiku is popping from apricot tree limbs and bursting from daffodil buds. Embrace it!

Seeds in earthen wombs
kissed fertile by sunshine gold.
Blossoms paint the land.

Exposed

Pieced-together flat lands extend
beyond the broad horizon.
A quadrant of wheat nestled
into angled fields of sugar beets
just pushing up to feel the sun
bathe their leafy greens.

A quilt from the vantage point
of clouds, puffing and rolling
their way across an expansive blue sky.
But rather monotonous from ground level,
blurring by at 75 miles per hour.

A river runs through it, a silver ribbon
snaking in and out of view. A foot note
to an otherwise unbroken disertation.
It seems impossible that it could go anywhere
at all, level and endless as its host land
appears to be. Until it arrives

here

For millenia, rolling water and undercurrents
carved a groove which deepened to a gorge,
walls which descend layer by layer
to a white and green swirl of activity.
Here a jagged outcropped ledge.
There a pile of car-sized boulders
where the wall gave way, how many years ago?
A grand chasm of diversity and history
which would be hidden beneath a blanket of crops
if not for the river.

What other flat, imagination-numbing scenes
only lack a catalyst to expose the
poetry-worthy beauty lurking beneath the surface?

And how can I get a river
to run through me?

This poem ain't gonna write itself

No, dear student, I can't tell you
how to write a poem.
I can read you all my favorites
and hope that you feel connected
to the poet's emotions through her words.
That you will be inspired to accost your own
feelings which you will lovingly,
painfully display in lines and stanzas.

I can show you spoken word videos
and will you to look into the wounded heart
of a poet who has reached in, ripped out his soul,
and tenderly put it on display just for you.
And you can poke and prod around the core of
your being, and bravely reveal someone no one yet knows.

I can even teach you about similes
and metaphors and symbols in hopes that
you'll discover one lurking somewhere in
the right side of your brain,
like a fish in the cool shadow of a grassy bank,
nonchalantly eyeing the bait I've so
carefully cast into just the right current.

You see, you have to come out of the cool
to write a poem. Poetry requires opinion.
I requires unabashed honesty. You're not here to
maintain your image. You're here to stretch.
So let go of expectations. Forget about reputations.
Find something that speaks to you, then discover the
right words to effectively speak back.
That's how you write a poem.

Day 3

HELLO
My name is

Writers aren't born

properly labeled, so it's

hard to know one when

one appears.

Julianna Baggott

The only part of my life's label that remains

perfectly legible is:

HELLO

My name is

The space below is a smeared mess of

edit marks, erasures,

even some sharpied scribbles

followed by so many exclamation points

that Mark Twain would feel obligated to make a

snide comment about my

self-perceived comedic prowess.

Or would it be F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Either way, some part of my buried past

is a joke.

At the moment, the space is filled with 

three letters,

uppercased, bolded and rebolded:

HELLO

My name is 

MOM

Though the very act of my fingers keying words

on this page will cause it to change.

I think I just felt the "p" soak into the tip

of my right pinkie, and travel with

the blood in my veins, making its way

back to my heart

and out of my skin to settle

below the red header, morphing the letters

that beat along with my heart this morning

as I dropped my children off at the airport

to visit their dad.

The "o" is already there,

no need for a replacement.

The soon-to-be-former resident "m"

rotates a quarter turn to the left,

and the "t" hops from keyboard to chest

to complete the me of the moment.

A skilled forensics specialists could lift

those letters

and the ones that came before

to reveal my identities all the way back.

Some would be easily discovered:

wife, teacher, daughter, friend.

Others would be harder to decipher,

their letters grown

faint from lack of use, or

from denial.

There was a time when

HELLO

My name is 

Runner

held its position for months at a time,

though if I'm honest with myself,

it must have been surrounded with invisibly inked

words like lonely, desperate, afraid.

And there have been plenty of times when

HELLO

My name is

Imposter

held the space hostage.

Sharpied scribbles and exclamation points

soon to follow.

Today, I'm content with an adaptive

white space, even if it means the white

has transformed into ever-changing

shades of gray.

The black and white

of my world ended

so long ago.

HELLO

My name is

HELLO

My name is

HELLO

My name is

Day 2

Gathering Eggs

The day she removed her apron

and draped it over the egg basket

I knew life was about to change

forever.

These chickens, as dear to her as children,

still clucked, still pecked,

still layed.

But she

abandoned them.

They still needed her when she purposefully

removed from her midsection the square of linen

that daily held her collection—

the proof that her chickens existed at all—

and forever laid it aside.

As if to remove the reminder of her obligations to

and the dependence of those

who continued to live.

As if that would erase the memory of the dead.

The day she removed her apron,

what little was left of life light faded from her eyes.

A dull soul remained,

the cut away pain tucked in a pocket of linen.

Hope also removed,

Abandoned.

The day she removed her apron,

I wanted to scream

into her deafened ears:

What about me? I’m still alive!

But life had already lost its value.

And death had already extended an invitation.

The day I donned her apron

And took hold of the egg basket handle,

I knew life was about to change

Forever.

And I would never give up, nor

Abandon them.

It's National Poetry Month! I'm going to attempt to write one poem a day for the entire month. Wish me luck! Here's today's poem:

On My Way to Meet My Teenage Daughters at the Dentist After School

Lights flash red and white as we approach,

my youngest daughter and I.

Two of them—no three,

plus the first one that passed us

before the others shocked themselves into view.

That makes four.

On its own, speeding to its blocks-away destination,

a singing siren could be hopeful.

But the three left behind to flank the red and blue flashers,

and the yellow-taped, traffic-diverted section of road,

sing a different song.

Or is it already a dirge?  

Before I see the stroller at rest on its side,

before the group of sidewalk gawkers,

some of them crying,

comes into view,

I hope in my squeezed and shrinking heart

that they made it through.

I frantically search for what

I desperately pray I won’t see—

willing each crunched car

and head of hair to be some other color than

red.

A teenage boy with his head in his hands.

The spilled contents of a diaper bag.

An elderly woman sitting on the ground.

My relief is visceral when I’m sure the cars

and faces at the scene

are unfamiliar.

And though I hurt for those who will receive

that heartbreaking phone call—

a life stolen or marred by simply being right here

a few, frightening moments ago,

I unsqueeze my heart to make room for the gratitude

of a mother

whose family is intact for another day.

More than a year

since my last post. How did that happen? I guess I'd better think of something interesting to blog about.