Tag: poem

escribí esto para mi tío – July 2021

The elders are going
One by one they take their leave
last breathes
Or whispered goodbyes
Sometimes without any words at all

Thin tall frames
Short lumpy ones too
Heads full with memories and songs
Ever varying shades of gray

They’ve gathered all their days
In a white cloth made of cotton
And tied them to a stick
With a string
And thrown them over shoulders

Waving off the June bugs
Dipping head and shoulders beneath the willows sway
Whistling or humming or singing as they walk off into the deep green

Or into the dessert beige
Beneath blues and reds and pinks
Mountain ranges wave as they pass
Sometimes silent as they go
Or with wide smiles and laughter recalled

I’ll not forget, I pray
The way you laughed
The rhythmic way you walked
Never

The breeze rises slow and strong
lifting dust from earth
gently falling down
Like the tears we weep at your leaving
I try but no thing makes your leaving less like your leaving

in the rooms living

down the hall

laughter rings

bouncing off of walls

dipping underneath archways

coming my way

in the next room voices deep

in that room little ones are arguing

she pleads her case

while she stands her ground

the water running in that sink sings

along to the tune from that pocket

the twang hums

the birds chirp

the smell of toast taosting

wafting in and out

in this room tears

for the hard talks had today

and so many other hard things

from today and yesterday

and last month

and all those other hard things

and days

and words

and blood stained stones

hard things from so long ago

bags and wagons and pockets full

of yesterday’s sorrows

of yesteryear’s hurts

of long past offences

and a million years of loss

piled up here

in this space

beneath these beams

on top of my head

tiny

Tiny silver spoon

I’m so happy to have met you

Me in my jeans and flip flops

Shiny from car air and the miles

You in that trap made of logs

Did the sign say they were hand crafted?

Building square and tall

In the shadow of all those trees

Next to that highway

Brimming with tourists

And other tiny silver spoons

I picked you

Not because of your shine

And not for your blessed silverness

Or because of the wee acorn

Perched atop your end

But because you can so easily

Chase the sweet brown sweetness

That is my favorite hazelnut spread

And live cozily in any

Of the 53 pockets of my bag

Away

The sun sets behind a building made of wood and stone and earth: time. She is a fireball in the sky. Burning orange with her shoulders wide, arms stretched out over the horizon, head back and into the sky.

I am passenger on swift moving train racing over the miles like wind past this scene. It is slow and beautiful and fierce and fast and sad.

Pale blues give way to deeper shades. I try to remember. I must stir. I must wake. I must write it down.

Lost are those long slender days when pain was less known to these bones. Fists clenched but the days have slipped through. The decades are left, waylaid and unremembered.

With the darkening sky weariness settles in as my eyelids close. And the gentlest wisp of cloud carries even these memories away, tucking them safely into its billowed folds: past.

Anxiety

From the ear buds the soft monotone voices speak slowly enough for sleep to come to me. Silence is too full of the unknown for my tired mind to manage.

Asleep like I am in a race. Running from thought to thought. From dream to awake to the places still and dark between them to running again.

The sound of the dogs breathing heavy, the train in the distance, horn blaring into all the places of the town. long wailing horn rising over fence and building and dumpster and on into the night full with their miles of Winter bare fields. Every sound heard and felt and sending mind to wander and run and search and never find.

Tiny and not so tiny people creaking in over the planks and into our bed wedging themselves into the spaces between he and I. My body unable to turn right onto my back. Unable to fully extend my legs unless I turn and twist myself diagonal.

Words in the smoothest script on so many pieces of paper tossed into the air fall to tables edge and metal chair and hard-wood floors and the scramble begins. Decide what to do, do and decide again what to do.

Anxiety

16 Dec 2020

reassess

we were all gung-ho
we were determined
we were more than a little brave
we were going to go
and change the world
we did our best
we started families
we made our decisions
and now we’re left with this

it isn’t bad
it’s even beautiful
but it isn’t what we thought that it would be
and we are not equipped
for all that must be filled
so we must make decisions
must start again
must reassess

30 OCT 2018

I wrote the above poem in 2006 I believe. We would have just been married. I think that it must have been winter, or at least that is the feeling that I get when I read it now. I remember that it hurt to write it and that it hurt my husband when he read it. We were both fresh from big life changes, from dying dreams and from the birth of new ones.

I come back to this poem every few years because we keep stumbling into new territory. Life is the moving into new phases, new seasons. As the days and years pass and the kids grow and change and as we do as well, there are waves of mystery and unknown and the new to navigate. Starts again, again require the stepping back and reassessing, again.

It is a discipline really, one that I hadn’t noticed we’d developed until the years piled atop themselves and my heart grew weary and yet so filled with hope. Dichotomy being the friend of the creative. Oh, that last line would have been a great blog title. Next time.