As I walk the old railroad bed away from town violets and periwinkles peer from bright green ground cover and the funky protozoan scent of the Raritan fills my nostrils. A cardinal’s scarlet flashes from a Sycamore overhead and two gold finches,like acrobatic dandelions, frolic through the green haze of trees. The path is lined with skunk cabbage, daffodils and buttercups, their mix of intention and happenstance so like life’s. High above, almost out of range, a hawk circles. The hum of the nearby Interstate hardly matters here. Its slinky spasms and urgencies are no longer my problem. I’ve traded those for the white flowers of May Apples, emerald velvet of moss and the disappearing tail of a red fox trotting into the trees. The world of commerce and its stresses computers, paperwork, clocks and what they count roll off me in a grateful sigh. I have lost my job and gained the world.
Category: POETRY
SELF-MADE MAN
No one comes from nothing.
Who birthed him – potty trained him
taught him to tie his shoes?
The concept’s blind to the myriad
lives that touch our own -
The workers who create roads
The teachers, who teach math and language
The plumbers who keep the sewers working
The linemen who climb poles to keep the lights on
Who made the shirt he wears?
His shoes? His socks?
His BVDs?
Rich or poor we all rely on weaver, seamstress
garbageman and priest
to help us through our days.
In this time of plague, we’re reminded
no infant can change its own diaper.
WOMEN
We arrive with our eggs
carried like loose change
until time and sperm meet
and a baby grows where
nothing has lived before.
We cast the best eggs first
save lesser ones for later
like unmarried daughters
spinster cells - homely but
good at housekeeping.
The price for children is pain
mental and physical.
Childbirth is the well-kept secret
of forcing a bowling ball
through a buttonhole.
Unmentioned too are cramps which
yield only to tub, hot pad
or drugs - the feeling of one’s
innards being yanked out
like a dropped transmission.
And Lizzie Borden days when PMS
changes our minds to war zones.
Anger and profanity replace finer
feeling and a flat tire is reason
to call the suicide hotline.
Did I choose the wrong gender?
I wonder until 20 hours in
when they hand me you, made in me.
A miracle to erase
the memory of pain.
NESTS
The whole place we built by hand
not just paper and paint.
We hung rafters from the sky
a chimney and bright metal roof
which sang in every rain.
We walked blank land and invented
life anew in the Blue Ridge
as if anyone ever starts again.
Years later a blind date remarked
“You’ve spent your life on houses.”
True. Like a nest-obsessed bird, I’ve
painted my way from town to town
designing space for friends and music,
tables to sit at and chairs to read in.
I envisioned a family unlike
my scattered patchwork
which rarely gathers where I live.
All that time and work
for a life dreamed of
a love desired – perhaps that’s
why birds have not just nests
but wings.
PROMISE
Please no box, no steel to seal me from the earth. Return me when it is my time to all I was and wish to be again. Release me to be born anew, green and wonderful each Spring – shoots sprouting from my heart each part of me blooming. Promise me.
HEARTS
I did not know when I birthed my son that he would take my heart with him. At night, desperate for rest half asleep, barely present I’d attempt to nurse him. The choice frustrated us both. One night when he cried, I took him downstairs to my rocker, made tea, made us comfortable and realized he was my life. He grew. I watched my heart learn to walk, read navigate friendships, school and grieve a first love anew. He became a man who with his spouse created three children into whom he placed his heart. Together, powerless but present remembering our own youth we watch their spirits grow as they navigate their lives. We’re participant and spectator both since we freed our hearts to beat, break and love inside our children.
NOTICE
A blue jay struts across the porch
to forage in our planters.
The red streak at eye level's a cardinal.
White “ribbons” wrap the trees - plastic prayer flags
to a God, gnome or Goddess unknown.
A cuban lizard pulls one off
the live oak on the corner.
As I leave Johnnie’s Bakery,
an Agama, his head and tail stripe
the color of children’s aspirin,
races ahead of me.
Johnnie’s bread has the taste of hope
hand-made, crusty, fresh.
So too does the air, laced with scent of
gardenia, magnolia and surf.
Beauty confounds the thought of so many dead.
Mourners bereft of goodbye are blind
with grief while fear heightens others'senses.
How can such extremes of bliss and horror
cohabit this planet?
The return of wildlife, clean air and
quiet seas make it clear
this earth can shrug us off
without notice.
GIFTS
My aunt gave me the sea in a book big as me. Curled in a chair, I wandered tidal pools despite the Christmas chill held hermit crabs and starfish inhaled salt air. I walked that book’s pages with childlike devotion an eight-year-old explorer baby beach comber. Robert Frost’s snow drifted into my 4th grade class and I listen for his horse’s bells as I practiced writing and first used an ink pen. Line by cursive line his poetry became mine along with the smell of ink, the feel of good paper, the love of pens. I began my own poems in solitude, sweet solitude…
TERROR
Dad dreams we flee the Nazis, our ‘55 Buick low on gas. We drive by the sea. They come with guns. They come in submarines. He wakes sweating and terrified. He shares his fear with me. Nazis enter my dreams dragging the stench of Dachau. They come with guns. They come in submarines. I wake sweating and terrified. Neo-Nazis march in Charlotte armed - flags waving, hatred palpable and near. In dreams, I hear the thud of boots on the night stairs.
FLU
Hold every cell still palm under chin legs and feet balanced. Stay in the trough between cough and ache. Sleep without waking the dragon. Forget how tooth, limb and eye throb and cry for relief. Dream, pray hope this will pass.
