Making Peace

I think it might be important to make peace with what is, before moving on to what is to come.  I try to live in the present as much as possible, but now and again a trip back, to evaluate, for educational purposes, isn't a bad thing.

It does appear that every now and again, god has to give us a good, swift kick in the pants, for no apparent reason.  Maybe it is fun to watch us dance.  Maybe it is a learning lesson.  Maybe it is just a cosmic accident.  But it does happen and on the great continuum, if it doesn't involve the death of a spouse, child, beloved pet or loved one, we are pretty darned lucky.

Sometimes, however, we find ourselves stuck, in a situation that is not of our making, that is painful, offensive and sickening.  It makes us ill, our health declines, our hearts break and our souls wither. And still we try to change the situation.

There are many good sayings about these situations: "Out of difficulty grows miracles." "God won't give us anything we can't handle." "When a door closes, a window will open." But I object somewhat to the passive nature of these phrases.  I do not believe god puts us in these situations, so he can rescue us from them.  We must rescue ourselves. We must tear a hole in our own brick wall, using something on the order of a toothpick and our own fingernails, until our worldview changes, the boundaries of our thought processes expand, and we find peace, not in changing the situation, but in moving beyond it.

“There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.”

Washington Irving quotes (American Writer called the first American man of letters. Best known for the short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. 1783-1859)

Sunset of We

Pacific Island,
Elongated beach,
Sapphire water
Pinkish sand,
Chubby bare legs
Of bucket-toting children,
Catching my eye.

Shimmering.

I choose to remember
That day,
The smell of salt;
No hint of rain.
We were so
Elegant then,
Lacquered pacific lunch box,
On a teakwood deck,
Amber iced tea,
Exotic ginger in a vase,
Hypnotic sea breeze,
Twisting fortune,
The belief you loved me
That I deserved your love,
That it could last forever
Floating effortlessly overhead.

I did not expect then
That I would fail us, destroy us,
With the formidable force
Of an unborn, ill-conceived baby
Of the female imagination.
And I did not expect that you
Could deny me something
Of such importance
With such ease.

After that,
We traveled alone.

Now we are older;
Not so elegant.
None of it really matters,
But it still stings.

Poverty

Just as the bleary eyes of a child
Wait for Santa long past bedtime,
I lie in the dark, waiting for you.
I play in the imaginary sandbox
Of goodness (in case goodness might help),
Until the bright plastic of my
Sandbox toys fades to milk.
I dance in the imaginary light of service
Until I know every weakness I possess.
I wield the puppets of compassion
Until they become awkward, and still,
As self-serving as an antique mirror.
I awaken and find I love you still
Even if I don’t qualify,
Even if Christmas never comes.

Wedding Dress

A wedding dress,
For a young lady,
Elegant, pretty,
Not just any dress,
A dress of passage.
Women gather,
Young and old,
Expectant,
Anticipating signs,
A meshing of fabric and lace,
And partially formed identity,
In suddely mature loveliness.
Beads sparkle,
In the young bride's eyes;
A smile forms that brings tears;
Faith is restored,
By a new beginning.

A Father’s Tale

His wife’s death was as easy
As the slow, soft rocking of
Her chair, before the fire.
She died young, she ceased
To rock long before he knew.
He was a busy man.
She was a memory he
Could not call back.

Thus it was that,
At forty-three years
He took up a crayon
And began to draw the
Garden where he played
Hide and seek between
The roses and the trees
When he was seven.
The old paths were dim,
Less sure where they were
Leading, cluttered with
Weeds that seemed useful
In the beginning for
Holding together the soil,
But that grew until
They had taken it up,
Become the soil, become
The fabric and the frame
So that the picture was
Indiscernible, its message
Lost in a memory he
Could not call back.

Rebirth has never been easy.
It took all of his second forty years—
He was a fortunate man—
To pull the weeds,
To get at the roots that
Suck and twine and curl
With the working of the earth,
To get them out
In time to rock before the fire
A few more hours
As the child he had been,
Drawing hides and seeks
And clean leading paths.

Until one day he ceased to rock,
Slow and soft before the fire,
Where I sat stupidly trying
To draw a memory
I could not call back.

Wanting

The view is numb.
Your words have gone cold,
I wish for the detail
That once hurt me,
The rocks in my path
Are smooth now,
The fields covered over
With ice and snow,
I am paralyzed with waiting.

Come My Friend

A poem based on childhood stories, for my girls.



Come my friend,
I will take you.
Morning after a rain.
Morning,
Dark still,
Quiet.
Wet and cool.

We’ll move
Stealthily,
Escape
Step into the grass,
Leave trouble sleeping,
Just this time.

We'll take a dirt path,
Soft and spongy,
Into the trees,
Aspens forming
A gate of sorts
Draped with
Unused expectation.

Leaving ours behind
We clear the gate,
Proceed anew,
Walk backward,
On tiptoe,
See if anyone
Is following.
A secret is more fun
With two.

We cross a stream.
A rough green log
Wobbles slightly
Under our weight.
Taking our time,
Striving for balance,
We cross,
Walk for hours
Until we are lighter.

Colors intensify.
Through the growth—
Through tangles of
Weed and willow,
A beaver pond
Shining in sunlight,
Stirring, rippling,
Shhhh,
A muskrat is working.

Hidden in shadow,
A spider’s web spans
Tree to tree;
It grips my face;
Distracted,
I struggle briefly with
The unexpected.

But there are bluebells to see,
Waist deep, and so many butterflies,
In so many weightless colors.
Strawberries so tiny, dainty,
And sweet--they must be fairy-food.
Toadstools, spotted and intense,
Growing at the path’s edges.
Waxy fungi cantilevered to tree bark,
Light through aspen leaves,
Lacy shadows on the forest floor.

Ferns; ferns, resting at the
Water’s edge, dipping their silly
Leaves into clear, cool water
Below lawns of lime green moss.
The stream makes them shimmy;
The water turns white
It churns over rock
And driftwood,
Toward the mountain’s base.

Nature captivates my attention
And my soul. I almost forget
The secret --why I brought you so far.
Henry, Dorothy and Freddie live
Here, deep in the forest,
In their ladybug houses.
If we are quiet,
We may see them.

Why?

Why struggle?
Why put up a fight?
Why be a rigid thing?
Bend.

Rachel at Nine

Freckles and sunshine,
Laughter and snuggles,
Unselfconscious
Dancing and singing;
Forest Monkey,
Jumping and screeching.
Scattered tears,
Occasional storm clouds,
Chance of pajama girl,
Love unconditional,
Freckles and sunshine.

“Grandpa,” My Father

Grandpa moves slowly
At 84, like an artsy movie,
Meticulous and careful,
Hard to comprehend.
Old bones showing through,
Tight and shiny skin,
Pale eyes that don’t disclose
Much but acceptance and joy,
A little tiredness, and
The occasional frustration
That technology brings.
A body determined to continue,
A life lived well.
But to what end?
I watch and I am amazed.
He never utters a desire,
A wish or a want,
Always helping,
Always serving,
No tomorrow, only today.
Surely if there is a heaven,
There must be a place
For someone like that.

New Day

Sometimes,
Early morning,
I sit on my front porch.

Faithful,
The sun does come,
Not hurried,
Not all at once,
But artfully,
Delicately,
Rock ledge to tree,
Illuminating mist,
Aspens shimmering,
Pink over emerald,
Lavender kisses.

I wrap my hands around
A warm cup of coffee
Bury myself, deep in my robe,
Pet the dog and surrender.

Remembering

Growing up
There was a tree
In my backyard
A redoak tree
With leaves
Scarlet,
Brown,
Green,
And in spring,
A color that reminded
For all the world,
Of turtles.
Rough multicolored bark
Branches
Right for climbing.
My tree.

I knew my tree.
Remember it still
Every aspect.
And so,
I know
I will remember you.

Sarah at 3 Months

You slept, twitching only slightly,
Damp hair against my breast.
In a small room that smelled slightly
Of plaster and tomato vines
Moths humming,
And us—rocking, rocking.
I slept too, and together we dreamed,
A farmhouse on a dirt road,
A dark branch and a woman,
A beautiful woman standing guard,
Her eyes, my eyes standing guard
Under the eaves as women do.

Tiger

I am young and hungry.
My love is an eerie snow
On the hillside, a tiger
In the eerie snow, crouching,
Emerald and amber.
Fierce and afraid.

Chukchi Hunter (National Geographic – February 1983)

Photograph:
A man,
In a fur hat,
Breathing smoke
Into a freeze
That came last August,
Under a spineless sun.
His eyes are dark;
Unmoving,
Believing,
Summer will come,
Knowing,
It will not
Come soon;
Last long.

Robert

I learned that
Robert
Was not to depend on
For company at Christmas,
Or raising children or
Planting gardens.

He was to share coffee at dawn
In a strange house
In someone else’s neighborhood;
To jog though the park
In the haze of November
And laugh at a fat lady
On a moped, more because
We had been lovers than
Because she was fat or the
Moped tiny, or gravity unfair.

That is not to say
I did not love him then,
But that I needed to
Fill the empty rooms
I felt forming in my future,
Rooms that could not stay empty
Without spreading into the endless,
Dustless, white desert of a dream
That will not come together
At the end of a night.

The shimmering mist of laughter
Two lovers share beneath the trees
In November will not easily trade
For a family, fat, dull and certain,
And oddly favored by gravity.

Digging A New Flowerbed at the Nursing Home

I stopped to watch
An old shoe surface,
Curled and sickly yellow;
A three pronged fork
And rusty companions;
Bleached and crusted pillbugs;
Two writhing half-worms;
Grave implications of flowers.

January 2

You should have come.
It was cold.
I traced cracks in the cement
Across an empty parking lot.
Arms out, I teetered
Along a curb and down an alley
Where the cracks were full of tar.
I popped tar bubbles there with Debbie
(We popped them with our feet)
In July when we were seven.
I watched a leaf float down the gutter.
In the water I saw clouds;
Trees spidering along the fence;
A blackbird on a post,
Twitching his tail;
My face.
I leaned closer—the blackbird was gone.
I was alone awhile with the clouds
And the trees.
I squashed a puff ball with my heel.
I rolled a Bois d’Arc apple
Through the mud, and threw
A can at old Mrs. Bottigheimer’s dog.
(It hit the fence)
In the water I saw clouds;
Trees spidering along the fence;
A blackbird, on the post again behind me,
Twitching his tail.

You Are a Void Now

You are a void now,
An empty space that cannot be filled,
And I am a lost boy.

We Are Best Alone

We are best alone. We talk to ourselves.
We comfort ourselves.
We don’t judge; we rest.

We kiss the dog on the snout,
We love who we really love,
We hold God in our hands.

Diagnosis

Poetry
A useless religion;
Egghead bread
For spectacled librarians
On lunchbreaks
And coffeebreaks
In January of
Very bad years;
Unprofitable
Non-nutrative
Habit forming
Sweetner
Causing Cancer
In laboratory animals
And possible brain cell
Deterioration
Leading to everyday
Shortness of breath,
Watering of eyes,
Hollowness,
Of heart,
And loss of hearing;
Acuteness of
Life
Under extreme conditions
Bad breath.

Doorway to Springtime

All was color:
Grape hyacinth,
Yellow daffodils,
Row upon row
Of flaming azalea,
Pink and purple
Crocus on a
Background of
Scalding roses,
Twining rung
Upon rung
Of brilliant lattice.
Then through no
Fault of my own,
The door slammed shut
And the sun went out.

Suicide

Those who come to us
And leave too soon
Were never meant to stay.
Do not judge them for your loss
Thank God for sharing.

They are often angels
With wings too delicate
A rainbow that fades too quickly.
They are a gift.

They may seem as
Darkness and struggle,
A tragedy, a sin.
But it is not so.
They are a looking glass
Reflecting the richness and dark beauty of your world,
In transparency and light.

Someday you will thank God for sharing,
You will accept this strange gift,
And bless the pain you both endured,
For you to have it,
For even so short a time.

Love After Death

To carry someone in your heart
That you can neither have nor use
Touch nor hold nor even claim.
To have desire and put it down,
To have wants and go without,
To keep your own counsel,
To respect unnatural limits,
To feel lost a million times over,
To value loving more than being loved,
Is an amazing, unexpected gift—
It leaves me humble and breathless.

Belated

She loved you as a child and so comes
As a child in the late evening,
To rest her hand upon the earth.

You taught her to believe
In what she could not see
And so she believes she feels your warmth
There, and cries tears she could not
Cry for you while you were living.

Having nothing to say, she rests in the long
Grass beside your stone, discovered—
Chance meeting of friends, one odd
Conversation—in a supermarket,
Years later.

She rests until the child
Is quiet, as her love is now quiet,
In the green field where she leaves
You sleeping.

Gently

I am the same
Today the old man
Breaking out pecans;
The old woman shelling
Peas into a hat,
Pod and pod and pod,
With drawn fingers
Until the hat is full,
Boiling with bacon, with salt,
The sun passing end to end
Of the long fence and away,
No one to come.

Today, a sleeper dreaming
Pod and pod and pod
Old man breaking out doves
Old woman shelling gems
Into the sun.