Category Archives: 7 sins and friends

by

vast

Sometimes emotions are vast. I do not think our culture deals with grief very easily. Grief then becomes a vast pit, stuffed inside us. I sent the Falling Angels poems to friends and family. One older friend said that the poems were too sad and was I that sad all the time?

I replied, no, I am not sad all the time. The sadness is in the poems because there are very few people that I know that are comfortable with sadness and grief. So I put it in to poetry, because I do not want to stuff it. We need to let grief come out and let the tears flow and let it go.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: vast.

by

send the remaining vaccine to another country

I know that it sucks for US nurses and doctors and hospitals to say this. You are having to intubate and take care of and watch people die, who have refused vaccination. You are really really tired and discouraged and sick of death and sick of working way too many hours without a break.

However, I think it’s time to give up on the oppositional defiant section of the United States, say “ok, boomer” or twenty two year old or seventy old and send the rest of the vaccines to people who want it and who would be happy and grateful and glad. If we don’t help vaccinate the rest of the world, we’ll see more strains. They might morph to something milder than Delta. They might turn into something worse and more lethal.

Send the vaccine to people who want it.

by

Advice to Michael

This poem is about a dream that helped me after my mother died and through a divorce. It was not an easy process, to look at my childhood and what happened. It can be a very frightening place to go. Good luck and health to everyone who tries.

by

phoenix rising

Written in 2009.

Set a torch to me
Why don’t you?

It’s not the tearing sound of fabric
A small rip
And now a tear
That I feel

It’s the torch

I’ve been here before
A job where the idealistic came
As moths to the flame
Self-immolation
Because they had ideals

I watched and burned and rose

It’s the torch
The flames that rise
As the witch is burned
Tilts back her head
In ecstasy and knowledge
Eager to learn what she can
From these burning brands

In the burning we learn
In pain we learn
If we can remain open
Ashes fall to the ground
Buckets of water
Wash any remains to grey mud
Gone, punished
Relief for the frightened
An example has been set

No but what stirs at night
Moon or none
What rises from the mud
The ashes
Takes form
Takes flight
Laughing

Set a torch to me
Why don’t you?
And see what is created

by

Loss

It seems to be one of my irritable days
They come rolling round in the month of May
I don’t feel friendly and don’t want to play
It seems to be one of my irritable days

It seems to be one of those days when I’m mad
At nothing particular. I feel really bad
I hate those damn tourists who always wear plaid
I really intensely dislike feeling sad

I haven’t felt quite this bad since last year
But I’m not one to cry. I don’t like weak tears
I’m not one to let myself feel any fears
I haven’t felt this bad for almost a year

It seems to be one of those days when I’m mad
I think I’ll go pick a nice fight with that lad
He looks too damn happy and just too damn glad
When I’m punching his lights out I won’t feel so sad

It seems to be one of my irritable days
Going to work on them just doesn’t pay
My boss’s revenge just goes on for days
Today it’s so bad that I can’t even pray

Helen Burling Ottaway, my mother, died May 15, 2000. I wrote this poem in the early 2000s. Her birthday was May 31, right near Memorial Day. Mother’s Day always falls near her death.

I am putting up a series of poems that I titled Falling angels, after a dream, where all the stars in the sky started falling. I was frightened and then realized that they were all angels. Then I was more frightened.

I think we need poetry and dreams and angels during this difficult time. Even if the angels are all falling.

I took the photograph of my mother. A friend loaned me his 35mm camera and I took one roll of pictures and gave the camera back to him. Almost all of the photographs I took were portraits.

by

resistance

Over and over
I resist
I stand at the edge
I stare at the torrent
The cliff
The falls
The abyss

Over and over
I resist

Over and over
I let go
I fall
Over the cliff
Down the falls
Into the abyss

Over and over
I am sure
I will drown
I will lose my way
I will not surface

Ecstasy is in the air
Between trapezes

I am elsewhere
I am other
No words
No thoughts
No body
No mind

The water is cold
As I expect
When I hit
I knew by the spray
Before I jumped

Submerged
Immersed
Subversive
Over and over

I am born
From the surf
I emerge
From the waves
I am delivered

Fear is my key
Grief is my key
In the places I do
not want to go
That’s where I must go

Over and over I resist
And then let go

by

Painting angels

You were an artist
You are an artist
You said that you’d have to live to 120 to finish all your projects
And died at 61
I keep wondering
what the art supplies are like
and if you work on sunsets
or mountains
or lakes

Trey, 9
made a clay fish last summer that I admire
He said grumpily “It’s too bad Grandma Helen died before I could do clay with her.”
He tells me he’s ready to make raku pots to fire in your ashes as you wished
I ask what he’d make
He considers and says, “What was Grandma Helen’s favorite food?”
I can’t think and say that she liked lots of foods
At the same time wondering squeamishly if maybe
he should make a vase and then being surprised
that I am squeamish and thinking of blood and wine,
too, I wonder if my dad would know. “Maybe guacamole.”
I need to find a potter to apprentice him to.

Camille, 4.
asks how old Grandma Helen was when she died.
I explain that she died at 61 but her mother died at 92.
Camille asks how old I am.
40.
When are you going to die?
I say I don’t know, none of us do, but I hope it’s more towards 90.

Camille studies me and is satisfied for now.
She goes off.
I think of you.

I perpetuate
the Christmas cards you did with us
upon my children.
They each draw a card.
We photocopy them and hand paint with watercolors.
Camille wants to draw an angel
and says she can’t.
I draw a simple angel
and have her trace it.
She has your fierce concentration
bent over tracing through the thick paper
She wants it right.
The angel is transformed.

My kids resist the painting after a few cards as I did too.
Each time I paint the angel
to send to someone I love
I think of Camille
and you
and genes
and Heaven
I see you everywhere


January 19, 2002

published in Mama Stew: An Anthology: Reflections and Observations on Mothering, edited by Elisabeth Rotchford Haight and Sylvia Platt c. 2002

For the RDP: another day.