Tag Archives: loss

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Crossing

This is the Staircase hike on Monday. It was not slick enough to make me turn back, but if the water had been higher or there had not been a railing, I would have turned back. I thought about rising water on that hike.

And the same day, I received a county email that an 18 year old slipped crossing a creek and was swept away.

Love to his friends and family and I am so sorry.

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Burning

Rumi’s chickpea poem: http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook/essay_chickpea.html

I took the stealthie on the first ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge yesterday morning. A quiet ferry with very few sleepy people…..

 

The dust stirs
This is not Konya
I am safe

Water falls from the sky on the dust
This is not Turkey
I am safe

The sun warms the dust
I am not of Islaam
I am safe

A seed stirs in the dust
I am not of Christian either: raised atheist
I am safe

A plant grows
I am not a man: a woman
I am safe

Peas ripen
I do not read the Koran
I am safe

Peas are harvested
I have no mystic tradition nor teachers
I am safe

Peas are dried
He does not ask a question
I am safe

Peas are soaked
He is not religious
I am safe

Peas are placed on slow heat
He chooses sex not love
I am safe

Peas come to a slow boil
He refuses love and leaves
I am safe

The ladle of the Beloved smashes down
None of it matters
I am not safe

 

 

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Fear stands

For RonovanWrites Weekly Haiku Prompt #79, the words are crystal and hope….

fear stands strong don’t look
crystal water reveals rocks
open eyes give you hope

 

I took the photograph in 2012, when my sister was referred to hospice for breast cancer. I took three trips to see her before she died. She was still very engaged with everyone on the second trip. But when she was not talking to anyone, her face was different. She was looking at eternity. She knew that I could see her doing it, because we knew each other so well. She did not want to talk about it to me until my last visit with her in this life. I felt so blessed and honored when she did talk to me, and I hope that she feels loved.

 

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Leaver III

I have subsided back to where I was

before I fell for you

before I fell

you said, thoughtful, meticulous and shy

I am quiet, thoughtful, meticulous with patient charts
I am not shy so much as lonely
and mistrustful

I don’t trust many people

my small child self still loves you
but it’s a child love
and she knows you’re leaving
everyone has left her before
so she is very sad
everyone but me and the Beloved
so not everyone
but you are the first not me
that she opened up to

so yes, shy
she is terribly shy
she hid for years under rock
bedrock
in my soul

now she and I and Beloved
are walking hand in hand
in the gardens of my mind

thoughtful, meticulous and

shy

 

the photo is me, my grandmother and my father

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Look longing

This is for Ronovanwrites weekly haiku challenge #75: the words are charm and look. The prompt includes that the first two lines should make a sentence with the opposite meaning of the sentence made by the second two lines…..

you gift a young girl
I see your charm, look longing
see you lie to me

I took the photo across the street from my clinic just a few days ago.

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Live germ

This is for Ronovan’s Weekly Haiku Challenge #72, prompt words life and give.

They say they protect
life given by taking a
life, germ live alone

I am thinking of more than one definition of germ: an ovum and a sperm are germ cells, that could develop into an organism. When there is fighting and death over abortion I remember that the egg and the sperm are alive too separately. They can’t all live: we don’t have room or food, do we? And I was playing with more than one meaning and pronunciation of live.

Full Definition of GERM

1a :Β  a small mass of living substance capable of developing into an organism or one of its parts
b :Β  the embryo with the scutellum of a cereal grain that is usually separated from the starchy endosperm during milling

2:Β  something that initiates development or serves as an origin :Β  rudiments, beginning

3:Β  microorganism; especially :Β  a microorganism causing disease

I took the photo at our home swim meet.

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Through storm and fear

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #34.

I was downtown in the early morning for coffee and a walk. I walked out to Port Hudson. The wind was blowing very hard and the rigging was singing that eerie whistle wail. There are giant cleats out as both seats and advertising. I put one of my earrings on the cleat and took the picture. The earrings were my mother’s. After she died I looked at her jewelry. She loved little boxes and I was trying to understand the organization of the earrings. It was not by value, since plastic and gold were all mixed together. She was an artist and organized the earrings by color. These little plastic eiffel towers were in the box with red and pink earrings of all sorts. They are probably at least 30 years old. The tower looks so small against the black cleat with the rainwater. I hope that we can all care for each other through storms and fear.

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Walk away

I used to carry my phone around
hoping you would call me now
I walk away

my house is three stories and
I can’t hear the phone and still
I walk away

I long to hear your voice I send
a hopeful query to you then
I walk away

I leave the phone plugged in the wall
and go up the stairs and down the hall
I walk away

I listen in the quiet to hope sighing
in my heart and maybe dying as
I walk away

I took the photo at the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition in 2009.

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Songs to raise girls: Pack up your sorrows

This song interests me. It is the fourth in my series about the songs that my sister and I learned growing up.

When we recorded our family songs, my sister said she liked it. I said, I think it is creepy, with that juxtaposition of a sweet tune and then words that are not so sweet.

No use cryin’
Talking to a stranger
Namin’ the sorrows you’ve seen

Oh, ’cause there are
Too many bad times
Too many sad times
Nobody knows what you mean

If somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me

You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me

The line that bothered me was “I know how to use them”. What does that mean? Use them for what?

No use ramblin’
Walkin’ in the shadows
Trailin’ a wanderin’ star

No one beside you
No one to hide you
An’ nobody knows where you are

Ah, if somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me

You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me

And how could you give your sorrows to someone else? The singer is offering to listen to sorrows but also take them away. “You would lose them.” And then the singer “knows how to use them”.

No use roamin’
Walking by the roadside
Seekin’ a satisfied mind

Ah, ’cause there are
Too many highways
Too many byways
Nobody’s walkin’ behind

Ah, if somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me

You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me

I never got around to asking my sister if it was the tune she liked or the words or what it meant to her. I chose to play that recording at her Washington memorial. I could not go to her California memorial because I was too ill. My father had terrible emphysema and was on oxygen. I thought I had pertussis but it turned out to be systemic strep A, which hurts. At any rate, I was too sick to travel. Her Washington Memorial was a month or two later, when I was well enough to organize it…..

You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me

It is by Pauline Baez. The version by Richard and Mimi Farina is the one I’m familiar with, so my parents probably had the record:Β  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4LbU8w7Th4.

Joan Baez, Pauline and Mimi Farina were sisters. Joan Baez recorded it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAMe1bRW8Ao. So did Peter, Paul and Mary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVxNleqVpx4.

And so did Johnny Cash and June Carter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ctVhDEuTYE

The picture is a music party at my house in 2009, my father seated and Andy Makie on harmonica, Jack Reid standing with the guitar.