Soft my heart forgives and lets go, lets go of reconciling. We won’t. I won’t. I have waited long enough. I forgive all and I am done waiting. I let it all go and walk forward into a different life. The Sufis lead me: the teacher must judge when the student is ready. I am not a teacher. I am always a student. I want to learn always and change. I let go. Farewell, my dears, you still have my love but you do not have me. I no longer care, I don’t long for your love, I let you live your stuffed and twisted lives in peace, without me importuning you, to listen to think to grow with me and you don’t want to so I am free.
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Written February 17, 2024.As with most of my poems, I don’t know how it will end until I write it. Poem as prayer. The ending surprised me, too.
I cry because the laundry overflowed the sewer blocked again we might have to pull up the floor and lay it down a third time I hate the laundromat water runs across the floor as fast as the tsunami crossing the fields crushing the houses catching the trucks in Japan
I cry because I have to ask for help again Help comes but the memories of asking when it didnβt help didnβt come and I was abandoned or humiliated rise up and overwhelm me I am flooded I am helpless someone help those people The shaking earth is bad enough But the ocean rolling inland Over all Breaking all Beams to toothpicks Those are the memories that rise up And flood me I think of the soldiers and victims of wars and disasters and PTSD tsunami of memory
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Written before 5/2011. I have posted before, but couldn’t find it on a search. Posted today at a friend’s request.
Hell is other people. Heaven too.
How much do you adjust for this person?
The one who is only available when I am damaged
a foul weather friend, unexpected,
busy with all the damaged around,
never time to play. This one hides much
and slips into denial like a familiar cloak.
I am sad. That one talks about others, ah, gossip
I hate it. This one has a blind spot I could
drive a truck through. I wonder why? I am curious.
I read that women are still expected to be responsible
for the house. They are praised or blamed if the home
appears perfect or a mess. I am clearing my main floor
to resemble this idea of what a house should look like
but reading that I wonder. Is it worth it? My decor
is packrat cat lady, though only two cats. No self respecting
burgler would come in as they would trip and fall,
over cats or stuff. Stuff on the stairs: I don’t care
and know that at 65 I will be counseled in my “free”
medicare wellness visit, that I’ve paid for through
all my working years, to make sure my house is uncluttered
reducing fall risk. Hell is other people and heaven too.
My neighbor has tiny violas blooming in her grass, near the garage. I had a tax appointment in the morning yesterday so walked the cats around noon. The busier street by my house was noisy, so the cats headed for the neighbor’s yard, further from the cars. I don’t hold the leashes but keep a close eye. NO DIGGING, cats, at least not in the neighbor’s yard.
Little signs of spring. Spring still feels strange to me here, even after 24 years, because it is so long. We start in February but summer rarely arrives until July 4. And then it is very rarely hot. After summers in Alexandria, Virginia and Richmond, Virginia, it feels so odd to not be hot. Though my patients would complain when it’s 80 degrees and 60% humidity. “Hot and humid!” It is all relative. I have lived in quite cold areas, Wisconsin and Colorado, and fairly warm and humid in Virginia.
I am in a large room, like an expensive hotel lobby. There is a large black bowl like structure, fountain size, but without a fountain. There is a big woman bullying me. She is making me dump containers of ice into the bowl structure. It will overflow and I will be blamed. Another woman whispers to me: “You have to sing a song about abuse, so that people will know that she is making you do this.” I know songs about abuse but at that moment I can’t think of any. Then I do. I remember a song my mother sang, this verse:
“Two little babies, crying for bread. With none to give them, don’t you wish that you were dead. Don’t you wish you were a single girl again.”
I wake up. The song is about a young woman, married, whose husband is drinking up his paycheck. She and the babies are starving and he beats them. Not a pretty picture of marriage, is it?
I wake up. One way to think about dreams is that each person in the dream represents an aspect of ourselves. So WHY is my inner bully showing up? I don’t like this!
That day my friend goes from the hospital to a nursing home for rehab. I speak to three people on the team, because my friend has a cardiology appointment the next day and I want to be sure that she will be taken to the visit. She is going to a nursing home 40 minutes away.
On the appointment day, I call the rehab just after 9 am when the internet says they open. There are three choices: two halls and a main office. I leave a message on hall one. I call back and leave a message on hall two. I wait another ten minutes and call the office. No answer, I leave a third message. I wait until 9:30 and call again. This time that inner voice with gumption is fired up: “I need a call back by 11:30 or I will drive up there, I need to know that my friend has transport to cardiology for her 12:45 appointment.”
I get a call back at 10:30. The rehab person introduces herself. “Oh, we can’t transport her because she just got here yesterday.”
“You don’t understand,” I say. “This visit is to make sure her heart is ok after restarting a medicine. It is not optional.”
“We can’t transport her.”
“I am sick, I can’t transport her. What is your name? What is your position? Who is in charge of the facility? What about her heart, your facility has no concerns if her heart is poisoned?”
“Just a moment.” Papers rattle. “Oh, we DO have transport arranged. Someone else wrote it down and I didn’t see it.”
“Oh, thank you so much. I was so worried!”
I go to the appointment, masked. The driver says my friend was a last minute addition. The visit goes well. I am on the tail end of a cold, not covid, and I am very tired from trying to be sure that my friend gets good care. I think THAT is what the dream is about, the inner strong voice who is not going to let my friend be abandoned, be bullied, be ignored. She is too ill to fight for herself so I am fighting for her. And I am formidable.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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