Tag Archives: poem

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Perspective: beneath the clouds

Beloved why?
I am glad for your love
and warmth
and connection
and my cat’s
and my adult children
friends
family
patients
work
and why? Beloved

A high Adverse Childhood Experience Score
Two alcoholic parents
One sick with tuberculosis through pregnancy
Letters from the hospital to her mother
After birth
Never mention me
As if I do not exist

She told a story that she dreamed
she gave birth to kittens
played with them
and gave them away

Not a dream of joyously welcoming her new baby
Me.
Yet I didn’t hate her or my father
My damaged parents
My damaged sister
Who followed their path, not mine
There was nothing I could do
Only three years old when she was born
Try to shield and mother her
As best I could

Why Beloved
I have tried so hard to grow
to love
to forgive
and yet I have no human lover

My cat jumps on my notebook
And interrupts this writing
She is happier to welcome me home
Than any man I’ve ever dated

My daughter’s boyfriend picks her up
at the airport and has made her dinner

If I am a failure at love with a partner
Or too smart or damaged or difficult
To love
For humans
At least my children have both found love
And if I were to choose me or them
Yes, I’d choose them

Is that why, Beloved?
Sacrifice to heal the next generation?
It is worth it.

And yet, that small child part of me
That even as a toddler thought the adults were unpredictable, dangerous, mean when drunk as they laughed.
She is angry at them, Beloved
She is angry at you, Beloved
Or at people
Or at the universe
She still believes in every cell, in her bone marrow, in the vast universe in her mind

that she too could be, should be

loved.

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Every day

Every day
I am thankful for clean water
water to drink
water to wash
I am blessed
by clean water

Every day
I am thankful for food
Good food
to cook
to eat
to share
I am blessed
by good food

Every day
I am thankful that I can stand
that I can walk
that I can carry things
up and down stairs
I am blessed
that I can stand

Every day
I am thankful that I can hear
voices of friends
voices of my family
all the music
my cat and birds
I am blessed
that I can hear

Every day
I am thankful that I can see
all the faces
all the smiles
the trees, the ocean, the birds
the ever changing sky
I am blessed
that I can see

Every day
I am thankful that I can touch
my cat purring
a vegetable for lunch
clothes and doors
friends to hug
I am blessed
that I can touch

Every day
I think of those
who cannot touch
who cannot see
who cannot hear
who cannot walk
who do not have food
who have no clean water
and some of them
are children

Every day
I am thankful
and grieving
at the same time

And I try to do a little
it’s not enough
yet

Some day I will be gone
or we will all have done enough

And every day I am still

thankful

________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: warning.

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Dissolution

I am sorting, Beloved.

I dream that my sister has drowned
in the ocean. A sailboat went down.
There were others on board.
Two friends ready me to dive and find her.
I don’t want to scuba dive, I am not trained.
I don’t know how to use the equipment.
I am afraid I will drown too.
I see her daughter, who is four.
Her daughter knows from my face that her mother is lost.
My friends say, “You will be able to find her.
You can find your sister.”
“But she is dead,” I say.
“I don’t want to find her.”
I know that they are right, I could find her.
But I might be separated and lost, in the depths.
I don’t want to die too.

I wake up.
The dream sticks.
My friends wanting me to wear a borrowed wetsuit
and scuba gear and go down untrained.
My sister floating in the depths, dead eyes open.
But she has been dead for years, I think.
And this is the sea of dreams
my unconscious
the greater unconscious
everything.
So why isn’t my sister’s body dissolving?
Changing to a skeleton.
A skeleton coming apart over the years.

I don’t need a wetsuit
or scuba gear
to dive in the sea of dreams
I can breathe in the unconscious
I have been to the bottom of the sea
many times before.

My niece is four in the dream.
She was thirteen when her mother died.
I think she was lost to me long before that.
The dream knows.
Her mother was lost to me
when my niece was four.
Drowned.

When the dream returns
I will say yes to the dive
I love the sea and the ocean and going deep
I don’t need a wetsuit
I don’t need scuba gear
I don’t need to find my sister’s body
She is gone
Dissolved
I let my past go.

I have not dreamed of the ocean

since.

__________________________________

I really don’t know where my sister is, because of the family schism after she died. Are her ashes somewhere?

This poem wanted to be born. For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Who knew?

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Concord

my heart is broken
love doesn’t conquer all
unselfish love
unreturned
unrequited
opens me to wound after wound
some turn from love no matter what
cling to the lies they tell themselves
cling to the poison they embrace
turn from love into the uncaring bottle
turn from love into the insensate smoke
turn from love even to the grave

I wish my heart would let them go
and heal

__________________

My friend Liz took the photograph, half way through the Rainshadow Chorale concert last Sunday.

by

Friends forever no matter what

My small child self is happy
Happy inside
She loves who she loves
Living or dead
In contact or fled
Distant or close
She loves who she loves
And I hold her close

My adult self is happy
Happy inside
I love who I love
And the world is so wide
Living or dead
In contact or fled
Loving forever
No matter what happens
I love who I love
My heart holds them close

My small child grieved losses
I hold her close
She loves them all
I guard her from most
She stays friends forever
No matter the grief
She is happy in loving
Her loves shine as stars
The ones who are hurtful
Are loved from afar
She’s held and she’s loved
And her love sings unmarred

_______________________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dogwood and for Mother’s Day. Mine died 25 years ago.

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Listen

There is anger and blame and silence.
People talk about each other.
People talk about others.
What is truth? What is rumor?
No one wants to listen.
They want to blame.

I do not see
I do not feel
I do not hear
how to heal this, Beloved
if no one will listen.

Only love.
Anger drains away.
I send love
Into the anger
Into the blame
Into the echoing silence.

by

Pathos

Beloved, what is my path?

I remember. You are gone and dead
I lie on my side, close my eyes
I feel your body behind mine
your arm tucked under me
your breath on my hair
your body warmth against me
your arm lying across my side
thighs and knees relaxed against mine
you are not gone and dead
as long as I can remember

Beloved, what is my path?

I remember. A path alone
so that I can see
so that I can hear
so that I can feel
so that I can write
Beloved, you set the path before me
a brief elaboration of a tube
Beloved, sometimes I want
Beloved, sometimes I say why
Beloved, sometimes I forget

And then I remember

_______________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: March.

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Content

I never do know where a poem is going when I start it. Usually I start in the dark. To my surprise, those poems will end in the light. Apparently the reverse is true too.

Content

At the moment I am feeling content
deeply content
with monsters

At the moment I don’t need more
then this
me
a few friends
and all the monsters

I can’t fix the monsters
healer, right
the people come
over and over
and won’t admit
their monsters

the monsters sit on the floor
of the exam room
clinging to the person
chained to the person
the monsters wail and cry
while the person
ignores them

It has taken me all these years
to let go of anger
fury
rage
that almost no one
admits to monsters
or tries to heal them

Except the addicts, drunks, crazies
they see them too
many try to destroy their vision
with alcohol or drugs
or persist on telling others
about the monsters
until they are drugged

Yesterday I look on line
for local music
not bluegrass
thinking that I would like
to find a place with grown ups
quiet

I think, how silly I am
to look for grown ups in a bar
and then I try to think
of where to find some grown ups
and I think THERE AREN’T ANY GROWN UPS
it’s all just children
who’ve grown big

I do not like drama
there are no movies
that I want to see

I like clinic
where I try to help a little
sometimes a lot
sometimes a person might remove
one knife
one chain
one arrow
from their traumatized
terrified
bleeding
monster

And really
that is why I am here
and that is all that I can do

__________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: journey.

Meanwhile, rat joy: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241128-i-taught-rats-to-drive-a-car-and-it-may-help-us-lead-happier-lives.

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Austere choice

What could be more austere than rock?

Taken in Echo Canyon in the Colorado National Monument, Thanksgiving, 2024.

Austere choice

Why do I still feel sad when I think
that I am best off with my cat
and that I should eschew dating.
Why do I feel like I am rejecting love?
I don’t have that sort of love.
It’s not like I am rejecting anything.
I am rejecting looking for it.
I am rejecting active interest in a partner
other than my cat.
What is wrong with that?

I do not ever want to reject hope.
I am not trying to reject wanting.
Hope and want are the deep and terrible ache
for the Beloved. I do not reject that.
I am still open, Beloved, to what you send,
though getting more particular in middle age.
A writer says that he uses a pencil and a pad,
because no better tool has been invented.
I take the same approach to wanting love.
If the relationship is more work than my cat,
for less love, why bother? It seems silly
and until I go home to the Beloved,
so far, I am best off with my cat.

____________________________________________

The first thing Sol Duc does when we go out for a walk, is roll on the sun warmed dusty sidewalk. The house faces south.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: austere.

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Tool

I don’t wear livery at work
and anyhow that’s a uniform for men
or a place to board horses
though the horses can be male or female.
Once I go to my daughter’s second grade
for a bring your parent day
and bring part of my uniform,
or perhaps it is a tool or instrument,
my stethoscope. The children all want
to listen to my heart
or at least touch this magical tool.
Afterwards I receive thank you notes.
I think that every one, except my daughter’s
thanks me for bringing the stethoscope
to their classroom. I did not know how
special and magical a tool can be.

__________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: livery.