Tag Archives: poetry

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what I miss

what I miss after 8 years of divorce and 14 years of marriage is sleeping with a warm body not you but anyone after you fill the U-Haul and are surprised because you think that I am the packrat and all the stuff is mine but you have a piano and bicyles and a motorcycle and clothes and music and books and really you are one too, it’s just that I am worse and you drive away and I can’t sleep though really it did start before then we did over a year of couselling and I slept alone some and then kick you out and sleep alone more our daughter moves into the room across the hall up from the basement when you leave and in the middle of the night she comes up with me because you are gone to Colorado and now 6 years later she asks about it and I say you came in with me and she says she didn’t know that and would wonder why I would steal her in the middle of the night and I say I didn’t but as she is older and moves back two flights down to have that distance that one needs from a parent when one is in puberty and growing up and away and I wake at four am and now that same sex marriages are legal I wonder about buying an asian bride and then I would have a body a warm body to sleep with but it wouldn’t work and yes I miss sex too but not in the same way it’s the warm breath and heartbeat and movements and I am the monkey longing for a mother to cling to and I too make do with a pillow I could make a scarecrow for my bed a body not an inflatable too cold but something warm and I could put a watch in its chest an old one that ticked it doesn’t actually help to be in love because I am not sleeping with my love and that makes it all the worse I long for a warm body really no I long for my warm love this particular body and breath and heartbeat and I wake often longing for my warm love

the picture is my sister, who died in 2012 of breast cancer. I made her stuffed animals and puppets for years starting when we were little. I made the red eared puppet and bought her the puppet with legs that year….

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Thank you for this

Oh Beloved

Oh thank you from my deepest being from all of me from every cell for this touch this kiss this day this cat this daughter this son this family this work this rose this farm box these vegetables tomatoes in my yard and deer outside the fence in town crossing at the crosswalk

the motor working the sailboat flying across the water my aunt laughing my uncle hanging the hammock up in the house the farmer’s market the panda trailer friends new bunnies who barely have fur and sniff at my alien scent in my hand teen bunnies who delight in celery patients and patience and enough

books a box from Wisconsin with a vintage suit fake fur collar and cuffs that unbutton and a woman in a wheelchair laughing when I show her the collar and cuffs and getting through another week and catching up on some of the paperwork a massage to look forward to music and song and a photograph of my father at 6 and my aunt at 3 and my great grandfather and great grandmother in about 1900, he was born in 1881 showing the photos to my daughter and my niece

physical delight that morning comes the wind in the sails of the boat hugs hands touching me and me touching the taste of the tomatoes blueberries a cream puff with whipped cream and strawberries soft cashmere yarn on sail in downtown and my daughter wants just the right hat knit of this yarn just so and it must not come down to her eyebrows we all laugh

loons mink crows raccoons deer a flock of cedar waxwings by the church who stop curious when I try to do their call cat fish frog nuthatches snapping turtle small bunnies

I am afraid to feel happy happy doesn’t stay I hold it away how can I be happy what disaster will strike next but little by little Oh Beloved I let the feeling rise and feel happy

Oh Beloved thank you for this and all

My photograph of common mergansers on Lake Matinenda, Ontario, Canada, 8/2015

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Not yet adequately adored

I am wandering in the forests of emotion I am comfortable now mostly I don’t talk about it much though occasionally I am irritable I am thinking about love I have had my children going commando could also be going postmenopausal because there is no longer bleeding or if there is I would have to get checked for uterine cancer but it is hot and why wear underwear of course apparently things can still get wet which is a bit of a surprise since so many women complain of less libido once the hormones drop I as usual do everything ass backwards and want sex more than ever but not when I am working hard and tired and cursing the new server laptop printer program and the keyboard is spaced differently and more sensitive all this fucking equipment when what we really want is to be loved as we are I have only seriously dated two people in the last seven years and one said that what I want is to be adored he said he couldn’t and I thought why not and Rumi says the depth of the longing is our depth of longing for the Beloved and really it’s not a forest for me it’s the ocean it’s the deepest part of the ocean those rifts and I dive all the way and don’t care if I run out of air Beloved I am not yet adequately adored

I will go for coffee instead.

the photo is from 2006, one swimmer carrying the younger swimmer

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Augean stable

Here I am
what a load of shit I know heracles did it
with brute strength in the allotted day I too
am assigned a day but I am just a girl you see
and small to boot I lean on the shovel and contemplate
the work what a load of shit has been produced and I
know what I have to do clean and sparkling by morning
I know the goddess to pray to and she shows up with all
her nymphs armed the bows aren’t so useful for shoveling
shit but they can shift it fast we are done long before
morning and all I have to do is pledge myself to her
to virginity like a virgin

all I have to do

my photo is from the 2009 US National Junior Synchronized Swimming Olympics

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Harden

harden my broken heart, please, Beloved
not against you I am openopenopen evermore
I have no enemies nor none to hate
openopenopen transparent like glass they step
on my heart glass it shatters again ow shards
pierce through me all over it takes time for each
clear piece to work its way to the surface I need a
harder heart then glass how do the bodhisattvas do it I
don’t know, oh, Beloved, yet I want to remain
openopenopen even if glass is the only heart I have
I pull the shard from my bleeding chest and back and
this is not a job for sewing or ribbon or lace my
friend gave me tape with a spine printed on it I tape
my heart with boneshards it doesn’t matter anyhow no matter
how I wail and tear my clothes it is all longing

for you, Beloved

my photo from the 2012 US Synchronized Swimming Nationals

remember, the lifts are entirely swimming: no one touches bottom

submitting to Ronavon’s beWOW

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Conjugation

A year ago a friend asked me, “Did they teach you latin in medical school?”
I said, “No, but I took two years in high school. Then I was an exchange student to Denmark and forgot most of it.”
He is learning latin. He is studying verb conjugation and he showed me various Youtube songs to remember it. So here is my present tense conjugation poem. Next, it needs a tune…. or a voice to set it into memory. I am going to hint to another wordpress author/reader……

There are a few other tenses to work with besides the present active indicative. I think that to make each one memorable, a different rhyme pattern or tune should be used. Let’s see. Go to it fellow noders! Veni, vidi, vici!

Amo: amare with an o
and you must drop the ARE, you know.
That’s I love, you know it’s true
The latin version of “I love you.”

Amas: amare with an s
Drop R and E, please say yes
You love, in latin, present tense
You love latin beyond all sense

Amat: amare with a t
Drop R and E, you start to see
She loves, he loves, it loves me
So much love is great to see

Amamus: add a mus you must
Drop R and E, a change is just
We love in the here and now
We love poems about purple cows

Amatis: tis time to add a tis
Drop r and e, remember this
You all love, ya’ll is not a word
But yawls are sailboats so I’ve heard

Amant: N and T complete the pattern
Drop r and e, you’re not a slattern
They love, they do, they truly do
They love me as much as you

In summation
a revelation
of loving latin
conjugation

The picture is from my train trip last August: graffiti somewhere between Chicago and Seattle.

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Funeral pyre

The words for the Ronovan Writes weekly haiku prompt are inspire and loss.

the word inspire
I breath in, out, sorrow, loss
sister expired

The photo is of my maternal grandfather, my father, my sister with her back to the camera and a “shirt-tail” cousin. My cousin Katy who is not a blood cousin but is still family, and who is named after my maternal grandmother. From about 1967 or 8, I think.

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Mother Daughter Show III

The Mother Daughter Show III is hanging, with a few additions still to come, at Pippa’s Real Tea, in Port Townsend, Washington.

Gallery Walk is Saturday June 6, 2015 from 5 to 8 pm and the first Saturday in July as well.

The photo is of four framed etchings: state I, II, III and IV of the Four Seasons. Each is a limited edition etching individually run and numbered, twenty of each edition. Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. These are by my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, not by me.

I have not done a full inventory of our art, so I don’t know how many I have of each of these etchings. These are 18 by 24, so technically difficult. I do not have the press, but I may have the plates, though they may have been damaged. And even though I know how to run etchings, I don’t have her skills in inking the plates and more importantly, wiping the right amount of ink off. I may have notes about the ink colors, but the trick would be finding them. And is the same paper still made?

At any rate, I am really delighted to have our work up and ready to show for the months of June and July.

I lost my father today two years ago, so am thinking of both my parents.