They say, sometimes,
that when God closes a door
He opens a window
(and yes I know gender is a construct)
but what I really want to say
is that sometimes
when God closes a door
what’s really meant
is for you to stay at home,
look around this place and say
hey
I kind of like this place
maybe I’ll spruce it up a bit
This poem is also an entry for the Slice of Life weekly writing challenge. Go give them a visit!
What do you do with all of your ideas,
they wondered
that you gather during the day?
She thought a moment,
pursed her lips
looked real hard to her left
(as if something were there)
then she shrugged her shoulders and said,
Depends.
The idea might be thin and wispy
so I’d carry it like a scrap of paper,
tucking it wherever it might fit best
Or it might be rough and scrabbly,
so I might work it with my hands,
roll it around my brain
until it’s smooth and shiny
For the one that might be handy
I’d plunk it into my pocket
and carry it around
with the keys
and the loose change
and the day’s worries
until I needed it
Some others still
just need to live in my mind,
traveling in and out of rooms
whispering when they want to
and shouting when they must.
Her head is littered
with poetic debris –
random shrapnel of thoughts
the daily barrage of metaphor
that obscures her vision:
the cairn of rocks from her nature walk
how trees grow through fences
(and how they’re like some teachers)
the many places where she stores her ideas
how grief attracts more attention than joy
the waiting-for of lilacs
the student who opens her eyes to hyenas, misunderstood
the giving-away of writing time
(and the pale ritual she’s resigned to)
She can’t not see things as a poet,
without lines and images swirling,
accumulating in staggering piles
so all she can do is
sweep up after herself
or open the door
and let them blow away
Today is a Sunday. Which is traditionally my Sunday Sit-Down day. But it is also April 18. So today, Sunday Sit-down will have to take a proverbial back seat.
Six years ago today, I was with my husband, enjoying a beautiful spring day while working the hostas in the garden. I received a phone call that my brother was in the emergency room in St. Louis, five hours away. Things didn’t look good. I lightening-quick packed a bag and jumped into the car, only to find out he was gone by the time I hit the highway.
After a seemed-like-forever road trip, and after a few heartbreaking hours at my sister-in-law’s house, and a weary, disconsolate landing at my parent’s place, I was alone, silent with my thoughts. Six years ago, on that couch in a darkened living room, I felt myself in the midst of everyone’s else’s grief and sorrow and this poem is what came to me. I’m sharing it again now.
So I heard this story the other day
About a guy
Who saw a lama for his pain.
And the lama
Had trained his heart
To grow big as the sea
So it could shoulder the
Burdens of the suffering
And replace them
With love.
The lama
Asked for the guy’s hands
And took them
Into his
And he asked for the guy’s grief
And took it
Into his heart
And the guy felt better.
I want to do that.
Not to be the guy.
The lama.
Let my heart swell
Limitless
Let love flood.
Place your hands into mine.
I will ask for your pain
And my heart will open wide
Wider
Wider
And swallow your pain
In love.
Here’s another poem I’ve brought out from the dusty corners. I remember when I wrote this, and everything about this writing hummed along until I got. To. One. Line. I worked and reworked and reworked, and put the whole darn thing away because I couldn’t get the right word.
I STILL don’t have the exact right word for that line. Bonus points if you can figure out which one I struggled with.
Who knows? Some day, that right word will come to me and I might, just might, come back and make one last edit to this poem. But until then, as they say, I shall “bless and release.”
In the meantime, it’s also hit me that I started this poem in pre-COVID times. I think it reads differently in today’s context. That’s okay with me too.
Just like the kosher lady
who sneaks pancakes with bacon
I awake into action
Cheerfully rouse the troops
Serve a nutritionally-balanced breakfast
Drop the kids off with a smile
Hi! How are you doing today?
Great! And you?
Just fine.
I greet my colleagues in the same fashion As we
Gather
In important meetings
And sit rapt.
I stop at the store, exchanging
Currency and small talk
Great! And you?
Just fine.
Just fine.
How I want
How I wonder
How I wish
The feeling of
Shrugging off appearance
Sloughing away
Thick skin
Broad shoulders
Heavy heart
A shedding of pretense
Leaving me
At the intersection
Of intent and reality.
Found this poem, incomplete, in my notes. I had started with the seasons and their respective nouns, and I had toyed with the haiku structure but never quite reached satisfaction on the stanzas. Still can’t say that I have, but I’m ready to let this one make its way into the world.
Summer: loosening
A relaxing of long days
Into sun and light
Autumn: a shifting
Into clarity, crispness,
Deepening of hues
Winter: reckoning
Hibernation of spirit,
Our souls in retreat
Spring: Awakening
speaks of cliché yet never
fails to inspire awe
When I was ten,
my grandma-from-California
paid for me to have piano lessons
and whenever she came in town she’d
sit me down at the piano bench and say
“Well, let’s hear my investment,”
and I’d play
And most often she would nod and smile
as I played
because I sure did practice
because she needed to get her money’s worth
And then in high school
I learned how to play guitar
on a four-dollar flea market cheapie
and I’d struggle in my room for hours
with guitar chord charts
torturing the life out of
Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Peter, Paul & Mary
until my mom brought me to the guitar store
before I went to camp, saying it was
“to get a better case for you,”
except it was for a new guitar,
a hundred-dollar one,
with a real case
with real fake furry lining
and I thought oh boy
I sure need to practice
because she needed to get her money’s worth
And now that I’m a writer
and I’ve poured myself into words
and I’ve started to understand
that even though I mostly shout into the void
I still have things to say
so I’ve bought myself a real live
domain and a real live plan
which might change the way my soapbox looks
or maybe it might not
but it might be a way to put my money
where my mouth is
where my fingers are
where my heart is
and I deserve to get my money’s worth.
Want to write? i said
Want a space where you’re read? i said
Then come with me i said
You can blog like me i said
Here are some ideas i said
You can take them or do other things i said
And then they came
They blogged
They took some ideas
And they did other things like:
This is good, i think
They’re figuring things out, i think
And they’re taking it, i think
And running, i think
And it’s hard to keep up, i think
And there are some problems
That are good problems to have.
*Special thanks to S.T., whose gratitude for her time together with classmates together inspired today’s poem
Dear Standardized Testing,
Thank you.
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
these loveys who miss one another
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
these loveys who miss one another,
who have not been together
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
these loveys who miss one another,
who have not been together
in this space, in actual human form,
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
these loveys who miss one another,
who have not been together
in this space, in actual human form,
in thirteen months
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
these loveys who miss one another,
who have not been together
in this space, in actual human form,
in thirteen months
so that once again they could play
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
these loveys who miss one another,
who have not been together
in this space, in actual human form,
in thirteen months
so that once again they could play
and challenge one another to relay races
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
these loveys who miss one another,
who have not been together
in this space, in actual human form,
in thirteen months
so that once again they could play
and challenge one another to relay races
and remember how easy it is to remember
Thank you
for bringing me these loveys –
these loveys who miss one another,
who have not been together
in this space, in actual human form,
in thirteen months
so that once again they could play
and challenge one another to relay races
and remember how easy it is to remember
how good it is, sometimes, to be a kid.
This is also my post for the Tuesday Slice of Life challenge. Check them out!
I was way too tired at the end of the day
from running around as the human pawn
in a Nintendo game,
and I AIN’T FEELIN’ IT.
I ran out of good words to string
together by ten a.m. and
ran on fumes ever since then,
so I AIN’T FEELIN’ IT.
I know that writing is the best way
to express all of those things
bubbling up in and around my heart
but I AIN’T FEELIN’ IT.
There are times when writing
just feels like another burden to shoulder,
something else I’m President of,
so I AIN’T FEELIN’ IT.
And if you ask me why I’ve written
neither stanza nor line,
just know that I’m skipping my poem
’cause I AIN’T FEELIN’ IT.
Soapbox: The Way I see Things