Posts for June 9, 2019 (page 7)

Pause
take a breath 
rewind. 

Take yourself back to simpler times. 
Back to before you knew
that life ain’t easy
before you were exposed to all the hate and ugliness 
this world holds. 
Take yourself back to simpler times. 
Back to before
you knew any better 
before you knew what it meant to be cold and lonely. 
Take yourself back to simpler times. 

When you feel
like you just can’t take anymore 
when life has beaten 
all the fight out of you,

Pause
take a breath 
rewind 
and take yourself back 
to simpler times. 

The road offers more than people’s stories.  
That stretch, across from house three, beside
Fields that often can and will take one’s breath.
Surprised wide spans of hay can capture you?  

Happens to me every time I chance to pass
Late in the day, hay rolls lying there resting
At last after the tractor, rake and conditioner
Have taken their toll in the breezeless heat.  

Pictured there I find the peace of a good job
Done, a harvest gift almost for the asking.
Feel the serenity flow from calm rolls, clean
Field, work done, rest ahead until a winter call?  

Poets might attach a comely metaphor for hay, or
A comedy sketch with cornpone and scarecrow.
In a world of twists and turns and challenge, fields
With new rolls of hay seems more a long contented sigh.

Should they ask if we’re together,
I’d like to act naturally, but need rehearsal.
Take a page from a favorite local poet:
Answer a question with a question (classic).

Have you ever stayed up well past
your much-needed bedtime to exchange words,
laughter’s edges on the late hours, for weeks on end?
When did you last glow, free enough to set aside
your quandry and pain, charged with
a cautious hope to fix your flaws and face your fears?
And when a fear began to surface, what did you do?

Have you ever forgotten yourself in the mirror
when there was another person there with you?
When did a different song find you every night?
When did you last believe in bliss, lose
your footing following your star?

Did you see someone else’s birth chart,
and have reliable suspicions?
What do you know about Meyers-Briggs,
and what do you expect from an ENFP-INFJ pairing?

Do I need to tell you anything?
If we share how we feel now, does our future
sink into the holes of what you hope for?

Are we really the types to openly brag?
Not at my age, not at his?
Is the young heart no more an iceberg than
the older heart is an opening in a garden gate?

When did someone remember you
needed fireflies among the woods
in the Arboretum?

Like leaning against the fence in the paddock area,
watching the number seven horse toss his head,
fight the reins,
all that tight energy.
The only gray in the race.  30-1 odds.
I’m too jittery to bet on a long shot (surely
a waste of money), and disgusted when he wins,
almost my car payment.

Now I attend an artist’s reception, single out
a painting that keeps drawing my eye:
pastel rendering of a jockey atop his horse,
the trainer still holding the reins.
Part impressionist, part abstract, part cubist.
It has soft intimacy, bold orange accents.
The artist is describing
how she hangs out at Keeneland, hoping
to catch the right pose, the right light;
how she tries to convey emotion
using the angle and curve of her lines.
She can see how taken I am with the piece,
senses her odds for a sale are good.
I bet on myself.
And tonight, we both become winners.

I remember when my grandma died.

At her funeral,

the preacher said

those who had accepted Jesus

would see her again

but those who had not

had lost her forever.

And I hadn’t cried.

And I was angry.

It’s callous

to peddle your wares

in the face of grief.

Saying goodbye to my family,

I made the long trip home.

And I hadn’t cried.

And I was angry.

So I drank

and played board games

with a friend.

Pushing feelings aside.

But when I went to sleep,

I heard her voice

And woke up sobbing.

And now,

Three years later,

I am still angry

and

I am still crying.

How quick do birds return to song
From silence
After the final shot rings out.

Could ever we relinquish our responsibility 
To the legislation of inept policy
To the rendering of political ideology  

Into the silence we walk alone
Returning to life
As birds to song 

While they burry their young
As we cling to our guns.

Calling from the silence: 
You are more than birds. 

She teases from the whirling patina
Inside your left breast

The favored side
Where you looked into your loves’ eyes

As they suckled there
Held in the crook of your arm.

I praise my spouse preparing our oatmeal with ripe rasberries.
I praise the sweetness of the purple grapes resting in a glass bowl.
I praise our cats snoring together in the forest green chair.
I praise the desire in our daughter’s voice as she conveys her story.
I praise our towering son cradling the orange tabby at the door.
I praise my spouse for baseball updates and Scrabble after dinner.
I praise the sparrows who scatter seeds from the feeder to the ground.
I praise the young possum who comes to scavenge the seeds.
I praise our acapella verse in “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling.”
I praise the flecked late-in-the day sunlight breaking through the trees.

Long ago, in her cramped office, a therapist, Polly,
asked me if I was afraid to be happy
and I laughed. Afraid? No, sweet
lady, I’m not
scared of joy. In fact,
I try to find it where I can:
under halogen parking lot lights,
in salty sweet snack food that is bad for me,
in people who are bad for me. That’s why
I ignore your texts, because you are
too nice, too far away from home,
to be bad
for me. Maybe
if you were high-cal and hateful,
I’d be there?

           Watching the Rain