Posts for June 18, 2024 (page 3)

Is it summer
or is it me?

Yesterday
I was evaluating myself
using numbers
I never do that
but a number came to me

I spoke across the table
and said to my husband:
“I think I’m about
75% today”

He silently nodded
to what I was saying
and sipped his beer.

But it was only 5:30
it was still so early

Any other day
I would have just said straight out
that I felt really tired
and even too tired
to have gone out
to this darkly lite Neighborhood Restaurant,
where the danger of falling asleep in the booth
was pretty high,
And I would have kept going on
listing my thoughts on
why I was so tired,
what I had done and not done that day
wondering out loud whether I should have
just stayed home

But last evening
I did not say all that
and I think my husband appreciated
the economy of numbers

When shards of strife
burden your life
let sudden pleasure
bring moments to treasure.

A scent, a caress
a whisper of trees

a taste that’s divine
a color that soothes

a breath taking view
some sweet thoughts of you.

Watch butterflies dancing
bright blossoms beaming.

Be open to bliss
a scent, a caress.

Let sudden pleasure
help your soul to relight.

When I was barely 8 years old

On the threshold of prepubescence and childhood

I visited my best friend’s family farm

That day both a rabbit and dog gave birth

Being young and naive I held the babies

Mere moments after exiting the safety

Of the womb

I cradled the babies

Gave them sweet kisses on nearly hairless heads

And returned them quickly to their mothers

Exhausted from birth and plump with milk

I returned later to find the rabbit mother

Had eaten her children

More gruesome a sight

Than Kronos consuming his own

I was told that my hands had killed them

My scent had made them foreign

Stranger to their mother

Who in her maternal mercy

Slaughtered them

I returned to the puppies

One I’d named Bandit

Who had a perfect brown patch around his neck

What I thought resembled a bandana

But should have seen as more a noose

For he did not survive the first hour of birth

He failed to thrive after tumbling into this world

That day I learned the power

That even my sweet, well-intentioned hands

Could have

My compassion was a harbinger of death

And I have loved cautiously

Ever since

A polished penny, 
From rain,
Shines in my direction

I try to spot the year
Without picking it up

A quarter with teal stains
Corrodes in the corner
I look for any misprints
I will find a million-dollar coin one day

I will

The thin soprano
of Grandma’s voice
singing ‘Ar hyd y nos.’

Stepping out of my car
to the fragrance of pines.
Welcome back to Chase Lake. 

Candle-lit church, multi-colored
robed choirs singing into
the early dark of Advent.

Shuffling through fallen
leaves, kicking the smell
of autumn into crisp air. 

My mother’s stories
the ones that were true
the ones that weren’t. 

Floating in the pool
wine and idle talk
as sun sets, moon rises. 

Long nights in hospital rooms
dozing in upright chairs
my mother speaking in tongues. 

Waking to silence, knowing
that winter’s first snow
has stopped the world. 

Never in the summer do I ever miss New York, unless you’re asking me specifically about Hell’s Kitchen kisses, watching the ‘Clones play, or the snappy, savory joys of a hot dog by the ocean. Heat bouncing down Manhattan alleys, humidity keeping us all sticky with the sunburnt frustration of eight million people who all need to be someplace. But the Q train was air conditioned, and usually clean, and Coney Island always meant a smile.

                Ich schreibe deutsch

The world was supposed 
to end 

in 2012

That’s the year i lost you 
so Nostradamus was right

in a sense