There is no way you should feel, there is only the way you feel. (Akiroq Brost)
Good and bad,
bad and good,
right and wrong
the way of the church and the way of the doomed
fit into safe defined boxes when I went to school.
Black and white garbed nuns, rosary beads the size
of dried lima beads attached to their waists like holy chains,
explained life. All these symbols
spoke of heaven and hell,
with absolute certainty and no smiles.
My teacher sold eternity at fifty cents
a Gregorian chant book.
I lost at least three one year,
then found another book the same size and gray color,
and faked the intonations with soft whispers,
never turning my head and exposing the lie.
Me, this girl who couldn’t keep track of anything.
I did well enough when asked to reach for something in the clouds.
Yet tripped-over shadows on the ground,
a stranger on the practical path where everyone else lived.
The shy girl, the different girl,
who secretly played Mozart on old 78’s,
or hummed arias or show tunes
while the other kids screamed over Elvis.
I could never understand how hound dogs plus hips equaled ecstasy.
Already good and bad wouldn’t stay defined within the lines I’d learned.
One path for everything; who should decide?
One path for music or sexuality.
One path for heaven or hell or happiness.
I suspected that myopia led nowhere,
made the course narrow, constrictive, dull, unthinking.
It bound the spirit.
Even now, any unsolicited advice after, you should,
slips away from me, garbled, unheard.
No. Look into my eyes and see who I am.
I promise to do the same for you.
Perhaps together we can find
a new truth.
This moment happened weeks ago, but I recall it now as the wind threatens to chill me from my ears all the way down to the tips of my toes. Winter is inevitable.
November 2, and my hands are begging the sun to appear soon. I’m outside the polls with others who care about the needs of the people. My fellow workers bring warmth, even laughter. But they can’t defy the whims of Mother Nature.
I smile at everyone who comes through whether they show interest in what we offer or not. Some are cordial. Only a few are not. A gentleman arrives with a box. Inside are treats and something even more welcome. Glove warmers.
“They are for anyone,” he says. He does not ask whether we cheer red or blue or some strange version of purple.
The sun arrives on time. Gold, orange, and red shine in the trees. The leaves will not be there forever. “None of us claim infinite youth,” I say. And my comrades laugh. They are not youngsters either.
Warmth, it comes from both the inside and the outside. Perhaps someday Maya Angelou can speak for all—a safe place for citizens who put both feet forward onto the blacktop here because the individuals who were voted in, took their positions as missions, not a stance or a power. This will take a lot of time in this fractured country. I pray it happens whether I am on this earth anymore or not.
Autumn and peace. I watch the leaves fall. And pray space opens for people to live truth.
Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason. (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield)
No Clapping Zone
Dupuytren’s Contracture in my left hand
joins with an arthritic thumb to create
its own clumsy five-digit island.
On my right hand, a long-ago
partially healed, broken middle finger
refuses to bend. It is set for vulgar messages.
None of the ten appendages chooses
to juggle anything more challenging
than a dose of Tylenol.
Both left and right agree.
Clapping is impossible because
the digits act like drunk spiders.
And yet, in more important matters.
in everyday places,
all ten digits work together. They decide
to cook a meal. Ignore the spills.
Or type this poem, or send a message
to someone who needs support.
Let the larger audience clap, carry
the greater approval for performances.
These hands will offer gifts. They just need more time.
Wish not so much to live long as to live well. Benjamin Franklin
How good it would be
to live without pain,
to live without anger or foe,
to languish in riches,
frolic in health,
and miss every effort to grow.
***
I look at my blog for this week and want to add more, tell stories. The tales move with rocks, twigs, and drop-offs along the way. Each tale has a slightly different shape and edge. It belongs to the course. Maybe someday I will understand how.
I should have said sayonara to this purse weeks ago. Right after I dumped its contents on a blacktop parking lot where there wasn’t enough light to guide an owl. No ring of keys anywhere. Or so it seemed. Then my son lifted the purse to my trunk and the back car lights flashed. The car key had to be inside. Halleluiah. But where?
A hole in the bottom lining had swallowed my keys. The holes multiplied. They had also devoured some coupons, my watch, and the original key ring I swore had been buried somewhere between Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. I wrote about the loss. With certainty. One good possibility had been a sand dune. Vacationland, I apologize for blaming you.
How can an inorganic object develop kleptomania? Especially something I carry everywhere I go. It didn’t learn a thing about honesty from my experience. Like the time I went to the grocery for toothpaste and came home with six bags of everything else, or the time I had to admit the cherry pie was a no-go because I had used baking powder instead of cornstarch in the filling. The boil-over would have made an interesting science experience if it were an easier clean-up.
I have been telling myself, I will cut through the rest of the leather and find enough cash to feed a city parking meter for an hour. Or maybe just a small cup of yogurt.
However, it would probably be best to simply say goodbye now. I have what I need. The purse served me well before its problems started. Wait, I found one more paper clip…
That’s the secret, love. It’s not about finding what you’re searching for…it’s about valuing what you find. (Reed Logan Westgate, The Infernal Games)
Time. I find so little of it lately. And yet, this poem, written four years ago, hits me as if I’d written it yesterday.
GENE’S WORDS—AT HIS OWN FUNERAL
My death started in January
when bare branches caressed snow
cold as my body.
My friend, the gentle priest,
stood at one end of the casket
and asked if he blessed my head or feet.
He didn’t know I laughed, hearing him
from the gnarled branches of a nearby tree,
where a bright, red cardinal and I
waited to fly together into new,
exciting places I would never be able
to explain to those left behind.
The priest had commented on my raucous
sense of humor. He paused, memory or imagination
filling in the blanks. Church space remained
reverent. Stifled laughs warmed my spirit, the chill
of my body left behind. My eulogist spoke
about schizophrenia, paranoia. I carried
the burden and pain. My friend said I
was not my diagnosis. He mentioned
common moments. Coffee, killer cigarettes, picnics,
my volatile, unstable movements
as if they had been claps of thunder
during a hymn. Something that happens,
and can be embraced as part of a larger whole.
A woman reached one arm around her husband.
Their son held his infant daughter. I carried
the baby’s father as an infant. My cardinal
companion flew upward. I followed.
A voice came from a light breaking through
the winter gray. Your fear has been buried.
Come. I had never heard the voice.
Yet, I knew death had ended, a new life begun.
pic made from public domain photo and pastels
Age is of no importance unless you’re a cheese. (Billie Burke)
As my husband and I walk hand-in-hand along a park path, two younger women say that we look like a cute couple. Yup, we’ve been recognized as nursing-home candidates. Cute is reserved for the opposite ends of the age spectrum. Youngsters and oldsters.
We are in our mid-seventies. However, the spirit I carry inside is confused by the image I see in the bathroom mirror. The loose skin and sagging neck. The inner self gathers both pain and joy. It grows. Its form is not visible.
I can always learn something new. About the world and about this red-haired individual I call me. Someone I love was in the hospital recently. The experience stole more energy than I expected. I am coming back.
A cobalt blue sky speaks healing. The deeper kind. The kind that tells me to hold on when rain and storms break through.
“I’m celebrating you today,” I tell my husband. It is his birthday. I appreciate a mate who loves me as I am. Presents and cakes don’t matter as much anymore. However, this living moment matters far more.
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence. (Denis Waitley)
Corner kick. Forward. Goal.
Thirty minutes to run, compete, score,
in an ordinary soccer game.
Yet these are TOPSoccer kids,
who identify their teams
with different-colored uniforms.
While their goals wear shared energy. All players pause
as a girl with a walker
reaches for a short kick.
Then a comrade on her team assists to score a goal.
Kids with special needs become more than unique.
They are individuals with fresh skills.
illustration made from photos, public domain pic, and colored paper
Children make your life important. (Erma Bombeck )
A metal bar on playground equipment can be as elusive as the top branch of a sequoia tree, to a child with Down syndrome. Low muscle tone affects movement. I watch as a more agile child edges Ella out. We are at an Oktoberfest. The adults roam the booths.
Ella sits on the ground and covers her eyes. I could go to her and be an even bigger child at play. An unspoken protector. However, Ella needs interaction with peers. I wait. And hope.
A girl with thick, kinky curls stops where Ella sits. I don’t hear their conversation. I’m not included. My granddaughter follows her new friend through the maze of kids and metal. The other girl calls her by name. Ella smiles.
The other girl is more agile. Yet, she doesn’t appear to show off her skills. She leads Ella through what she can maneuver. For another half hour. Until I see the girl stop and raise her hand toward someone behind me. “Okay. I’m coming, Daddy.”
She needs to go home. To join her family. A family already displaying the importance of getting along. I don’t turn to see either parent. I take a picture in my mind of a girl with light brown skin, dark hair. The beauty of black and white joined. And a gift I hope to pass along in a few short paragraphs.
Peace in mini doses.
pic created from public domain photo and colored paper
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted, and behold, service was joy. (Rabindranath Tagore)
Fernald Nature Preserve, 2012
The Year Before Dad Died
January opens a sliver of warmth
as my husband and I
traipse through fresh mud,
past wadded-leaf squirrel nests, and
over discarded acorn tops.
My boots collect clumps of
soil in their ridges. When the trail
widens I slide my grimy soles
over loose gravel,
and beg it to remove the soil.
What I really want is to cover
my father with more than
a thin, white institutional blanket
as he lies a few miles away
in his narrow nursing home bed,
even though I know in minutes
he will thrash about, the blanket tossed aside,
as if it were tissue paper that could be
blown across this lake with a single breath,
his thin arms and legs exposed.
They didn’t take off my stockings last night,
he told me. And yet his nurse claimed
he’d been confused.
I responded that he may not recall detail,
but he recognizes pain.
I wanted to add,
Can’t you see beyond the stroke,
the tremors, the uncertainty,
and age? Can’t you see the man?
The words blew away,
more quickly than bitter winds
scatter October’s leaves.
I speak now to the stark brown
outline of trees
until I discover the blue above them,
the same brightness that celebrated August
with strips of white spanning the sky
before the goldfinch dulled his feathers,
when the hummingbird’s wings rarely paused,
and tomorrow was only a word.
I allow the spirit of the Preserve
to open the way
to beauty
present even now
in winter chill,
in touching pain,
in healing life.
terrypetersen 