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Posts Tagged ‘poem’

Peace Recipe, a Poem

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , on June 18, 2022| Leave a Comment » 











Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are. (Hafsat Abiola)

Peace Recipe
Set spirit temperature at warm.

Forgive. Inside and outside
the home receptacle. Sprinkle awareness.
Listen for minor changes and slow cook.

Watch the product, not the clock.
Peace can be both served and recreated
as ingredients intermix. 

Add truth and blend it with patience,
an uneven, unpredictable process.

The mixture is as necessary 
for an effective final product
as oxygen for breathing.
Water for life.

Allow contents to simmer, open-lidded. 
Take care. Hate enters and boils 
when placed in a closed pot on high flames. 

When the recipe is
denied by someone or something, 
begin again. Vent excess heat
in a safe environment.

Practice the recipe and serve daily 
without expecting instant satisfaction.

Peace development can take many forms.
It can be the yeast in bread dough
in another family’s house. 

Let it rise where it can.
And know you are part of the core
of world change. 
 

published in For A Better World 2022

					
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Dear Ella, What I Wish I Could Tell You

					

					Posted in inspiration, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , ,  on March 23, 2022|
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 Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don’t fit into boxes. Tori Amos.

DEAR ELLA:
WHAT I WISH I COULD TELL YOU

My Dear Ella,
You lead our make-believe time
as we make a blue birthday cake for cow
and scoop chocolate ice cream for rabbit.
The birthday song needs only happy and birthday,
repeated with fervor, sung with heart.
I’ve often wondered if your tripled
twenty-first chromosome holds unique gifts,
including a sixth sense, compassion.
I recall a day before you learned to walk,
when you scooted freestyle along the floor.
A movie on television showed a violent scene,
reminiscent of an old crime,
different victim—me. I gasped.
You climbed into my lap
and blocked my view of terror.
Too young for words, your eyes said
what you could not. Don’t look at the screen.
Look at me.
Then, the past faded into
the beauty of your presence,
a reality lost to those who have not yet seen
more than a slant to your eyes and
delays in your motor skills.
Now, my attention returns to cow,
rabbit, snowman, and dog,
unequal in size, shape, and fabric,
equal in importance.
Today we pretend. The ordinary
opens to show the extraordinary,
above, below, and beyond
the surface of each moment.
My youngest granddaughter,
watching you be you
makes me a better person.

Love,
Grandma


In honor of World Down Syndrome Day
celebrated this past March 21

Third prize poetry contest winner Down & Beautiful 2017



					
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The Pawn, a Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , ,  on January 8, 2022|
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Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. (Carl Gustav Jung)

THE PAWN

A young man props open the door
to his screened-in porch
as a robin, wild, wings flapping, dives
into the wire mesh walls.
The man gestures toward the exit
and mutters about how creatures,
two-legged or flying,
refuse to be rescued.

He locks the door to his house
and leaves the screen door open, 
then crosses the street
to learn the tricks of chess
from an elderly neighbor.

The older man offers him a seat
at his kitchen table,
where a set of yellowed-white 
and chipped-black game pieces 
wait on a well-worn board.

The master’s game is sharp.
As he plays, he speaks
of his sons and daughters
and their plans for him
to move to a nursing home,
the place the old man 
calls incontinence hell.

He describes shirts with elbows bared,
gifts from his deceased wife,
removed without his permission,
She lives in those shreds. 

The young man tries to follow both
his teacher’s stories 
and his advice about the game
until the old man shakes his head.

Because you are learning I will let you
try that move again.
But the student sees 
only worn-black and dull-white wood,
 perfect squares with impenetrable borders.

Checkmate. 

The old man shows no sign of triumph.
He resets the board.
The young man nods, silent,
wondering if the robin
found passage—or not.  



pic made from public domain drawing, cut paper, and pastels

poem previously published in For a Better World 2014





					
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One Too Many Shoulds

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , ,  on December 3, 2021|
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(photo of me sometime in grade school)


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.




					
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No Clapping Zone, a Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , ,  on November 17, 2021|
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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.



					
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The Year Before Dad Died, a Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , ,  on September 27, 2021|
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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.


					
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Are We There Yet? A Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , ,  on September 3, 2021|
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country road_LI




What you're missing is that the path itself changes you. (Julien Smith, The Flinch)

Are we there yet? 
my child voice calls from the past.
And I recall waves of heat
on the road ahead, illusions of invisible fire
as my dad drives toward them.

Are we there yet?
a younger brother repeats
as the road continues
past neat rows of corn.
And cows, a rare sight for a city child. 

Are we there yet?
my siblings and I wonder.
We’ve asked too many times.

And now I watch
a different road. My beyond grown
wrinkled hands grasp the steering wheel.
“You really are old,”
my honest granddaughter says.

And we pass the full summer
beauty of leaves soon to ripen red
and drop.

My granddaughter and I
laugh as the light turns green.

Are we there yet?
I answer a long-ago child.
You were already there.



(pic taken from public domain photo)




					
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The Pond: A Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , ,  on August 27, 2021|
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Park pic




Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not. (Valery Satterwhite)
THE POND

A deer lay dead in this pond last winter,
bloated, white as the ice-spotted hills.
The carcass froze, demise unknown,
while the frigid water licked its sides
until the body could be hauled to shore.
Now, a late summer breeze
remembers nothing of snow,
and warmed water fills in the emptied space.
My spirit longs to plunge under the surface,
to swim with the schools of tiny fish
under the water lilies,
to sing with the frogs,
and smell the algae and rotting things
until it finds the secret of water,
that accepts whatever space it is given.
Frozen, heated, evaporated,
eventually it becomes a pond again,
that accepts the dead and feeds the living
without question.







					
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Flashlight, a Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , ,  on August 14, 2021|
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flashlights




Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.  (Jonathan Swift)

Flashlight

She stirs artificial sweetener into her coffee
as my husband shares one oldie recording after another.
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane,
The Supremes. The 1960’s scene.

Folk artists. One-time hits. I listen.
And watch as my friend moves her head
with the drumbeat. She is blind. She won’t look 
for bookshelf dust or carpet lint. We welcome 

few guests during pandemic time. She celebrates
learned pathways through my house and moves 
between our couch and dining room table.
We share places where disability dissolves.

Or so I imagine until she reaches for coffee
and touches another cylindrical object instead.
“What is this?” I answer, “flashlight,” 
as if she knew about the object the way

she understands the feel of our leather couch,
the last Elvis Presley song, or a groaner-pun.
“Oh,” she answers. Yet, I don’t see the un-seeable
 until I return the artificial light to a desk drawer.

She would fathom flash-light 
the way any sighted person grasps a concept like infinity. 
I have a lot to learn about my friend’s life. 
I am grateful she is willing to teach me.


published in For A Better World 2021








					
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LAST VISIT TO THE HOUSE I CALLED HOME, a Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , ,  on July 10, 2021|
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Our past offers us two choices … live IN it or live FROM it.  (Brittany Burgunder)


One of our upstairs room has been a storeroom. For things. Too many things. For years. Oh why was I born with a creative mind instead of one made of neat everything-has-a-place compartments? With loving help the space is now a playroom. For grandkids. As I go through old photo albums, the next chore, I see pictures of my parents. In a side closet I find my wedding dress again, fifty years after I slipped it into its protective bag, closed the zipper and lived the unexpected life that followed.


I find a poem, written after exploring my father’s house after he died. 


wedding dress




LAST VISIT TO THE HOUSE I CALLED HOME
           
Dust encases the old homestead.
Encyclopedias from 1963,
boxes of unused pencils,

skeins of yarn with faded fifty-cent
mark-down stickers,
a broken clock.

Most of the saved items are gone, 
Dumpster and shredder items wait.
Bags of cancelled checks

on Mom’s closed account.
She died years ago. 
Dad’s will to maintain dissolved, too.

In the back yard his loss leaked
into the naked, open space
leaving it flat, withered.

Before the property grew sullen, 
I planted seeds for annuals that sprouted into
a tiny-stemmed miniature garden.

They dwarfed next to tomato vines 
Dad tied to hand-cut posts.
Sunlight coaxed 

white blossoms into green and then red fruit.
Inside the house Mom made soups that 
took all day to blend the chicken 

with onions, carrots, celery
into a fragrance that filled every nook.
I try to recall an ancient, lingering scent

but it was taken for granted
too long ago. I find my wedding gown 
in an eaves closet,

zipped in plastic.
I had changed my name and moved on.
The yellowed department-store receipt

remains attached to the wire hanger.
I wipe off the grime and carry what-was-me 
into what-is-me now.

The door locks for the last time.
The sun leaves a sliver of itself 
on a pink horizon,

a visible color beyond reach,
like memories, both dark and light,
locked inside things left behind.


					
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