Author: lillian

Memories in Black and White

lillian8 Comments

Phyllis Groat, Billy Behr and Timmy Drew
Francis somebody with Jimmy Fisher
and Mary Buckley too.

Black robed nuns that seemed to glide
feet and hair a mystery
rulers that reached a mile.

Lunch time stools swung in and out
from tables that disappeared
into Mary blue block walls.

Holy card for first place prize.
Priests mumbled Latin mass
and girls watched holy backs.

Third grade fell out of mother’s drawer,
a stained photo stuck between dried up pens
and a Tupperware orange peeler.

Three days after we buried her
in a Catholics only plot,
she made me remember
what I deliberately forgot.

uniform      communion

Photos:  3rd grade class photo mentioned was tossed….but these were also in the drawer.  Me in my 3d grade Immaculate Conception School navy blue uniform  and my first communion picture. I actually won a third grade competition to see who could learn the altar boy responses in Latin first (our third grade boys were lagging in this important task — it was thought this would spur them on). Silly me – I thought if I won I could be an altar boy. See that word?  “Boy.”  Nope.  I did win a gold embossed holy card of St. Francis of Assisi and the boys all went on to assist with Mass.  Memories…..

Color Their Love: cherished series, opus 10

lillian5 Comments

Their love never showed itself
in word or touch.
It simply travelled
through a colored atlas
of their own making.

Sunday rides in a battered Buick,
state highways traced in orange.
Twenty-fifth anniversary in Hawaii,
circled in pink
like their matching floral shirts.

Retired early, she insisted,
they sold all their worldly goods.
Left a three bedroom colonial
for a small motor home,
and rambled through forty states.

College towns starred in blue
for the young at heart.
Green highlights for favorite parks
and the Grand Canyon’s purple X,
the greatest site of all.

Now, in a pastel assisted living center
map of colors upon her wall,
she gazes out the window
at red and yellow tulips,
his ashes beneath their blooms.

With quaking hand
she touches coffee cup to pane,
then slowly to her lips.
This, their morning kiss, a ritual
now the road is still.

momanddad

Sunday Seaside

lillian5 Comments

Sight line ends
where water creases sky.
Rhythmic waves,
the breath of wind.
Gulls glide by in slow motion.
Clouds first pink,
turn violet grey.
Glisten paths upon the sea.
Surely I am in church today,
my knees upon the sand
seeking intercession
in genuflection,
closer my God to thee.

IMG_0695_SunFLare-AM_9-30-LILL                           far heart                    close heart

Photos from beach by our deck in Provincetown. Assignment from my September 21 Day Challenge was to write a poem using the strategy of litany (listing) and end with a longer sentence, with a stronger meaning.

A New Day Dawns

lillian6 Comments

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And the sun shall break forth,
blush clouds pink then shift
seep tinges of deep warm reds.

A lonely gull sits sentinel,
witness to the changing palette
as waves stir the sands.

And somewhere a newborn cries
seeks her mother’s breast
as seedlings sprout in a monet garden.

For this is a new day to claim
cause and determination for joy
because we can.

We touch, we live to love
this day another,
thankful
together.

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