Author: lillian

What Really Happened . . .

lillian4 Comments

Best friends, we met secretly.
Listened in awe to Tituba’s tales.
Barbados voodoo, fortune telling.
So exotic to our young minds.

Betty’s father ranted,
not just pulpit preaching.
Everyday damnation,
spirit squelching abuse.

We craved attention, excitement.
Anything but embroidery
peeling potatoes, praying,
tending garden and the hearth.

Betty and Abigail started it.
Twitching, talking in tongues.
Rolling on the ground,
petticoats be damned.

STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I joined them and we ramped it up.
Rolled and spit and drooled,
hiked our skirts over our heads.

Center of attention were we.
Eyes on us, tongues wagging,
STOP! THE DEVIL BE GONE!
What? What was he talking about?

Too late. We’d gone too far.
He demanded, WHO?
WHO HAS COMMANDEERED YOUR SOULS?
CONFESS NOW. TELL US WHO!

Scapegoat. We didn’t know that word.
But forced by his shaking
we had to pick.
God forgive them. Betty and Abigail did.

Tituba!
They had the limelight as they screamed her name.
Jealous I was. I craved their fame.
Sarah Good! I screamed.
God forgive me my pride.

Now, two hundred people accused
Thirty found guilty. Nineteen hanged.
Oh my God, what have we done?
Young girls turned miscreants
in a Puritanical world.

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Day 25: National Poetry Writing Month. Toads asks us to write a poem in which we “take on the persona of someone from history; and we write in the first person – as if we are that person.”

I’ve chosen to write in the voice of Ann Putnam who was 12 years old at the time of the Salem Witch Trials. She was good friends with Elizabeth Parris (Betty) and Abigail Williams, the first two girls (ages 9 and 12 respectively) who accused Tituba of witchcraft, thus lighting the spark of the Salem witch trials of 1692. Betty’s father was Reverend Samuel Parris, Putitan minister in Salem and central figure in the witch trials. Tituba was his slave from Barabados who, it is known, shared many stories of her culture and voodoo practices with Betty and her young friends. This is, obviously, a fictional narrative, told in the voice of Ann, as to the origins of the paranoia that filled Salem, Massachusetts in these Puritan times.

…and who are we, if not similar to

lillian9 Comments

. . . those hands, those fingers, that face.
Those eyes,
seeing me as I see you.

Genetic relatives
mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda
lowland gorillas in western Africa

and me. Visiting you.
Those hands, those fingers, that face.
We are so alike. Akin.

And in this new Corona world
I feel more akin,
stumbling in my own shrinking habitat.

Have we plundered too far?
Been too sure of our advanced selves?
Has our arrogance been revealed

by a novel virus
that recognizes humans
only as we truly are?

Too smug beings
who caged others
and now it’s payback time.

Photos taken in Washington DC, May 2019: my husband’s hands (in black and white); and the hands and face of a gorilla at the National Zoo.

Poem written for day 24 in National Poetry Writing Month. Toads  asks us to write about “nature’s wonders . . . how everything is connected.” 

Lest someone be offended by this post, please know I do not take this virus lightly. It is a horrific disease that is affecting so many people globally. My heart goes out to all those affected, including those who work so others might live a daily life. Stay safe everyone. I pray daily for a vaccine that this scourge may never happen again.

From the Bard’s Words

lillian12 Comments

He grew up a laughing stock
across from the river Avon,
son of a poor tailor.

Clothes make the man.
His father coined the phrase
but shared it not with his son.

The lad had but scraps of cloth
ne’er enough for a pound of flesh,
certainly lacking as he grew.

His mother’s eldest child
cold comfort she gave him,
too busy suckling the youngest ones.

His job, to tend the fire
through cold of winter’s nights,
not easy at that bleak stone hearth.

Stolen bits and scraps of wool
cradled beneath his head at night,
such stuff as dreams are made on.

And each night she came to him
he with heart upon his sleeve,
she in garments weaved of gold.

Her plea to him, always the same.
Steal your father’s coins.
Come what may and flee with me.

Weakened by his love for her,
coins in hand, he fled to nearby woods
expecting to meet beneath the stars.

But all that glitters is not gold
and caught was he within her snare
as she revealed her true self. Devil incarnate.

She took his coins and claimed his soul.
Then, after one kiss upon his anxious lips,
struck him dead.

As good luck would have it,
his body never discovered
decayed within the region’s soil.

And thus it is each spring
he lives again within the greening,
all along the Avon’s shores.

william-shakespeare-62936_1920Day 23 in National Poetry Writing month and the anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death.

At Toads today, we are asked to write a poem inspired by the Bard. All of the bold words/phrases in this post, were first coined by Shakespeare and are now in common use. And of course, Stratford-upon-Avon is the town where Shakespeare was born and buried. 

 

A Good Life

lillian25 Comments

The happiness project,
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
Plain and simple:
eat, pray, love
embracing earth.

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Day 23 of National Poetry Month: first installment today is written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets.  Bjorn  asks us to explore “found poetry” — and more specifically, Book Spine Poetry.
Look at the books on your shelf, pick some with titles that speak to you and arrange the titles into a poem! We have the choice of “adding some meat to the bones” — as in filling in some of our own words around the titles.

I love the way these 5 books fit together.
Consider it a belated Earth Day poem!

Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Dig out some books and come join us!  

Never to be the same . . .

lillian5 Comments

In 2005, we rented a vacation home on the Big Island. Our back yard included an ocean inlet to Champagne Pond where at low tide, we swam with glorious sea turtles.

Our most amazing adventure was a lava hike, climbing over fields of hardened basalt. Eventually we came upon fissures where hot lava pooled, spit, hissed, bubbled and oozed ever so slowly. Using flashlights on the return walk, lava glowed red-orange in the distance, as if a jack-o-lantern was lit across the horizon. We also hiked across a caldera, over “waves” of Pele’s hair. We found a small delicate fern peeking out of a crevice. Hawaiian breezes deposit plant life in nooks and crannies. Life reappears in the midst of desolation.

Pele’s anger erupted violently in 2018. Kilauea spewed plumes 12,000 to 30,000 feet high. Fissures burst open. Lava flows destroyed over 700 homes. Lagoon House: A Piece of Paradise, the vacation home so many people enjoyed over the years, was entombed in thirty feet of boiling lava, which eventually cooled to impenetrable basalt. As the owner wrote, the coastline is forever changed. I wonder, how long it will be before a single fern, and then a tree, and then a grove of trees take root. Will the memory of Pele’s reckoning disappear? Will humans be enticed to rebuild what was once called Leilani Estates – and is that even possible?

I look at photos
housebound during Covid spring ~
Pele sleeps again

* Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes.

Day 22: National Poetry Writing Month. Toads asks us to choose one of four given quotations to motivate our poem of any form.  I wrote a a haibun.

Photos from June 2005 trip with our children to Hawaii’s Big Island. Our guided lava hike across Kilauea, at the time, the longest continuously active volcano in the world, now seems ridiculously dangerous and foolish – given the horrific occurrence in December 2019 at New Zealand’s White Island.

In the first photo, I’m waving goodbye to the incredibly beautiful back yard at our vacation rental, the night before we returned home. Little did I know that 13+ years later, this scene would be nonexistent.

QUOTATION USED TO MOTIVATE POST:  “A fresh and vigorous weed, always renewed and renewing, it will cut its wondrous way through rubbish and rubble.” William Jay Smith

Birch Tree Lane

lillian8 Comments

This place spoke to her
and she said yes.
Her party would be waiting
her bridegroom, her love.
All standing patiently
in windswept open field.

Her dress of white ethereal silk
flowed as she walked alone
oh so slowly down the path.
She held a small bouquet,
delicate white freesia
hyacinth and sweet peas.

Birch trees lined the trail,
leaning in as sentinels would
protective and quietly calm
seeming to guide her steps.
Lush greenery everywhere
leading to her new life.

This stretch of spackled white bark
delicate in its strength.
This birch tree lane
seemed an extended bridal veil
approving her decision,
her love for him.

Their lush branches
whisper-rustled encouragement.
Trees on either side,
embracing her in calm serenity
as she took step after step forward,
until at last, they were all at her back.

She turned and looked once more
these birch trees, their beauty,
leaning in to line this walkway.
They seemed now to be
her wedding gown’s bridal train
bidding her adieu . . .

and she smiled . . .
turned . . .
and stepped into the open field

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April 21: day 21 of National Poetry Writing Month. Today Kim at Toads asks us to write about trees. Photo taken some years ago when we visited our niece in Ohio. 

Careful What You Wish For!

lillian4 Comments

Another birthday?
Oh God to be young again!
Rid of the grey, the wrinkles.
To live those carefree days again.

Pimples? A crush on what’s-his-name?
High school cliques and watching Elvis gyrate?
No-Doze to pass Dr. Parkander’s killer exams?
Grad school living off hot dogs and beans?

Note to self:
Put all the candles on the cake.
Blow them out in thanksgiving
instead of blow-hard forgetfulness.

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Day 20 of National Poetry Writing Month. Today at Toads, the prompt is to write about a wish that would somehow produce something not as good as what you’d hoped for – when good wishes go bad.

Scene fades to . . .

lillian17 Comments

. . . sun peeking round cotton-puff clouds.
I wander meadows flush with buttercups
trees rustling in breeze.
Leaves gleam myriad shades of green.
Sitting cross-legged, eyes closed
hands prayer-folded to chest
soothed by buttercups,
undulating tall grasses.
Serenity . . .

RRRRiiiinnnnnggggg!
RRRRiiiinnnnnggggg!

Scene shifts
I grudgingly answer call.

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Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where it’s Quadrille Monday and the word to be used within the body of our exactly 44 word poem (sans title) is flush. 

In this Covid-19 era, I find myself doing yoga and meditating every day. This morning the telephone rudely interrupted me – motivating this post. Stay safe everyone! 

Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Photo from Pixabay.com

Biding Her Time . . .

lillian8 Comments

She sang sprightly tunes
skipping lightly across mushroom caps,
a spring in her step.

She wandered beneath dripping canopy,
rain drenched leaves
above her head.

Fairy wings at the ready
waiting . . . waiting . . .
for the sun to reappear.

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Day 19: National Poetry Writing Month where the challenge is to write a poem every day in April. Today Toads asks us to write a poem of less than 100 words, that includes one list of four words given within the prompt. We have five lists to choose from.  I chose the list that included CANOPY, WANDER, LIGHTLY, and SPRING. 
Photo taken a number of years ago on our trip to Alaska.