the day of and days after and after that’s leftovers
like youthful kisses I love those leftovers too
the you and me season after season, still savory good.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where today Sarah asks us to write a response to a poem we’ve read in the past year. Below is the poem I modeled mine after. It appears in jelly roll, a collection of poems by African American poet Kevin Young, winner of the Patterson Poetry Prize and Finalist for the National Book Award. I tried to simulate his form and like him, used a type of music as the title. And yes, that’s my husband and I fifty years ago and obviously, much more recently!
2020 Christmas season begins with a gray, gloomy winter view out my front window. Remnants of light snowfall melt into a muddy mess. Turning from bleakness, I behold the color of Christmas spread throughout every room. Our tall green tree lit with colored bulbs, covered with sparkling ornaments collected for 60 years from travels and special life moments in my family. Red candles in brass candlesticks glow, the scent of cinnamon and peppermint awaken my senses. Alone, missing my family, I close my eyes and they are here.
Redbird in front tree Sings familiar melody Amaryllis blooms.
Although this year ends and the next promises hope, far too many can not be joyful. They survive, just barely. Lost jobs. Lost income. They watch the year end without a loved one by their side. Let the new year begin. Let hope live and thrive. Bring relief. Bring safety. Hear our prayer, oh Lord. Help us begin anew.
Sometimes, this time of year, we struggle to stay in the present. Memories intrude ever so gently or sometimes harshly, like a kick in the gut. We may gasp. We may wail. Loved ones lost. No. Wrong word. Loved ones gone. Gone from our sight, our touch, our living space.
Tears they say, are cleansing. A release. Well . . . perhaps. But must we be staid while others carol? Granules of being have disappeared, theirs and thus some of ours. So we reminisce. Sometimes ache as waves of emotion flow through us. Whisper aloud I love you, though the room is empty, save for us.
This Christmas season shall pass and we shall live on. Beyond the celebratory gifts, beyond that sweet gospel of an infant born one miraculous morn. Our treasured memories still intact, just shelved, perhaps a bit farther back. But still there. Always there. Always with us. Available for the taking out, the reexamining, at any time we wish.
Today, we shall step into the sun, feel its rays and warmth. We shall smile through gentle tears. Our tongue shall linger on our lips, taste sweet saltiness, a gift of remembrance. We shall walk another day but we shall always know one truth. The empty space beside us is not indicative of an empty heart.
I am about to celebrate Christmas with our home warmly decorated, and my spouse of fifty years by my side. I am however, cognizant of the many who have lost loved ones in the past year or two…whether to Covid, addiction, cancer, accident, any myriad of other reasons. Many people have difficulty during this season as they face the starkness of their loss. My poem is dedicated to all of you. May you all be blessed with gentle memories, serenity, and a new year that brings hope and health to all.
I reach for your hand, my love. I seem to do that more often as the days age on. We walk more slowly, notice things more minutely. Outside our window, that jay, perched on winter’s shivering branch. Sky blurs. Sometimes blues to hazy violets. Sometimes shifting reds to soft shades of orange, as day slips into night. There is a truth we cannot deny. The path ahead is shorter than the one we’ve tread. No less glorious, just different. Each time my hand seeks and finds yours, there is quiet reassurance. We are us for another day, another hour, another moment in time.
Photo taken at our beloved annual sojourn in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod.
Sit with me this early morn. Shhhh, listen to the silence while we gaze at new fallen snow. Watch candles flicker in the midst of holly and ivy. Sip hot steaming aromatic coffee and savor nana’s cranberry bread. Sit with me this early morn and we shall recount life’s blessings, thankful for every day.
. . . we are only on pause. Missing hugs missing celebratory dinners missing your company missing your smile. This is hard. But I need to remember, we are only on pause.
Black and white television set with tubes inside blonde console in our little den. My Lone Ranger lunch box. Watching Gene Autry at Junie’s house after playing dress-up with her mother’s things. Hankies with lace edging, rummage sales, and pettipants under culottes. Hooking nylon stockings to suffocating girdles. Mother dressed for Sunday church wearing hat and gloves, carrying her pocketbook. Green Reader’s Guides to Periodical Literature and card catalogues in oak drawers. Typing on a portable Smith Corona, frustrated by holes in paper from erasures. Skimming small print in thick telephone books. Hoop skirts under prom dresses and stretch pants with foot stirrups. Looking at my grandma and thinking Wow, she’s seen a lot of changes in her life! When did I become her?
Heartfelt music, morning to night December brings joy, no matter the site. Children scamper ‘cross fields in the Commons, screaming and laughing in childhood chase. Away in a Manger’s sweet refrain fills my head as I slowly saunter on. Evergreens tall and warm in the sun nod in sympathy at neighborly oaks, their skeletal branches shivering in cold. Oh Tannenbaum wafts through the wind.
Back now inside, I stare at our tree. Fragile ornaments peek from the top. Mother’s pink bell of thinnest glass father’s airplane, with broken tail, both from their childhood days. What were they like, way back then? I wonder as I wonder on this Silent Night. This season of softness with candlelight, flickers that shift both time and space cause memories to flood through my head.
Mom hanging tinsel, strand by strand and dad’s ruddy cheeks, smoking his pipe. December’s calendar squares orderly, rigidly, sit in their rows. Not for me. They dance in my head. Musical numbers turned into songs turned into people and memorable times. Cold and blustery weather predicted, warms my soul with harmonious skies. Oh Come All Ye Faithful to celebrate His birth. And yes dear Virginia, oh my yes, I still do truly believe.
Grace hosts dVerse and asks us to “incorporate music in our poem from the persepctive of a synasthete. Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sense leads to automatic involuntary experiences of a second one.” For me, the month of December brings Christmas carols to mind almost anywhere I go, which triggers family memories.
The “Yes, Virginia” statement at the end refers to “eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon [who] wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897.” The responding editorial reassured her. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Photo taken yesterday. These are the two ornaments mentioned in the poem. They were on my parents’ childhood trees and are extremely fragile. Each year, I hold my breath when I unwrap them from tissue paper and place them on the tree; and when I carefully take them down, wrap them and store them for another year.
lillian the home poet 