aging

Elegy for Childhood

lillian18 Comments

Do not grasp or fear the sifting sand
savor instead, sweet memories.

Tippee cups and imagined friends
popsicle sticky smiles.

Unabashed big bigger Balooka bubbles
popped on freckled nose.

High pitched yells with a Mary Jane stomp
knock knock jokes giggled silly.

Proscenium now disappeared, curtains askew
props and costumes gone.

Mourn not the little ones of yesteryear,
loose your hand and revel now.

Their roots are strong, let go the sieve
tis time to change the scene

beach

WP Writing 201 prompts: the word “flavor”, enumeratio (listing), and the elegy form. Elegy: usually in couplets, first line longer; can be a longing, loss, mourning, and/or a celebration of life.

Mrs. Jester

lillian11 Comments

She was a primary color kind of gal
young at heart, year after year.

Neon chalk streaks adorned her hair
blue moon ice cream colored her tongue.
She wore bright yellow boots to walk in the rain.
Smiley face balloons attached at the wrist,
always her shadow of choice.

Her happy place
was wearing a clown-face red nose
making you laugh, wherever you met
in a car or a train or a bus or a van
or rocking in chairs here at the home.

We missed her after she died.
But the old man now in her room
wakes every day with a smile,
seeing the large crooked rainbow
painted wheel-chair height,
directly across from his bed.

Rainbow02

 

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

Riding the Waves

lillian12 Comments

Gin and tonic on the rocks
atop a Cape Cod hill
overlooking white sail dots
on forever ocean scape.

I drift backward on the waves
to days on my old Boot Hill,
surrounded by empty fields
new subdivision coming soon.

Crouched low behind tall weeds
brambles with stick-on burrs
scratched knobby eleven year old knees,
we stalked bad guys never seen.

Rode horses round that dirt mound
inspired by westerns on console tvs.
Buster browns galloped and dusty laces flew,
head strong imaginations with no reins.

Parched by the high noon sun
horses unhitched and left to roam,
we walked home, hand in hand
to lemonade in aluminum glasses.

And we wondered how old
the Lone Ranger really was.

grass-1-1391232

Photo by Elvis Santana.

Time Descending

lillian9 Comments

I flung my arms out wide
to feel the wind
that sun baked day
danced, skirt billowing

cool sand between my toes

I stretched my arms out wide
to erase the fear
eyes locked on yours
step by first step, second, third

you chortled, giggling towards me

I curved my arms out wide
to envelop your leaving self
joyful sad, then turned and watched
the airport swallow you

emptiness descending

I raise these arms
tissue thin sagging skin
eyes search yours

name descending

shawl droops down legs
dancing somewhere
a thin filament

within this brain

disappearing into mist

wheelchair-1430696

Off-Season

lillian3 Comments

Our jetty - appears and disappears with the tide

Our footprints disappeared
in cool damp sand ridges
as we walked, farther and farther
into the wetness of low tide.

Heads bowed,
eyes shaded from glare,
the water glistened
in glorious serenity.

We shared our solitude,
hand in hand
grateful we chose the off-season
to rediscover togetherness.

This is rewritten, using Glisten as a base, the first poem posted here, on March 20th.

Dancer Down

lillian5 Comments

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There it was. Audition.
Wanted: 100 dancers
for three months prep
to perform in Boston’s Copley Square.
No experience required.

I did the same thing,
twenty years ago
in Iowa.
Auditioned.
And was selected to perform.
Ninety-nine hoofer-wanna-bees
plus Gene Kelly and me.
Thousands watched us
in the Big-Ten half-time show
or took a trip for hotdogs
and the john.

So I did it. Again.
And made it.
Again.
Ninety-nine plus me
two nights every week.
Loud fast rehearsals
with slow
every day repeats
at home
to video
online.
I should have known.
I was twenty years older
not newer
and certainly not digital.

One month to go.
On our burgundy shag carpet
five-six-seven-eight
and again
right-turn-slide-spin.
Repeat at studio
on unforgiving wooden floor.
Five-six-seven-eight……
Crap.……dancer down.

Legs sag. Muscles be damned.
Relegated to RICE.
Rest-Ice-Compression-and-
– – oh hell. I forget
what the E stands for.

Originally posted on March 23, as Self-Portrait: Dancer Down, just my third post ever….revisited and revised. No Likes then, no comments, two followers (my family members)! 

Mirror Image egamI rorriM

lillian8 Comments

I stand here, you there
separated by a chasm of disbelief.

I know me, I feel me.
Who then, are you?

You must be from another place
or time or universe.

When I turn my head away,
will you laugh at my derision?

Will you reach out,
pat my back and mutely say 

There there, you’ll be alright.
Are you sympathetic to what I see?

My memories are inside of me,
hidden to the outside world.

I do not wear them for all to see.
Why then, do you?

luxurious-mirror-1422353

Photo by Torli Roberts

 

What’s in a Shoe?

lillian7 Comments

They sit behind closed closet doors
in back of the shoe rack, gathering dust.
Two-toned in black and white,
four inch heels to elongate the leg
toes so narrow their tips turn up
after years of emptiness.
Ground-in talc mottles the inside
used oh so many times to smooth the sole,
pressure points etched in long dried sweat
from happier bare legged days.

Witness to her previous life
they sat primly crossed in corporate talks
hid behind podiums and knelt at pews
clicked down hallways, sat quietly grieving
in cold rooms filled with overwhelming floral scent,
danced at weddings and stood higher still,
tips of heels up off the floor
for a lifetime of New Year’s kisses.
These Spectators, aptly named
sit waiting to see the sun again.