memories

Are You Out There, Uncle Bob?

lillian7 Comments

Never planned to join the circus,
although there is a hereditary tendency.
My Uncle Bob ran away to the circus,
several times. But he always came back.

Never planned to join the circus,
but what a circus we’re living in now!
Twenty-four-seven news cycle,
clown leading buffoons under the big top.

Never planned to join the circus,
but it’s tempting to become an escape artist.
I’d lose myself in romance novels and Netflix,
or any kind of my own-made cocoon.

Uncle Bob, if you’re anywhere out there,
somewhere in the cosmos,
help us find our way back home again.
Just like you always did.

Kim is hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. She asks us to write a poem “that starts with a surprising hook, which can be one to three lines, but must develop into a fully-fledged poem.”

A bit of explanation: in a few years, I’ll become an octogenarian. I actually did have an Uncle Bob, who every time his wife became pregnant, ran away to the circus. Absolutely true – he had four children so he ran away four times! But he always came back- well before they were born. He was a wonderful uncle and as my childhood memories recall, had a lot of fun with his kids.

PS: here in the U.S., this is no time for any of us to be escape artists. It’s time to speak out, stand up, and resist!

Parenting

lillian12 Comments

Chrysalis like. Our arms, our home.
Enveloping, nurturing,
encouraging evolving independence.

Teaching skills. Helping. Watching.
Too soon the dividing line appeared,
between the now and what was coming.

Responsibilities increased. Yours not ours.
Your departures, more frequent,
measured at first in hours, not miles.

Your wings. Expected, prepared for.
We marveled and smiled. Waved at you . . .
and then you were gone.

Distance multiplied. Time stretched separations.
Hairline fractures of the heart,
smiling our love through goodbyes.

Parenting children to adulthood.
Learning to live through changing times,
adjusting to the moving margins.


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Dora asks us to write about a poem that somehow talks about margins. She gives many examples of margins. As a septuagenarian with two happily married children and five grandchildren, I thought about living through moving margins as a parent and thus, this poem.

Smoke Rings . . .

lillian20 Comments

The last of my generation. Savoring my cigarette, I sit blowing smoke rings. They dissipate into wispy nothingness, metaphorical for my existence these days. I’m not alone in this assisted living complex. But I am lonely. With my failing eyesight, I no longer escape on adventures with Agatha Christie or James Patterson.

I have so few pleasures. Sometimes I’ll listen to Duke Ellington records and I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook with the photographs there. And the moss that I imagine in my dreams, always beneath my husband’s feet. I can see it when I bend over the pages with my magnifying glass, in the picture of John standing beside our first tent. Memories come alive on the pages. My children’s birthday celebrations, cheeks pooched out, blowing candles. I’ve been blessed. My life has been good. But oh Lord, it’s time. It’s time.


Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, Kim asks us to include the line “And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss” in our piece of flash fiction that is 144 words in length, sans title. The line is from the poem Take This Waltz by Leonard Cohen. We may change the punctuation of the required line, but must use the words exactly, in the exact order as appears in Cohen’s poem.

Image created on Bing Create.

Love Dances On

lillian29 Comments

Victrola plays Glen Miller’s Moonlight Serenade.
She sits dozing, blue-veined hands quiet,
elbows on doily-covered armrests.
Asleep, she was dancing with him.
Awakening to reality
she stares at his empty chair.
Only a figment in her dreams now,
she still misses him every day.

A quadrille written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. I’m hosting today, asking folks to include the word “figment” (or a form of the word) in their poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Image created in Bing Create.

Detour

lillian22 Comments

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus

Some years back we found ourselves near the town I grew up in – Waukegan, Illinois. I’d not been there in decades. We decided to take a detour in our planned trip and drive by some of my old haunts.

Sadly, the house I lived in for my first nine years was in a state of disrepair. Rickety porch steps, missing shingles. My mother’s beloved lilac bushes were no more. The downtown where I’d “scooped the loop” in the front seat of an old Chevy was barely recognizable. Not one store name was the same. Most jarring was my walk through the Catholic church I grew up in. How could it be so small? I remembered lighting candles inside a hushed space – a side grotto/cavern made of dark rock. There I stood, inside the grotto, looking at battery operated candles and grey plastic simulated stone walls. After lighting a candle and saying a small prayer for my mother, I decided to end our nostalgic tour. I wanted to keep the rest of my memories intact.

stream rushes surely
rocks tumble and change their shape
nothing stays as is


Frank is hosting Haibun Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. His prompt for today is to “imbue our haibun with mono no aware. Write on any topic that you like as long as your haibun embodies that wistful sadness marking the beauty of transience.” A haibun combines prose and a haiku. Image is a photo I took some years back on one of our vacations.

Time in a Bottle

lillian3 Comments

When I was very young
time meant having fun.
The road ahead of me . . .
well I couldn’t see the end
much less fathom the turns,
detours, or optional routes
in the long journey to come.

A septuagenarian now,
closer to eighty than seventy,
my memories are glued in scrapbooks.
From early marriage days
to birthdays and holidays,
newspaper clippings,
and recital programs.

Wedding albums,
birth announcements.
Photo albums filled with
tent-camping vacations,
early grandparenting days,
family reunions,
scenery shots from cruising days.

There is no doubt about it, time is a glutton.
It eats up seconds, months,
and precious years. But if we could stop it,
collect special events,
and put them in a bottle,
the question is,
at what point would we do that?

What would be the ripple effect?
Which moments might be lost,
what aspects of human development
might be missed in that stutter moment
between stopping the clock and starting it again?
Can we really judge what is significant enough
to stop everyone’s else’s world to save our own?

And just as important to consider,
how many bottles would we need?


Written for NaPoWriMo day 17 where the prompt today is to choose a song, and write a poem whose title is the name of the song. Time in a Bottle was made popular by Jim Croce.

Ode to a Family Table

lillian3 Comments

Praises to the table,
the one our family gathered round.
You held court with meals,
never minded spilled morsels.
Gained rings in the process
from sloppy milk glasses.

You listened without judgement.
Heard the hijinks of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle,
knock-knock jokes, teacher complaints,
family disagreements, high school gossip,
vacation plans, college choice deliberations,
and joyfully sung table graces.

You welcomed guests
who crammed in extra chairs.
More elbows leaning in,
more spills, raucous laughter.
Birthday party guests and gangly teens
who occasionally kicked your legs.

Now in another house
but still in the family,
serving another generation.
From toddlers punching playdough
to kids’ paints slopping on your surface,
you still stand proud after all these years.


Written for day 9, NaPoWriMo. The challenge is to write a poem every day in April, which is National Poetry Writing Month.

The NaPoWriMo challenge today, takes a page from the famous poet Pablo Neruda. His poetry, translated to English, is treasured by many. Among his poetry are a series of Odes. An ode is a poem written in praise of a person, place or object. The challenge today? “Write your own ode celebrating an everyday object.”

Photos are of our family table over the years….could not find any when our kids were infants or toddlers. We sure celebrated many a birthday at this table! The table has been at our daughter’s home since her children were very young. They grew up at the same table their mama and uncle did. Last two photos are of our daughter’s and son’s children sitting at the table in more recent years.

They said it wouldn’t work . . .

lillian1 Comment

There are certain phrases we hear so often
we just naturally assume they’re true,
or at the very least, in our experience
we never hear them as new.

All through our married life
we always had dogs, as in two,
because everyone knows
“two is easier than one” is true.

You’ve heard that well worn phrase,
“they fight like cats and dogs.”
We always assumed adding a cat to the mix
would result in a myriad of scrappy conflicts.

So it was with great trepidation,
we agreed with significant hesitation.
Buckling under to our daughter’s frustration
we agreed to her pleas, with much consternation.

We added a cat to the mix
expecting a storm of scrappy conflicts.
Blossom was a Siamese kitten
so cute, we were all quickly quite smitten.

And weren’t we incredibly surprised
when our fears were never realized.

Lyra stretched out her long Shepherd frame,
Blossom circled round, staking out her claim.
Lyra settled in for a nice long nap
and Blossom curled up, at home in her lap.

Written for NaPoWriMo Day 8. The challenge is to write a poem every day in April, National Poetry Writing Month.

The prompt at NaPoWriMo today is to “write a poem that centers around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met – whether due to time, space, age, the differences in their nature, or for any other reason.” Photo is of our very large German Shepherd, Lyra, and our Siamese kitten, Blossom: taken many many years ago when our kids were very young.

We Are Family

lillian2 Comments

Family gathering
love, laughter, reminiscing.
Like the inevitability of spring,
our connections bloom again.


Written off-prompt, for NaPoWriMo. It’s National Poetry Writing and the challenge is to write a poem every day in April.

Written today, on the occasion of a family gathering this weekend in Chicago, to celebrate the lives of Joanne and Ed Schnackenbeck.

Prosery for today . . .

lillian20 Comments

One of four children, her parents died before the age of sixty from massive heart attacks. Her two sisters did the same; as did her brother. She buried her youngest sister on her own birthday and did the same with her only son, who died at fifty-one, also from a heart attack. Her husband died at seventy-three, from complications following open heart surgery. She defied familial medical history and lived to eighty-one, her own heart having been broken many times. She was my mother.

When they called, I rushed to her side. Congestive heart failure finally took its toll. “We’d like to operate,” the doctor said. She quietly shook her head. “I’m so tired, Lillian.” I held her hand and she smiled. But that smile was the last smile to come upon her face. I whispered, “Go and find dad, mom.” And she did.

Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Lisa asks us to use the line, “But that smile was the last smile to come upon her face” in a piece of prose, no more than 144 words in length, sans title. The line is from the poem Ballad of Birmingham, written in 1968 by Dudley Randall. My mother, Helen Cecile Petitclair Gruenwald died in 1998. I had the privilege of being at her side as she transitioned to another world. I remember it clearly.