memories

From Boston, Paul Revere, Take Notice!

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NaPoWriMo  Writing Prompt:   it’s the eighteenth of April, the 240th anniversary of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.  In keeping with the theme of rush and warning, write a poem that involves an urgent journey and an important message.

Boston marathoners
poised and ready again
take over streets
race their way
to a 21st century
interpretation
of words you once lived.
Boston Strong

A time to remember those killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, pay tribute to first responders on that day of pain and resolution, and praise the indomitable human spririt that rises in the face of evil.  

The Framed Dream: cherished series, opus 3

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NaPoWriMo  Day 17 without a prompt.   A constant in everyone’s life is the ability to dream. In your sleep and in your waking time. But what do we do when that dream is unfulfilled – stopped dead in its tracks?  Sometimes by a conscious choice, sometimes by circumstances that present themselves, wanted or not. 

 

The Framed Dream

It was a short notice: Helen is predeceased by Bud
and Charles Gruenwald Jr, her husband and son.
God knows, she’d lived the last eight years
impatiently waiting to join them.

It moved with her when she was left alone.
An eight by ten picture from a 1930s
Life Magazine: young nurse in white cap
surrounded by glowing light.

Her nurses training lasted six months.
Instead of earning a nurse’s pin
she eloped and eight months later
put my brother to her breast.

The room was empty when I took it down.
Water-stained backing, script barely readable
My dearest Helen, No one can take this away
from you. Sister Everista 1937   For sixty years,
she’d kept her dream in a plastic frame.

Moonwalk

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NaPoWriMo day 10:  without a prompt.
Nostalgia. Reminiscence. As we age, these words come into play. And sometimes, like me, you go back to revisit your childhood haunts.

They warned me
but I still tried to moonwalk.

You remember that smooth
walking backwards to Billie Jean?

This time, I glide back
for a one day return to where I began.

The house at 144 is there. Paint peeling,house 2
flecks of grey-white decorate the yard.

Rusted poles, frayed clothes line
bereft of flapping sheets.

I meander down a one-way
and circle back searching

for the corner shop. Marble topped
counter with stools where we perched

to share chocolate or cherry cokes
and carefree cheerleader talk –

now your friendly neighborhood
hardware store. Without those silver

keys to tighten clamp-on skates and
rush down Washington Street so fast

we didn’t need my brother’s Radio Flyer.
Next door sits a Dunkin’, eclairs filled

with counterfeit custard. Past blurred
in the too-large magnifying glass

of my mind’s eye. The moonwalk was
and still is, well beyond my grasp.

Sunrise Return to Sweden

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Four years ago, we took a Baltic Cruise, including a day in Stockholm. My husbands’ family is very Swedish. His grandfather, Hjalmer Siegfried immigrated in 1906, at age 22. Painter by trade, he decorated the basement walls to look like the USS Sweden, the ship that brought him to Ellis Island — complete with ship railings, sky, and sea gulls. Some visitors actually got seasick after a Yule drink of homemade glog. Well, honestly, I don’t know if it was the simulated ship or the grain alcohol in grampa’s glog!  Criuise highlight?  The VERY early morning glide through the absolutely quiet and rustic archipelago, leading into Stockholm. Island after island….stunning!  NaPoWriMo day 8 entry, without prompt.

     Dawn in the Archipelago, outside Stockholm….just entering Sweden.  IMG_6095      

Sunrise Return to Sweden                                                             

I stand mesmerized.
Dawn awakens serenity’s beauty
rippled patterns glisten on black sea
gulls hover over softly churning wake.

Moving patterns of white wings
against dark greens and grey rock edges
the occasional light house turns its eye
wood frame homes nestle in their woods.

The ship slowly glides in dark waters
through Sweden’s archipelago
guardian isles to myriad lines of ancestry
protector from the city’s growing girth.

A lone call from among the gulls
pierces still air, a stark welcome
primitive in nature, surely heard before
by our grandfather and his and his and his.

IMG_6136

The Table: cherished series, opus 2

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Celebrate National Poetry Writing Month  NaPoWriMo   Writing Prompt Day 7: a poem about something that has value or worth.

Cherished items, people, and places live in our memories. And because we lead transient lives, their meaning and clarity can evolve over time. Old photos call forth recollections. 

 

The Table

She found the table at Marshall Fields
in nineteen forty-nine, and pictured
her family at exactly half-past six each night
four plates, four forks, knives and spoons.

White oak, the Illinois state tree
with tight growth rings
durable, resilient, and
carved with artisan’s care.

Emotions buffed artfully into lustrous patina
over years marred by scratches, chips and burns
tuna-noodle-pea casseroles set forgetfully upon the wood
and forks slammed down in anger.

Keeping up with Rita, Gwen, and Claire
teflon pans and a formica table-topper
emotions erupt on modernity as leftovers
disappear in a single swipe of the hand.

Phraseology

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The power of words – made into phrases – dependent on circumstances…

Words to a baby small
said with a grin
scooping mashed somethings
from a dripping chin.
All gone.

Long buried
dark transgression
in the almost unreachable
back room of my mind.
All gone.

Brother sudden, father slow,
mother slower still.
My lips whisper:
now – just me.
Almost – all gone

   

Uncle Jim – cherished series, opus 1

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A Prose Poem? Never created in this form before — sort of like a short story, but shorter and more musical? And so begins the Cherished Series.

Jim

Uncle Jim

We hadn’t seen each other in more than twenty years. Now, here I am, watching him peer out of a torn screen door in a mobile home park. I feel his thinness in our hug.

He leads me into the kitchenette where a yellow Tupperware pitcher of pink lemonade sits on the table. There are two metal glasses, one red and one purple. The sticky cardboard can, on its side in the sink.

He listens for a while, to the latest stories about my kids. Do you have any pets? Before I can answer his eyes glance down and he starts talking about Cindy, the black lab he had for so many years. You remember Dickie, my second wife? Well, she just didn’t like dogs and so I couldn’t…..  and his voice trails off. This seems like a nice park I say, filling in the silence. Oh I love the dances and the bingo parties. All the ladies want to dance with me since Dickie died. But I’m not up to any of it so much anymore.

It took an hour to walk the small grocery store. We came back with ten cans of soup, applesauce packs, a quart of nonfat milk, some Comet and three chicken pot pies.

On my way to his place I was thinking it would be nice to see Uncle Jim in his twilight years. But it’s dark going home and I never did see any fireflies lighting up the sky.

Secrets One and Two

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We all have them, right?   Secrets can be delicious or debilitating, wonderful or horrific. So here’s the question to think about. At some time in our lives, have we all had both?
 

Secret One                                                  

A secret so sublime
you long to swirl it
relish it slowly
like the first pour
of fine red wine
as it coats the glass
anticipation heightens
the tasting as divine
as the telling.

 

Secret Two

A secret so potent
like anger
wind-whipped current
roaring through
the sea wall of your mind
unrelenting persistent
batters forward
again and again
through rock hard edges
until released in spews
shattered feelings spent.