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
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.
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.
Have you ever been asked to “define” yourself?
In Holly Wren Spaulding’s poetry class, we were asked to write a Self-Portrait Poem. That seems a bit softer, less in-your-face and serious than “defining” myself.
By way of explanation, I took dance lessons from age 4 to 17 with Miss Edith Tewes in Waukegan, Illinois. She was one tough lady and for a long time I fancied myself a budding Rockette. Photo is me in one of the many Boston rehearsals mentioned below.
Self-Portrait: Dancer Down
There it was. Audition.
Wanted: 100 dancers
for three months prep to perform
in Boston’s Copley Square.
No experience required.
I did this twenty years ago –
in Iowa.
Ninety-nine hoofer-wanna-bes
plus Gene Kelly and me.
Thousands saw me
in the big-ten half-time show
or took a trip for hotdogs
and the john.
So I did 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.
One month to go.
On burgundy shag carpet
right-turn-slide-spin.
Then on wooden
unforgiving studio floor.
Five-six-seven-eight……
Crap.……dancer down.
Legs sagged. Muscles be damned.
Relegated to rice.
Rest-Ice-Compression-and-
– – oh hell,
I forget what the E stands for.
If you haven’t read my About, now would be a good time. Looking at this post, it seems to fit with who I am quite well.
Pollyanna
She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life’s shifting textures.
Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day’s foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.
She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin’s shiny glint from the sidewalk’s crevasse.
A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.
She said regrets lead backward.
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.
She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.
This was written in response to a poetry class writing prompt: think about your regrets. I sat down with my journal, a morning cup of coffee, and began to “spill” on the page. Thoughts, not coffee. And then I stopped. Not fun. And it wasn’t me. So I started again and out came Pollyanna. Have you heard the term? I can define it by something my daughter once said to me, Mom, every movie can’t be The Sound of Music!!!
The picture is from Provincetown, MA, many years ago. It just seems to fit with this post, right? Besides, sunflowers always make me smile.
In today’s age of Twitter, LOL, BFF, etc, you’d think writing one sentence poems would be easy…..but to be grammatically correct, have meaning….tough stuff! This is my first try 🙂
Tantalizing
Standing close, head tilted back
with eyes pressed shut,
small curvey hollow of neck exposed
by an open top button on her uniform,
she waits to taste her very first kiss
lillian the home poet 