Relationships

You Became My Constant

lillian7 Comments

I was not there, the day everything changed.
When was that? When World War II ended?
When Einstein discovered relativity?
When nine-eleven crashed into infamy?

Or when Harry really met Sally?
Or when you simply ate a peach that summer day,
juice deliciously dripping down your tanned wrist.
Somewhere at that moment, I suppose a child was born.

Truth is, everything changes
with every breath we take.
Every pivot, every spin, every loping run,
something new becomes.

Nothing stands still. Except perhaps
sentinel mountains in the Norwegian fjords.
Yet even they are marred by subtle granular shifts
as we gaze up at their rugged rockface surface.

Like when we turned around
and our children became adults.
We noticed when their braces came off that summer,
but we didn’t register the daily shifts.

I don’t understand my image in the mirror.
I know it’s me. But how did it become . . . that?
Wasn’t it just yesterday, I was a brunette
and you introduced yourself to me?

Fifty-seven years later, we walk more slowly,
still hand in hand more often than not.
We’ve passed through so many seasons together,
the path is now longer behind than in front.

And so my love, in this moment
that shall also pass by all too quickly,
I simply must tell you.
I am thankful for every day.
I am thankful for you.

Written to share with dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Saturday, March 18, dVerse will go LIVE with audio and video from 10 to 11 AM EST.

Folks from across the globe will meet face-to-face via Google Meet to read a poem of their choosing, and to visit across the miles.

Click here between 10 and 11 AM Boston time on Saturday, March 18th to join us — you’ll find an easy link that will open in your browser so you can meet everyone. Be sure to click on the SATURDAY link. Come and read a poem of your own OR just watch and listen. We’re a friendly goup and the more the merrier!

Photos: That’s George, the love of my life, and I our freshman year in college – many many years ago. Second photo is of us this past summer.

Friendly Warning

lillian14 Comments

Steeped in amniotic fluids,
ejected from maternal womb –
dropped into parents’ environment.

Simmered in their care, their beliefs,
their modeling behaviors and aspirations.
Children grow roots where they are planted.
Tend your garden wisely.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Today Bjorn hosts OLN LIVE from Sweden, from 3 to 4 PM Boston time. Click here between 3 and 4 PM EST for the link to join us live with audio and video. Come read a poem of your own or come just to listen. The more the merrier!

Who needs a rosary?

lillian4 Comments

Rosary tied to box spring
beneath where my father slept.
God, have mercy on him.
He did not worship You,
but lived You in relationships.

I was taught Papal invincibility
as priests preyed on youth.
They forgave others
behind confessional screens,
required rosaries for penance.

My father,
God rest his soul,
more a father than them.
He didn’t need a rosary,
but many of them did.


Explanation: When I was away in college, I received a phone call from my mother. They’d just had a new mattress and box spring set delivered. And the strangest thing, she said. When they went to remove the old box spring, they found a rosary entwined in the bottom of it. Did I have any idea why it was there?

And then I remembered. When I was in Catholic grade school, learning my catechism, I feared my father wouldn’t go to heaven because he didn’t go to church and he wasn’t a Catholic. So I sneaked into my parents’ bedroom, crawled under their bed and tied a rosary to the boxed spring, on the side of the bed my father slept on. Imagine the indoctrination that happened to make me think that and go to that extreme to save him. I was probably in third or fourth grade when I did this. I just couldn’t understand, I suppose, how such a good man as my father, wouldn’t be allowed in heaven.

Image by Richard Revel from Pixabay

With Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

lillian40 Comments

“How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.”

Valentine’s Day,
definitely the time
to answer that query.

One, two, three, four . . .
forty-seven, forty-eight,
fifty-three wedded years.

Seven dogs we called our friends,
two children, nurtured and loved,
five wonderful grands.

Strolling Singapore’s orchid gardens,
admiring Japan’s cherry blossoms,
walking atop the Great Wall.

Meandering beside Lake Michigan’s shores,
through London’s fog, Alaska’s snow,
Bryce’s hoodoos, Yosemite’s trails.

From Iowa to Sweden to Australia too.
Easiest answer to that question?
So many ways over so many years.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, on Valentine’s Day, Sanaa is hosting and asks us to write “plainly” about love.

Photos top row, left to right: summer 1974, pregnant with Abbey, our first child; at the Great Wall outside of Beijing; in Japan enjoying the cherry blossoms. Bottom row: in an underground cave in Bermuda about 8 years ago; and finally, us here in San Diego just seven days ago, February 7th, celebrating our 53rd anniversary! Thankful for every day.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” — from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43.

Crocus Me

lillian13 Comments

Born in May these many years ago,
amongst lily of the valley
and gaiety of tulips bright.

I am like the crocus
enjoying first rays of spring sun
in the midst of winter’s final stance.

Assertive, I push forward
first to appear,
even when slicked with chilling frost.

During coldest of times
I burrow in found comfort.
Your arms, ready to enfold me.

Like Mother Earth,
you are my home
in every season of the year.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Sanaa asks us to “become the embodiment of winter. Tell us what you feel during this season.” Crocus Me is where my muse took me!

NOTE: HOPE you will join us this Thursday, Jan 19, from 3 to 4 PM EST for OLN LIVE . . . OR . . . for the first time, on Saturday, Jan 21, from 10 to 11 AM EST.

You’ll find two links on Thursday’s dVerse: one for Thursday and one for Saturday. Clicking on the link will bring you to a live session with audio and video! Come meet your fellow dVersers and either read one of your poems aloud or just come to listen! The more the merrier! We’re a very friendly bunch!

Twelve lines do make a poem . . .

lillian24 Comments

May you burn in hell,
I truly hope so.

Sun still shines at dawn
to cause their demise
at Charter Street Burial Ground.

I crave escape.
A pen, and a plethora of words
curtailing his gigolo lust,
two stars over, from above the moon.

Respect provides a healthier view.
Illuminated on my tree,
“There is good in this world.”


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe where today is Meet The Bar Day. Laura asks us to look at the most recent poems we’ve written, preferably the last twelve poems, and taking the last lines from each of the poems, rearrange them into a new poem! A poetic sudoku! I did exactly that, not adding any words; not using enjambment (splitting words over two lines). These are the exact words from the last lines of the last twelve poems I posted to dVerse, (minus a prosery prompt since that was prose). Interesting how it turned out. Photo is from a visit to Glendalough, Ireland on a cruise a number of years ago.

When the World is a Blur

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When the world is a blur
we reach out.
Grab a hand we trust
to steady ourselves.
In today’s world
the question becomes,
whose hand can we trust?

Must we ride a mad bull,
bucking twenty-four/seven
careening through disasters,
red flags hurled at us?
Deafening roars
blocking out the rational
in a cacophony of noise?

Some days I seek the easy chair,
slump contentedly, eyes closed,
listen to nothing, just breathe.
I know you are in the next room
ready to provide the steady hand.
You are the reminder,
there is good in this world.

With Folded Hands

lillian28 Comments

Faith came much easier when I was young.
I believed in Purgatory.
That half-way house you might need
before your final reward.
I’d say three Hail Marys for the one lucky soul
who needed exactly that many words
to move out and ascend to heaven.
My lips moved silently,
hands folded, head bowed, like I learned
in Immaculate Conception Grade School.
Then I’d say a very loud Amen and grin.
Good deed done for the day!
These days, as a septuagenarian,
I realize that for some people
hell is right here on earth.
Hail Marys don’t seem to cut it
when a Black man gets shot in the back
while innocently jogging down a street.
I don’t grin anymore
at the end of my prayers.

Shared with dVerse today, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Today is OLN LIVE from 3 to 4 PM and OLN. I’m hosting today….so hope to see many folks there. Photo is my hands this morning.

For the Love of Harold

lillian24 Comments

Widowed at eighty-three, she didn’t cry until they closed the lid on Harold. Never to see him again in that beautiful dark blue suit, worn on so many of their date nights over many years. The love of her life, resting in the Peters-Carmody Funeral Home, before the hearse would take him away.

Five years later, Maud Smith noticed an elderly woman sitting in the front row of mourners patiently waiting for Father David to begin the rosary. She approached the funeral director and quietly asked “Who is that old woman in the front row? Why is she sitting with my family?”

“That’s Mrs. Crowley, ma’am. She often comes to our viewings if the decedent is male. Her husband Harold’s service was here five years ago. I think she imagines him lying there, near her again. You see, to her, death is quite romantic.”

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Bjorn is hosting Prosery Monday, where a line from poetry is given and then must be used, word for word, in a piece of prose that is 144 words or less, sans title. Today the line is from Bob Dylan, “To her, death is quite romantic.”
Image from Pixabay.com

Breaking Point

lillian27 Comments

That was it. She’d had it. Sliced away, leaving a scar on the ancient bark, the tree looked raw. Desecrated. His handiwork obliterated.

That night of infatuation, he carved a heart with their initials right there for all the town to see. “We’re forever entwined” he said. Except they weren’t. He left for college and never returned. It’d been years. She’d waited tables at the Oleander Café. Endured the town folk’s talk behind her back. Their whispers haunted her. They knew she’d carried his child for six months before the miscarriage. People pitied her.

She knew he was never coming back. She dropped the knife and walked out to meet the dusty road. She hailed the first bus she saw. Paid cash and finally got the hell out of there. No matter the bus’ destination, it was her turn to leave it all behind.

Written for dVerse where today Sarah is hosting our Prosery session. She asks us to include the line “she’d had it sliced away leaving a scar” from Michael Donaghy’s poem, Liverpool.

What is Prosery? A Prosery prompt gives a line from a poem and we are to include it in a piece of flash fiction of 144 words, sans title. The line must be word for word, although the punctuation may be changed.