togetherness

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

A Glimpse in Time

lillian5 Comments

I press my hand into the rock
this cave dwelling of yesteryear
and yesteryears before that
hand in hand, exactly
living inside solidified.

Bending still,
my eyes turn upward
seek the crevasse,
its light
and breath of breeze.

Clouds stir
create, reform
amorphous ambivalent shapes.
A spirit courses through my fingertips
perhaps rides the wisps above.

And I understand. I feel. I know.
Those before me, before them
all are dear to her,
threads of life intermingled
tied to the earth’s core.

photo 2-3    photo 1-2

Me in 2003 — at Walnut Canyon, Arizona. The Sinagua people lived in the cliff dwellings within the mountain sides.  This is me, putting my hand into a print in the cave wall — I was so moved. My hand fit exactly. I’ve never forgotten it.  The second “picture” – my words, written next to the picture in my scrap book….”It is an amazing feeling of connection to humans of another time.”  All these years later, still remember that feeling and it motivated this piece.

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.

A Study in Tears

lillian10 Comments

photo

I cried today
peeling onions
at our black marble countertop
knife chopping
on the old scarred cutting board.
I laughed at myself
as salty tears seasoned diced sweet yellow
enough for two, waiting for your footsteps.

I cried today
walking in the rain
the Charles covered in mist
damp fog coolness on my face,
your absence by my side.
A young couple scurried by
unaware that my tears ached
with rivulets from the sky.

I cried today
in front of our tv
on our corduroy couch
stained by tears on wales.
Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr,
an Affair to Remember
their ending so bittersweet
ours so not.

And I wondered
if anyone,
beyond these walls
could hear
my silent
primal
scream.

Motivated by rereading a prompt from my poetry mentor, Holly Wren Spaulding, in a previous class with her.  Write a poem using “anaphora” —  repetition of a word or phrase.