The Waters In Winter

A Place to Stand

16 September 2016

Beneath the sky, upon the ground,

between green grass and frozen waters,

I am a bed of cold, cold sand.

You scratched the words into the surface:

You must find A Place To Stand.

Always, my feet were on the grass

around the reservoir in springtime.

I made the flowers grow, the leaves green;

I caused the sweet, warm breeze to blow.

Always this has seemed to me

a solid place to rest and weep.

The waters received my tears.

Soft wind blows, my hair a plait

behind me. The sun was warm;

kept the chill of grief at bay.

I dreamed beneath my midnight skies

of dancing stars, among the citrine fireflies.

I'd rest in dreams, not lies. Not lies.

Always, this has seemed to me

the safest place to rest and sleep.

Even here, a chill could creep into my mind,

into my sleep. Between the grass and reservoir,

I'd be a bed of warm, wet sand, the water taking

slowly any words traced there, by any hand.

The thread of cold is constant, day or night,

but springtime is rest, summer is for dancing,

fall a time for honey-sweet reprieve for tired feet.

Always a chill creeps through the grass.

Always I know it comes, and I cling

to all these vestiges of autumn, summer, spring.

Winter, I deny. Winter is a cold, hard eye

avoided. A small rebellion,

now there's nothing left to push against.

Only choice. Only me and my desire

to sleep, dance, rest in warmth of forgetting fires.

If I stand beside the Reservoir in winter,

the grass will crunch beneath my feet,

reminding me of spring and citrine fireflies.

I'll place the cold, hard stone of grief

beneath my feet where rain can't penetrate.

It is frozen.

I'll stand on grief in wintertime.

I'll stand barefoot beneath a sliver moon.

In the dead, chill air, my hair hangs loose.

I'll bow my head, hair falling like a curtain

hiding tears that slowly freeze

before they reach the reservoir—

the reservoir that never runs dry.

They freeze before they fall. I know,

I know they all will make their way

in springtime to the waters.

Beside the waters in winter,

I can still remember green and living things,

but songs as sad and sweet as empty honeycomb

sing softly through the trees.

Carp still swim the depths, but snow begins to fall,

and I don't need them to remember. I know.

Unsleeping memory opens wide

on still green grass, frosted in the evening's glow.

I'll stretch myself beside the frozen waters,

gaze upon capacious midnight skies

and unmoved stars above. The world does not tilt

in wintertime. Grief is foundation enough,

even for my heart's shifting.

Beneath the sky, upon the ground,

between green grass and frozen waters,

I am a bed of cold, cold sand

bearing your inscription.

Winter is my place to stand.

Chastened Inspiration

I'm not one for prevailing methods of primping--

daily hair-styling, make up, and hot oil treatments

have always seemed, to me, a waste of time and effort.

I have my own sense of winsomeness, my own

habits and ways of enhancing my outward strengths

that don't include padding the pockets of Paul Mitchell,

Ulta, Mac, and Chi.

But now and again, I get inspired to experiment

with tools and treatments unfamiliar to me,

by nobody's fault but my own:

You'd think coconut oil is coconut oil,

but you'd be wrong. I learned the hard way

as I meticulously massaged coconut oil

scented vaseline into my scalp, enthusiastically ensured

the petroleum jelly reached every hair follicle from the source

outward, down the shaft length of every hair,

to the very split ends I was resolved to address.

Ten washes later (six with dish soap),

I'm finally feeling a little less like a duck in an oil slick.

My hair is more than a little worse for wear,

my inspiration for beauty treatments chastened.

Milestones

No one warns a woman about the quiet

milestones--less celebrated than Double Digits,

Sweet Sixteen, Twenty-One, and the year 

our insurance payments decrease dramatically,

magically with the turning of a quarter-century.

The Silent Others we don't mark until they're behind,

sometimes years gone--

the passage from Maiden to Matron;

the moments that sneak up behind and whisper

"You've missed your youth." Your washboard belly,

your innocence gone for good, but you don't remember 

ever having fully appreciated that form of beauty.

You spent an inordinate amount of time shamefacedly

focusing on your spindly naivete until you found yourself

entrenched in this new form of loveliness.

You'd better get cracking learning to believe this frame

and faltering wisdom are desirable in whatever forms

you need to be found desirable.

What a loss to waste this time, find yourself

silently, irretrievably lost; tenuously alien again.

Renaissance Man

26 February 2013

Do you think da Vinci knew

he was The Renaissance Man?

Did he know, in his time, the lines he drew,

the connections he made between disciplines were genius

far beyond his personal interest? Did he have a sense

of the greatness, the significance of his daily tasks?

Perhaps they struck him as mundane.

Personally, I think he lacked focus, constantly

flitting from one medium to another, attending

for moments to a discipline before rushing off

to discover a new facet of his work.

Jack of All Trades

24 February 2013

I'd like to drop the sentimentality,

write something honest. I'd like to share the moment

when the baby was enjoying her bubble bath.

I was listening to Billy Joel, remembering

how it felt, years ago, to be a pianist--an amateur

as always, but a musician nonetheless.

It's very like being a carpenter,

a silversmith,

a seamstress for a moment,

though it's hard now to find a moment to decide

which point of interest to choose, where to excel.

I'm still a Jack of all the trades I encounter,

a master of none of them. Even this poem

comes haltingly, and I second guess the content,

the form,

the poet.

Service

She went from person to person
placing orders. Other people came to fill them
while she juggled I-wonder-how-many-people's
expectations of service and care.

If I were in a restaurant,
my order would be free after such a wait.
But this is the ER, payment comes up front
where I'm neither the product,
nor treated as the customer,
though I was well within my rights to say
No thank you, send the meds back.
How was she to know I prefer the waning pain
to a shot in the a**?

Look Away

10 December 2011

The pot boils,

the flower blooms,

the writing fades,

the light glooms.

We watch without blinking,

eyes watering, winking--

still, the child grows,

flourishes, goes

when we look away.

Topography

5 December 2011

A barely visible cross-hatch of history

lies below my eyes;

a topographical diary of thirty-five years’

experience, foul and fair, each impression

faintly faded as a fabric’s fold

that will never lay flat

no matter how hot the iron,

no matter how hard the press.

For a Time

4 December 2011

I have learned there’s a treatment
to amputate whatever
silence cannot be tolerated,
whatever noise needs hushed.
Extremities are a nuisance, even when
Nature herself dictates that I receive
the gift of acute feeling
for a time. To numb is the norm;
Experience has become
a choice against the grain--
to dive in, to know, to stay sane
amidst the chaos.

Tea with the In-Laws

27 October 2011

I stir my tea and think
of everyone half a world away, wonder
if Lizet stirs her tea counter-clockwise;
how Ruth manages to stir her tea at all;
if Dottie drinks tea when we’re not there
to make it for her, to sit and sip and enjoy
the simple moments that sometimes we,
yes, even we take for granted.
I stir from the bottom and wonder how
Deb can manage coffee without sugar,
if Gina is ribbing her husband instead of me
over half-and-half this early in the morning.

You Used to Write Things

I used to write things--
USED to, he says,
and then looks
puzzled at my offense.
Used to indeed!
Why, just the other day,
I wrote a note
explaining why
our son was not in school.
I wrote a grocery list;
a collection of items,
things I must do before
I lay down to rest.

Polished Wood

22 October 2011

Time is taking hold of my eyelids,
dragging them along
a mostly predetermined path. Evidence
of many meals enjoyed,
perhaps too much,
certainly too late,
bring softness where once
I was, by and large, unyielding--
but my hair in sunlight is still
the color of polished wood.

Broken Faith

15 September 2011

Think before you call it quits--
you’ll never stop
realizing all you’ve lost,
even when the sting subsides
and you’ve forgiven yourself
and other. There will always be
another reminder of where and who
you could or should have been;
who you should be with.
No matter how good it gets,
it’s never quite perfect,
and you can’t ever make it
what it’s not, no matter how you long,
no matter how you try to believe
you never loved,
you never broke faith.

Complacent

I no longer wade into the depths;

extend myself to hidden places to find

what's wonderful any more than

I choose to seek out the predators.

By extension, or lack thereof, my beauty

swims at the bottom of an inkwell, free

to avoid notice; bound by complacency.

I sit in sunny paradise with an ice-cold

Yes I Can; Now Everything Is Peaceful

humming softly in my ear.

Thoughts After Bedtime At Friendly Acres

You give me poems to write:

space for me and mine to work out

our idiosyncrasies here

in a place Friendly to such things.

There is so much opportunity.

I am afraid to go to sleep,

even at 11:32 PM, when

my children have long since

left their struggles to find rest;

when my husband has been in bed

for at least an hour without me.

You must understand, this is unheard of.

Home is a complicated combination

of many ingredients. He is the first.

My children are a close second,

and after that, it's all a matter

of geography, and being in the same space

together--safe and somewhat understood,

if only for a moment.

You needn't catch every nuance;

understand every shade of meaning

entailed within our struggles.

The matter is only one of willingness

to be present, to endure,

to come together at the end of the day

on the porch with the sun in our eyes

aware that the time is slipping past us;

this won't last. We have to enjoy of each other

what we can, while we can.

That's what matters most.

The Porch

The porch is a good place to sit

and take in the rest of the farm.

Mail comes when it comes,

and if I sit here, I know when

to walk down the driveway and retrieve

the junk and what I imagine are rare

precious posts--perhaps less rare here

in such a friendly corner of the world.

The wind is cool, just right

on a day when, if I step off the porch

into the sunlight, I'm a little too warm

for comfort. The leaves are singing,

the sky is lazy, the trees are wearing

shadowy skirts that brush the grass

a darker shade of lovely.

Comparative Literature

28 April 2011

The bright colors, crinkly fish

tails and floppy elephant ears

mark this book as hers, completely

safe and allowed

and, therefore, uninteresting

compared with my Kindle.

Up All Night

18 March 2011

Sometimes she sleeps--we think she's angelic.

Those hours fly by, then she wakes teething,

spends the night screaming.

In the morning someone asks

and we agree she's adorable

during the day or when she sleeps,

but wouldn't it be nice to close your eyes at 10 PM,

not open them until 5 or 6? Of course,

there are the moments when she wakes burning,

a cloth on her brow, cool just moments ago,

mopping up the fever. Those moments between

2 and 2:30 stretch out as if to ten mornings or more,

waiting for the fever to break. I've noticed

how precious she is in those moments,

whether or not she's sleeping.

Congruence

6 March 2011

I never have understood this brand of non-conformity,

everyone building their own unique

from homologous blocks of vaguely varying hues;

differing degrees of sameness. The very pretty

people somnambulate to and fro scrutinizing;

assimilating bits of cleverly pieced cotton and ramie;

making their resulting congruence

a little less distinctive, a little more

just like everyone else.

Fishing

Inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith
21 January 2011

I've never been a fan of fishing--
the smell of stink bait, or the wriggling
of worms I send to their deaths
so I can feel a moment of exhilaration
(or not)
when an unwitting catfish, trout, bass
runs scared from my hook inexorably
piercing, tearing the flesh of his cheek.

This has never been my idea of a good time,
though some revel in that moment, whether
this terrified creature is dinner,
or an unfortunate participant in a game
of catch and release.

I might be persuaded to sit lakeside,
unsuccessfully casting my line
in an unpopulated shallow, enjoying
the warmth of the sun, the cool of a beer,
the seemingly self-satisfied state
of the fish who think
they've pulled one over on the hook today,
the story telling later
about the one that got away.