Side by side in darkness
as we roll down the highway
seems an appropriate metaphor,
given how little our eyes can help
and the obviously required
image of a journey towards something.
It may seem simple and quiet,
but as your hand silently lands
on my knee and waits to be joined
by its rougher, colder companion
a smile wells up from somewhere
deep in my chest and I realize
I have no questions left to ask.
My mother said anyway
South Dakota had beautiful sunsets.
My mother said, “Daughter,
at least you have nice ears and a
straight back.”
My mother said she didn’t care
for sopranos but they
filled out a choir.
She wasn’t a giving woman,
yet I think of her now
as once again I see the sun
slip from the prairie sky in glory.
-Yia Yia
Salty, to be sure
but I wonder
how many seeds it took,
and if only a few less
may have proven non-fatal.
No time to shout
or reflect on
an abbreviated life,
I imagine.
A small family
shrinks by 33%,
a larger one by some
far off decimal.
His manager wondered
what to do
with these murderous seeds.
His co-workers wondered
if they would have made
the same mistake.
And this man,
well he must have just
closed his eyes
and smiled
as he received such
a marvelous hug.
Cooking in the Cold
The days fold up neatly
like socks from a careful mother,
packed away in a suitcase to be
set aside to measure a winter.
And oh, how these winters drag.
The Minnesota chill lasts
until late July, I’m fairly certain.
And I think it picked up again
around the third of August.
But yes, the days shuffle by.
No rush to come or go,
as their twin is likely to follow,
and be folded in with it
in a slightly lumpy wad of
cotton.
I’ve decided to start posting some poems my grandma wrote some years ago. I’ve always liked her writing and will tag them with “Yia Yia” (grandma in Greek). This first one is definitely not my favorite, but I found it to be quite similar to the first poem I posted on here around six months ago, so it seemed fitting.
Post Caring
The house I was born in,
The city, the state,
My mother, my father,
The weather, the date,
Were all arranged neatly
Without my consent.
So it’s not unexpected
I couldn’t choose when I went.
Perhaps respect has gone awry
somewhere in the bogs of time.
You tread in our footprints
and advocate our vilification,
but before your religious age
the eyes of early days
bore no sullen witness to sin
and fear was just a brush
with the impossible.
.
I’ve heard you preach repentance
over the same crumbling bones
you exhumed from reincarnation
for the sake of your spat
with your own degeneration.
.
Am I to suppose forgiveness
is wired into your nature?
.
You have excavated more than
a lonely pterodactyl,
for I am never more to return
to those holy ashes.
.
Heed the word of a mightier beast:
the wings of the dinosaurs
carved prayers into the heavens
and still fire rained through the scars.
.
Oh to be a pterodactyl!
flying in my Jurassic glory
Undaunted by my steel and glass obstacles,
casting impossibly large shadows
on the pedestrians below.Oh to be feared by fifth grade spellers!
with their comparably tiny fingers
crossed that their word is something
like “boulevard” or…
Someone wrote a reply to my Pterodactyl poem.
(via hindsightunrequited)
It’s important to not become attached,
I suppose.
But isn’t the point to care for them?
If I could see she played tennis,
and enjoyed green tea and toast,
I might be more careful
when removing her stomach,
knowing the hot liquid it held.
But I see she had a child at 32
and I try to assume it was a happy one.
I see she had seven stitches
above her eye,
and I pretend it was while jumping rope
with friends,
and that they all laughed later.
But mainly I see “Depression” at age 82,
followed by “refused treatment”
in sad little parentheses,
and suddenly it’s awfully hard
to see her final three years
as happy ones.
You start with a flower
or something equally as colorful
and you go on to explain
how you picked it
and carried it home with you
to put in a mason jar filled with water
next to your bed.
You say you’ve given it a new life
here among your books
and lovers whispers,
Where it can cleanse the stagnant air
and brighten your evening landscape.
You say it likes it here
where it is not lost in a sea of beauty
but is rather a puddle of pretty
all by itself.
And each morning
when you open your eyes
and it slouches just a bit more
and the water does it no good
and its story seems nearly over,
you tell me it’s not a sad story
because this flower was loved
and admired like it dreamed of.
Which is just to say
that you aren’t ready
to talk about what happened
and why you were walking alone
and why your mason jar was empty
and why the lovers whispers have gone quiet
and why you wake up facing a wilting flower now
and why you’ve taken to loving something that’s dying
and why you can’t just tell me that he’s gone.
