Caught In The Tide

There are snapshots, colors
fading from the noon sun, lining
the radiator shields, the bookshelves,
the dressers and piano top. One
is of a young child in a striped
one-piece bathing suit, her father
lifting her above the waves, her face
happy and anxious at the same time,
the father smiling. And there he is again,
this time holding her arm at the church
as he takes her down the aisle and releases
her into the unknown, his face still happy
but filled with some uncertainty, looking
so handsome and young in his tuxedo,
friends and family in the background
whose faces the camera did not clearly
catch, its focus on the man and the young
woman. And then, there he is again,
sitting under the dogwood tree with his
youngest grandchild, a weary smile
gracing the definitive lines that men
who have lived thirty years at sea
and who have witnessed things the young
woman and the grandchild can't begin
to imagine often wear, and you would think either
the young woman, who has now earned
her own share of lines for entirely
different reasons, or perhaps a grandchild,
would recognize the importance of placing
these scenes in a photo book or a box
or in between the pages of a favorite
book so the fading would end, the erasing
of time halted, but the woman, in particular,
knows there is no stopping this gradual
fading into nonexistence, her memory
nearly as drained as the paper, her resolve
to persevere not what it once was, back
when she was lifted from the waves,
feeling the pull of the tide, worrying
even then that her father may not be strong
enough to save her, nor himself, from a plan
not of their device, but one they must live with.

When The Spirit Calls

Her face is the color of a Dove
milk chocolate bar and just as smooth,
so smooth, as a matter of fact, that I wanted
to take a bite out of one of her high cheekbones.
She hugged me, knowing my face was familiar
but not quite being able to place me. What she
needed was a comrade in arms, the woman in line
in front of us at the local grocery store was the woman
she caught with her man one night last summer,
after she'd put her babies to bed and put her face
on, her long walk to his house longer than she
would know until she found them in the middle of love-
making, his hand touching places reserved exclusively
for her, and then she looks at the young girl in line
in front of us and asks her Are you Sammie? I saw
fear rise in the other girl's eyes, rise like the creeks
and streams inundated with this latest spring
downpour, fear so palpable my heart starts to beat
harder, and I think of the rabbits Molly chases
in the backyard. After the woman leaves, she tells
me how the scene played out, how he ran after her
into the street, how other women and men judge
her because she can't read and lives
on disability, how they have no right, the man
and the woman who drives a red Camaro. All the way
out the door and into the parking lot she asks me
if what she did was wrong as she explains the situation,
and I say, Sister, what did Jesus say about judgment,
about what to do, and she answers with the Biblical
explanation, her thin arms flinging themselves around
my neck, her voice calling to me as I walk to my car,
Thank you, Sister, for filling me with the Spirit
today, and I nod to her to say I understand,
knowing full well the way the spirit moves
her is as broken as the way she walks,
and my spirit is not nearly as fierce nor as ready
to concede how tenuous the walk is, grateful
I could even talk the talk long enough to matter,
the albatross of indifference spreading its enormous
wings long enough for me to release this onus of me
which generally refuses to be released,
except when the spirit catches me unaware,
and all pretense leaves in the shadow of its calling.

Down in the River to Pray

I Can See No Reason But This

Why aren't you alive, I say to no one
or nothing in particular, as I stand
on my porch and watch the traffic
trickle by, this several hours after rush
hour, which is not really a rush in this
small town--it's just the path some folks
choose on their way home. But there
they are--those damn branches next
to the porch, the ones that fell this winter
in the ice storm. They just keep looking
at me, their bare limbs reaching out
to me like so many fingers in the nursing
home, dead but still alive, lending
themselves to the imagination of a drunkard
and a fool who chooses to think they still
feel, two months gone, severed from their
host. Why have I not taken them
to the curb, left them there for the city
to feed them and their disability into
the chopper, and then take them
to the mulch yard at the recycling center
where they would be sure to arouse someone’s
interest, have a chance to find a new home,
one in which all the fragments of their existence
could come together to make something whole
again? I just haven't found a way to make
peace with them before I send them away,
one of them with the beginnings of a bird's nest
woven tightly into one of her arms, a very pregnant
cardinal swooping in and out, her beak filled
with the melange she finds scattered about in yards
and trash-filled streets, me quietly watching
her flit about, then going back over the question
nagging me from the start—who am I to say
what constitutes life--realizing as I say it
to the wind, the limbs, and the birds that I miss
you so much that nothing I see or know makes
much sense except letting the living take a stab
at living and letting the dead do what they
must, which may mean letting the dead just be.

stevie ray vaughn pride and joy 1982

In a Stevie mood today...sure wish I had seen him perform live before he left this earth...still dancing here...

Lamentations of a Quasi Gardener

Spring has arrived, bringing with her
only work to be done, I think as I look
from my porch windows to the unraked
leaves, fallen limbs, clumps of wild grass,
to the Bermuda forcing its way through
the small cracks between the brick
pavers I placed in front of the garden beds
the summer you died, the summer I could
not stop moving--planting, digging, raking,
mowing, and sweating--god yes, sweating,
pulling Bermuda from around the beds
until my palms bled, and there it is all back
again, prolific and determined, much more
determined than I think I am this year to remove
it, a days-long task to lift each paver
and pull by hand the unruly roots
until the wet soil coats my garden gloves,
which I will be forced to shed, if I am to feel
the loam conspiring with the intricate
workings of rhizomes webbed beneath
my feet, and I'll be bent there in the hot sun,
fingers and nails covered in cold soil, pulling
and cursing and wondering why I didn't do this right
initially and place black plastic over the tender
seedlings, leaving just enough air for them to grow.
But I know why--that would have been too easy,
and I'm not about easy. I lean toward making things
as difficult as possible--perhaps to have something
to bitch about, a lesson to offer my children or anyone
who will listen, not knowing any good reason
to keep this up--this laboring and saving the fragile
ones from being choked to death--me so immersed
in my martyrdom that I often forget to do the basic
things like planning and taking reasonable steps,
just diving in on a whim for the most part, and my yard,
like my life, stretches out before me, little snippets
of my half-hearted attempts strewing themselves
about, waiting for those large droplets of yellow
sweat to drip from the tip of my nose and become
forever lost in the raging green.

***************************

Major overhaul on this one but not sure that it is saying a damn thing I want it to...errrrrr....

Gotta take Molly out to potty and get to work....no time for poetry today (she says after she's spent the last hour fooling around with this thing!)

and jim, thanks for your comments on the first posting of this--I still think the poem may be working against what I am asserting but I can't tell for sure...should know better than to try to force my little darlings...this may be one I need to kill off indeed!

********************************

Gumbo night tonight with a Chardonnay. Selections
in this town are very limited--I hope I chose wisely.
I bought a bottle of Tormaresca Puglia (Puglia is
the southern Italian province where the vineyard
is located). My only other choices were Mondavi,
Glen Ellen or Yellow Tail. We'll see if I made a good choice.

Never been much of a white wine person--I do so love
the reds but they make my teeth turn gray (which doesn't stop me
from drinking them--I just invested in some whitening toothpaste
that really does remove coffee, tea and wine stains) but I am trying
to branch out a bit and pair up my wines with my food.

Just thinking about the gumbo makes my mouth water.

Using a recipe from Food & Wine magazine and embellishing
it with my own special touches I add to gumbo. Hope it's yum.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
E. E. Cummings


somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands