For almost 25 years I rose at 4 in the morning to write—5 or 6 days a week. I was a single mother; I had a job, and grabbed the only time available. I burned with words. The children grew up, MIDNIGHT LEMONADE bought unlimited writing time, menopause brought new sleep patterns, and the flames leapt lower. I began to ‘bargain’ with the muse, put her off the way you do with organizing a closet or calling a friend who talks too much.
On New Year’s day of 2012, I cut a deal: I would write a poem a day—no matter what. And I did, In fact, I kept to that resolution for several years. I wrote probably hundreds of pages of poems. If I could find them all, I could trace those years and seasons, own them over again. But the point is that I wrote a lot of poems and maybe one passable poem for every thirty. I have been graced with friends who are true poets, even great poets; a couple of them have been read by many thousands of readers. I understand I’m in whatever is lower than Little League as a poet. Prose is more my medium. On New Year’s morning 2016, I made a resolution to start a novel (bear in mind I already had 3 or 4 unpublished novels filed away) and to work on it every day until I finished. And I did. The novel was GONER. My powerful agent sent that manuscript scurrying back to a drawer to join the other novels she had already rejected. My friend, Lynn Hill, asked to administer CPR to my 2016 novel and that is how GONER found its way ‘back into the light ‘and to an Independent Press. Thank you, Lynn!
All this, as preface to Selected Poems of 2022. I continue to pen the occasional poem and this New Year decided to cull out a few from the past year. Here they are:
Dinner Out In The Pandemic
Separate cars parked
in a haunted parking lot
waiting for the storm.
We seat ourselves among
empty tables, pretending
to remove our masks.
The menu is stingy,
the past conspicuously
not ‘Du Jour.’
Missing like the sauce
not served with
January Oysters.
A silent soundtrack
plays golden oldies
gone silver.
1/13
STELLA
Stella star
but you were
not even close.
You were pretty,
but unremarkable,
maligned by virtue
of your shyness.
Four children
to disregard you
invisible star
out
shone by
your moon man,
volatile but
a damned
good storyteller,
my grandpa,
“Kill the kid on the bike!”
he’d shout, speeding up
while you cowered
in the passenger seat.
Who could even imagine
your hands
on the wheel?
At four years old
your French mother
tied an apron round
your waist and
stood you on
a stool to reach
the stove where
you spooned
liquidly dough
into hot grease
making breakfast
in the house where
your father
killed himself.
Crepes!
those lace
edged pancakes,
I recognized
in Paris.
Like discovering you
now In my old age
and remembering the
year I was abandoned
at eight to live
with you, and
volatile grandpa,
where I learned how
poetry can mute pain
while voicing it
in all those sad
nineteenth century
poems you read to me.
The tears we two shed
together over lost
causes, dead children
unrequited love.
Grandmother my star
I don’t even know
where you are buried.
Let’s Get On With The Show
One night, two years before you died,
you called to tell me to look at the sky.
You were probably not sober
and had probably tried to
call each of our children
who never took your calls after 6.
The moon and a couple planets were
performing a once-in-a-lifetime show.
You were an old actor, decades alone,
the only patron in that big house,
but the sky needed more
audience that night and there was
no one else to call.
Though I, too, never took
your calls after 6, I answered
just before the last ring and
carried the phone outside.
The show we watched together
was splendid, astonishing.
It leaves me, even now,
suspended between
gratitude and grief.
HOARDERS
You would think that
the people who love life
the most would be the
ones who cling to
life most tenaciously.
But it seems the other
way: the misanthropic,
the glass half-empty-folks
are the ones who horde
life, hold on tight, misers
huddled over their dark gold.
HUGE
When her heart broke it wasn’t
Just her heart breaking, she
Brought her whole body down.
Other people fall, or trip, miss
A step, slip on ice, Maureen
Crashed down through a ceiling.
Driving 460 drunk she hit a ditch
Drove the gear shift through her
Thigh, drove herself to ER.
When she smoked she pulled
The smoke deep into her lungs
And then said what she had to say.
She loved big and thought big.
Whatever she told us, we did
And we were better for it.
We six women, her safety net
Woven to soften her landings.
The bridge on her way out.
She was smart, hard, sharp.
It was just like Maureen to leave
without saying good bye.
September 2022
Please Don’t
Please don’t touch the butterflies.
Flames of color flaring
the flowers,
lighting down, lifting up
silk tatters torn from
the glimmering fabric
of wistfulness.
They are so airy and
fragile, child palm
bursts of gladness;
flighty, brave, brief.
Like first love
Overlook
We pull off the road
driving down
from Mountain Lake
to gaze out over
the verdant valley,
the slash running
through its heart.
Land stabbed
In the Devil’s deal .
Angel Resting
Drive past a rusty trailer home set back
in a hollow, cars mounted on blocks
tattered Rebel flag fluttering above
a tipped over two-wheeled tricycle .
Around the next bend, early morning
sunlight has turned the creek stones to
chunks of gold; velvet green hills swell
and rise toward Angel’s Rest Mountain.
Mist turns the angel’s gown gossamer
and stirs beneath her frigid wings, as if
to wake her, bring her to attention.
These people here believe in heaven!
And really, how can they not? Marooned
so close to Eden’s promise, viewed through
cracked windows from an unsweet chariot
home swung too low, carrying them nowhere.
Dwindling
Not urgent, but essential,
these almost-autumn swims.
The river cooler, slower
my strokes parting leafy
scrims as I aim for
the late sun streaked
over the river’s belly.
I turn on my back,
feet upriver, letting the
current fan my gray hair
toward the sunset.
The sky pales and speckles
With Summer’s
early birds
checking out.
9/19
Disconnect- October Italy
Puccini babel of language
heard but not understood.
The tasty lunch with wine
before dead hours of Latin naps
above cobbled streets once
marched by soldiers, memories
vague enough that grudges
click the flint of war
near cracking gas lines
lacing the globe while
The U.S. news is all
About the weather.
10/1
Specter Spouse
I loved him for myself
the beautiful blank page of him
the way he blew the way
the wind blows, so easy.
“The silk touch of your skin.”
“The silk touch of your skin.”
My line and his refrain
bed talk, times two:
“So blessed to lie together.”
“So blessed to lie together.”
He took on my dawn risings,
the same people & places,
same books, movies, politics .
On Friday nights we lit
candles, played oldies,
danced close, singing
along to our song:
“Time goes by so slowly.
And time can do so much.”
Though I couldn’t sing
And he couldn’t dance.
Such a love: like one lover
pressed against a mirror
made into two.
Everything the same way
he had no way but mine.
We never disagreed!
He repeated my stories,
without my timing.
My best friend was his
in all but intimacy.
One day I found him
holding onto a locked box.
When I asked to see inside,
he swallowed the key.