The Muse is a trickster, at least for me. I never know how she will arrive. For the past three or four years, especially ’22 and ’23, I probably wrote over 300 pages of poetry. The Muse hasn’t nudged me, lately—thank heavens—toward any novel writing. With a stack of unpublished, terribly flawed, full manuscripts gathering dust, mildew, and discrete touches of mouse urine in storage, I surely don’t need to fall down the novel-writing rabbit hole ever again. Right now, I aim to re-visit a long dormant writing project and hope it will keep me distracted and useful in these troubled times. But, back to poetry:
This past year saw the deaths of three amazing women. Sadly, more than three—but I wrote poems for three. A poem about the death of Lynn Cheney, brilliant mother to my amazing nieces Mary Alice and Katherine Distler. A Poem for Elizabeth McCommon, once our troubadour for justice, and a forever member of the much-diminished Web 6. A poem for Bali (Barbara) Wilmer, a beloved and challenging friend since 1968. I won’t ever come home from a good movie, or finish a great book without reaching for the phone to call Bali. Finally, a poem for Cassie Sieple, cartoonist, painter, poet, stunning blogger, music collector; a ferocious fighter for life. Cassie dug her heels in and tried to keep on living for her young sons. She was a wonder.
First, in the elegy poems, is one for Tony Distler, who died exactly 8 years ago today. Tony, the father of our three children, a great showman, a dedicated advocate for the Arts, an actor and academic who allowed his career and his illness to overshadow his family. Tony spent the last decades of his life making amends. A redemption story, that Tony.
12/28/24
Good Bye, My Darlings
For Tony:
Sleep Over
During that final twilight we gathered around you, one
or another of us offering the lukewarm martini you
could not even sip, though you awkwardly tried.
All of us there for the cocktail hour with time running out
we honored the tradition no matter the toll those many
hours of gin had taken on us but--most of all--on you.
That night I thought of climbing into your propped up bed to lie
beside you, gaunt and lost in the crowd, solitary; I imagined
warming you as I settled around your cold bones.
Four decades had passed since we two had shared a bed, now
our children were surrounding the one from hospice
we had set in place of your unused billiard table.
I didn’t do it; didn’t lift the covers and slip in to nestle beside you
knowing it would embarrass our children who’d been raised
to turn away from intimacy, to cover sincerity with wit.
But suppose I had? Suppose I had settled in to lie next to you and
our children--all parents themselves, surely knowing how to
comfort--had clasped hands across the bed, cocooning us?
We would have been a real family; together mending, stitching the
bitter old rips and tears back into love’s soft cover, a shroud to
wrap and soothe you as we sent you off to your long sleep.
That didn’t happen, of course. You remained alone in your last bed
while we stood by with so much to say we were speechless. Not
a one of us knowing where to place your half empty glass.
After you died our family scattered like wind-blown straw. Who would
have guessed it was you who had been holding the nest together?
Your loneliness drew us, kept us close, compassionate, forgiving.
In dreams I walk the years back into your bed, I turn you so that
your wasted body cups into the spoon of me. And we sleep.
For Lynn:
Points
Use my points for that, she said
directing travel and shopping
4 days before she died
leaving her daughters
orphans.
Grown women with children
of their own, they’d lost
a father as little girls, but
had a mother who took
charge.
When her healthy, disciplined
body betrayed her, became
a cage, she paced it making
plans, counting out steps,
points.
She gathered her tribe beside
the sea, drank wine from a
held cup, played cards
with a grandson’s hands,
engaged.
Winter days unfurled under
a tropical sun, the plantings
and harvests of a family crop
long tended by a tenacious
matriarch.
There is a dusty twilight that
comes just before dawn,
turning the sea to glass,
where early risers whisper
weep.
Grace arrived and curved the
taunt bars of her cage into a
vessel, love’s breath filled the
sails, daughters waved from
shore.
Summer’s Last Day
For Bali, September 21, 2024
“I float like a rock,” you said
when you were here
by the river in
that island between
your deaths;
the cancer respite
that lasted over one
abundant month
before October slammed
you down again and
we didn’t think
you’d be with us
come Thanksgiving.
But you were here
just not feasting, in fact,
hardly eating as
Christmas loomed
so bittersweet.
Still here, my stoic darling,
still eager to talk
books, movies, politics,
all this life you were leaving.
New Year and Easter/Passover
and you didn’t pass over
you remained and dwindled
and we filed by with our
good-byes while you stayed
the course, your eyes
intensely on the prize:
your daughter like a candle
burning with the life
of you so bright that
you just could not blow it out.
Today, watching the oak leaves
scrim the surface of the river
like wide hands waving, leaves,
the opposite of rocks on water,
I felt you saying that
you were finally leaving
this season, your season,
and ours. All that
will never be again.
But was.
For Elizabeth:
Our Elizabeth
Elizabeth died yesterday;
our song bird whose
song has been silent,
that raging political
warrior from the
last century who,
after it seemed
too hopeless,
would hush our
political talk
or leave the
room.
Elizabeth
mother of five
widowed before 30
trying so hard, always
struggling just to
make it . . .yet
she would tilt back
her head and laugh
for any good fortune
that came to one of us.
finding joy in our bounty.
Last night, sifting through
four friendship decades,
we sat before different
screens watching an old
recording of Elizabeth
singing on stage: slender
sure, strong-boned face
full of passion; her voice
ringing out for justice
for our land, calling out
corporate greed for
torturing our valley.
She was so furious
her entire being a
glory of righteousness.
Lord, her voice!
Her fury was a clock
winding down, her
ideals a fire laying low;
the road she traveled
full of senseless detours,
her fame a card game
where the cheaters won.
Yet, she would rally,
our Elizabeth, and
carry in, not a guitar,
but a tray of perfect
deviled eggs—delicious.
Or set a table, just for
us, with her last pieces
of ancestral china.
She never gave
up smoking and she
never let a friend down.
She just got weary,
our Elizabeth.
For Cassie:
Crossing Jackson Avenue
Mountain child, I’m not sure how you made
the ‘land of dreamy dreams’ your own.
The way I heard it was that Katrina’s
distress called out to you so you
and David went down to help
and just never came back.
Crescent City, shaped like the scar
at the very back of your head.
“I do wanna get old,” you said,
pouring your life force into your sons
into comic panels enclosing your monsters;
New Orleans sidewalks, upended by
mossy oak roots, never tripped you.
“It’s OK to not be OK,” you said.
“It’s hard to be soft.” Honesty and
sly humor flowed from you like lyrics;
a whole crowd behind you, singing back up.
Cassie, the full moon’s endurance at sunrise
reminds me of you, as does the New River
running clear from the mountains, also the
cocoa wide swirl of the Mississippi pulling
the soul of America toward the Gulf.
And then, that sun circle lifelong bright
band of fierce friends who will cleave
unto you for all the rest of their days.
It is true that you are gone from our valley
and also from all the coming Mardi Gras’s in
your city of blue tarps tattered in the wind.
Yet, you are everywhere in all the
songs we would have missed without you,
your childhood stories, Benton and Asa
at bedtime: “So dreamy, so dreamy.”
You, walking up Bienville after radiation,
your friend Alexandria’s red high tops;
A dot, a line, a squiggle.
As brave and strong and brilliant as
you were, as hard as you resisted
you were stolen, abducted, carried
away by Mary Oliver’s ‘serpent on
his empire of muscles, ‘ severed from
every single thing you ever loved.
But you never let go, Cassie. You are
indelible, your heart tattooed to ours.
The things you saw you let us see and
we remain to testify. And look, your
precious family endures-- four shadows
crossing Jackson Avenue with the light.