Phonetic Ambiguity

I have known you for so long

I can recite you

Like the alphabet

Each phoneme so familiar

I feel no need to wonder

What comes next

Having traveled

That space between

Where your A begins

And your Z stops

So often

I am convinced

That I could navigate it

With my ears closed

But just when

It seems like

The sequencing

Of your system

Is set

You change things up

And I am overwhelmed

With the crashing

Of your consonants

The articulation

Of your lateral liquids

And the vibration

Of your long

Sweet

Vowels

Jack

From the beginning

your hands moved with the instinct

of the second born son,

first banging on me from the inside,

so I wouldn't forget you were coming.

Then reaching out in welcome,

like happy baseball mitts, clapping.

Or balled up into fists,

pushing hard against me,

while simultaneously

insisting,

on sleeping right beside me.

Your hands took no prisoners,

even in peekaboo,

but always pointed just in time

to the full blue pools of your eyes,

or the perfect curve of your dimples--

smart hands!

And they felt so right

resting in mine,

but too often I had to drag them from behind--

the plight of the second child:

never enough sleep,

never enough time.

But now your grown hands strum your guitar,

and I can't remember the last time

your hands reached

for me.

But I want you to know

that you have always had me

head over heels,

out of my mind

in love.

My hands

will always miss yours

wanting mine.

Green

This week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry asked us to write about feet...

When my path is dry
And cracked with worry
You bend and pour yourself out
Make everything soft and green
And while you’re down there
You laugh
At my funny feet
And that
Is why
I love you

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone. Life has been getting in the way of poetry lately, and my goal for the new year is to figure out how to intertwine the two again. In the meantime, here's a new poem and I've reposted my Christmas poem from last year in the next post down. I wish you and yours the happiest of holidays.





Star

A single point in human time
A single lantern in the sky

Obliterates
The slow and anxious advent
The now and then and have and not
The want and need and pride and shame

Illuminates
The happy, necessary fault
The joy of ransom and release
The ache, the salve, the yearn, the claim

Concentrates
The soul’s mind into knowing
The intersection of ask and answer
The ancient breath, the newborn name

The Night Before

The desert floor cracks and yearns

Somewhere in one grain of sand

The memory of what was lost stirs

And launches itself into the thirsty wind

Men shift in their mournful sleep,

Turn their dark, dusty faces

And breathe their brokenness out

To a bright and insistent star

While slumbering women cradle

Their arms to their aching breasts,

Feel the heavy night contract and push,

Sense the cresting of a tide

And the crowning of All That Is

Bear down on a pregnant sky

Water

I wanted to say
When I saw
Your blue eyes brim
That the waters
That flood so fast
And rush past your lashes
Are the same ones
That spill from mine
That they come
From the same stream
Of love and regret
Of grasp and release
Of swell and stab
Are the same tides
Of contracting and pushing
Of me and other
That clean
And then roil
The bonds
Between child
And mother

I'm back after a bit of a dry spell with a poem somewhat inspired by this week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry.

Enough

My sixteen-year-old boy arrived at the hospital at 6:30
that Saturday morning to sit with me.
He sat between the window and my bed, long fingers
curled around my own IV-taped hand.
And he was beautiful,
his lanky body, bent over my bed, partially
shadowed by the window-framed sun.

He had gotten up so early so he could just sit there
before his track and field meeting at school,
but I couldn’t move my morphine-heavy
eyes and lips to talk to him.
It seemed like I should say so much,
but I could only manage a few I-love-yous and
you-don’t-have-to-stays. But he did.

I kept drifting out and tripping up in my own
bad dreams and staples and tubes. I couldn’t
quite hold myself there with him. I kept wandering,
two nights back, to my mumbling pre-surgery prayers.
And I realized I could have done better.
Instead of my weak now-and-at-the-hour-of-our-deaths
and acts of contritions, I should have just said,

Look Lord, Here Lord, I made this boy.
And that would have been enough.

This week's prompt from Big Tent Poetry asked us to create a conversation poem. I kept thinking of a conversation I couldn't have, and came up with this.

Silly Rhyme for Rick on Father's Day

Thank you for joining
your Ys to my Xes and
making me mother
to the more boysterous
of the sexes

Why I Love my Mom

She’s the one who loves
to watch my forty-one-year-
old freckled face sleep

On the mound

On the mound my son
Is a study in impossible pre-pubescent grace
On the mound my son
Is liquid motion
Is preternatural poise
Is singular purpose
On the mound my son
Is focus and balance
Is velocity and trajectory
On the mound my son
Is a kinetic stoic
Is arm and leg and ball and glove
Is a perfect arrangement of parts
On the mound my son
Is science and poetry
Is divergence and symmetry
On the mound my son
Is beautiful
On the mound my son
Belongs to no one
On the mound my son
Is completely mine and separate from me
On the mound my son
Is himself

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt #20 asked us to write about a hero. This week, my hero is Brendan.

Mnemodermia

her skin holds memory, perfect longing,

of her babies, round and reaching,

even when she sleeps, hungering, hurting,

motherhood is the invention throughout the night

of necessity, injury and wanting,

and she will always need the itch that knows no relief

Today's readwritepoem NaPoWriMo Prompt14 was to write a cleave poem. Blogspot is not letting me separate the two vertical poems, so I have put the second in red.

Lasagna

I must admit I'm pressed for time today. I just spent a lovely evening celebrating Rick's birthday with friends and lasagna. I'm full and sleepy, and just for this evening, am resorting to a little Haiku.

Homemade lasagna
Makes me happy and I think
Made them happy, too.

Melt

A flake of unwanted April snow
Tossed about by unwanted winds
Finds its home on hostile ground
Rests briefly
Melts tenderly
Down

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt was "unusual love connections." I couldn't get into romance today, so I focused on sacrifical love.

1992

a deserted play pen
curious blue eyes blinking above the edge of our bed
a startled separation, an untangling of limbs
a sudden shift in priority
an adorable change of plans

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt 7 asked us to "write and capture humorous incidents related to love in a 5-line love poem called a tanka."

The Un-Zen Art of Mothering Tulips

I should have a more Zen-like attitude
toward tulips.
But I can’t.
My attachment is too great.
I spend the last trimester of winter
wanting
and filled with fear
that this will be the year
that they don’t come.

And when they arrive
I waste our time.
I know too much
from past experience
with baby toes
and baby fingers
and baby feet
that such pink softness,
such perfect curves
and folds
are much too sweet.

The heartbreak
is that they seem
to stay still
and rest themselves against
my grateful breast.
Happy, so it seems, to be at rest.
But no matter how tight
I swaddle,
they stretch out,
open up,
scatter their petals
to the worldly ground.

So I would like to say
my time with them is
spent in the now.
But it isn’t.
A mother’s love is all about
attachment.
And I haven’t found
the will
to release
the wanting
yet.

This is for NaPoWriMo Prompt#4.

NaPoWriMo begins!

I've taken the poem-a-day pledge for National Poetry Month over at readwritepoem, and this is my first of 30 poems. Today's prompt asked us to shuffle song titles from our ipods or CD players and use the titles to make a poem. Well, the title idea wasn't working for me today, but I think I stayed true to the spirit of the prompt. I randomly sampled lyrics from a single CD in my car stereo and incorporated them into my poem. The CD is "Woman of the World-Celtic." Song lyrics are italicized...


Framed

Can you recall the day we married, Oh!
We were beautiful, we were
Those children in the portrait
Hanging on our wall
Smiling out at Us Now
We were them then--
Silver winged, poised to fly
Across a landscape
Of blissful trusting and unknowing
Did anyone warn them?
That love is never easy
It's a stream running up
A mountain
It's not waves of romance
Washing away
The sober land
But it can be years
Of waiting
For the wheel to turn
And pulling
The roots of
A seemingly dying tree
And pretending not to care
Who wears the crown
Did anyone warn them?
No! Those framed children
Had no ears
They didn't want them
They saw summer sunsets
And asked for more
Believing they deserved them,
Believing that love
Was the great Because
They can't believe
That we forgot.

Thirty years

Sometimes being nine was hard
But when I saw your beige van—
My chariot—in our driveway
Nine was right where I wanted to be
And everything about you
Was just right:
Your white shoes
Your white belt
Your Old Spice
Your pink shirt
Your Frank Sinatra eight tracks

But most of all
It was your way of announcing
My entrance:
“This is my granddaughter”
With an implied
With whom I am well pleased
And your way of proclaiming,
Affirming my desires:
“Give her whatever she wants”
She deserves whatever she wants

You were the one
Who thought I was perfect
And deserved donuts for dinner
And to stay up past Johnny Carson
And to dip my French fries
In whatever I wanted
“You’re Number One,”
You would whisper
“No one else is.
No one else could be.”
It was just you and just me.

A few years ago
Thirty-nine was really, really hard
And I mourned the possibility
Of your van in my driveway
And felt deeply, truly sorry
For myself
But then I ruined the moment
By looking at your picture
And then looking in the mirror
And seeing the lines of holy obligation
Running over your face
And then mine
“This is my granddaughter,”
You whispered.
Now get up off the floor and start acting like it.

This was in response to readwritepoem's prompt #117.

A little haiku about the hubby's latest creation...

Sculpting the Metal's Edge

What Is

Last week's readwritepoem prompt gave me a lot to think about, as it asked me to consider what I believe and what I do not believe. It was quite an experience for me, and I think I will actually have several short poems as a result of the exercises. Here is the first:

I am the Little Spokane
Forced to flow and push
My cold waters against
Unforgiving shoulders of land
And He is the colorless Winter Grass
Who consents to the flattening
Of snow and mud and lays
Himself down alongside me
And remains.
And rustles hoarsely in
My watery ears:
I know, I know…

el pez

the old year flames out

and collides with our hunger

for a brand new start

(A haiku inspired by the burning fish Rick made for the annual Mayfield New Year's Eve party)

Just a bit more bragging about the hubby...

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/dec/31/steel-panther-embodies-mead-highs-community/