Ready

We're ready for you Spring!  we yell from the front stoop.  With hands cupped around our mouths, for warmth and guiding voices out to some place where weather might hear us.  We're ready for you Spring!

And we go back inside to quiet games.  Wrestling.  Television.  Books.  All of them making my bones feel like they'll break through my rubbery flesh.  But we're exhausted from the yelling.  And I vow to be more resilient next winter.  To dress properly and march the kids out, no bullshit weather's permission.  I nearly faint onto the bed, giving up, whimpering.  I give up.  We're ready for you Spring.

Miserable Moaning Mommy

Sometimes I write a poem.  And I tool over its minutiae, make it whatever version of flawless is possible.  Or I blast through it and judge it good enough, because even if it only exists on my thumb drive, it exists somewhere and the act of writing it has made me better.  Yes, that's enough. 

Other times, though, I write a poem, and I do these same things.  And then I read it the next day, and I'm stunned by its lack of resonance.  Its utter, terrible un-imagination.  And I wonder, does that mean I'm meant to be an infrequent poet?  That I should write more?  That I should give up?  That I am uncreative, unimaginative, myself?  That I need to travel?  To experience?  To read more?

I don't have the answers, so I travel in my brain.  And I create those places there.  And I read.  And I write.  And I fail, fail again.

As my kids would say, "Miserable Moaning Mommy."

Spare Key in the Garden

Sitting on the deck with cigarettes and an evening alone,
I think of the way we trolled the yard for a place to hide
the key, a spare you would use in case, and we practiced
turning it in the lock, and your small hands were strong
enough and I marveled that you knew to leave the flat
side down--and I told you to find this silver treasure
if I was stuck in traffic, or god forbid in just a little car
accident, and you seemed bewildered but I know you'll
ride the bus tomorrow and hope in secret pockets that
I've forgotten or wrecked (just a little) so you can tip
the heavy garden St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things,
an unearth a shiny symbol of independence, something
yesterday you wouldn't know if you'd seen it peek from
beneath a cement statue, and inside I hear you talk in your
sleep, and a guitar string snap spontaneously and echo,
and I hear a crunch and feel sure I've stepped on a ladybug--

Hurricane Sandy, October 29, 2012

Watching bands of grey as they stretch across the sky,
I am holding up my pointer finger and thumb to measure
the way they expand and contract against eerie white.

We splay bodies all over the house, open curtains and internet,
checking the winds, what they mean on their scales, changes
in the trajectory of the storm, what debris may accumulate.

We check weather like this here, usually in Winter time,
as we wonder about the days that follow storms, how far down
will the ground be, when we will see it again through dull ice.

But these winds and rains are foreign, imported from a watery
place, and they will chase themselves down storm drains, seep
into the ground, and we will drink them months from now.

And I feel, coming on wind from somewhere south, a lowness—
a familiar knowledge of fruitless anticipation, after the storm
this landscape will be barren, unchanged for many feet or inches.

All our watching, and there will still be naked street and yard,
and we’ll be able to walk barefoot, and work, drive, make
our coffee—life will go on for us if we’re lucky, changeless,
with a long, low tone, covering us like a heavy, invisible blanket.

Fawn Road

The season of butterflies has past,
when I would screech in secret joy
at the way they’d thrash against
the windshield, and in my mind
I’d clap my hands, sweet lord!,
having made contact, before
they’d lift off like nothing else
because nothing is so light,

not the bright white bones
of deer, dressed in tawny skins
that start to creep away from
gravel burns, leaving a mottled
magenta mess—
                               but today
there was a fawn, as much like
delicate patterned wings
as anything ever was,
with her—her?—white

spots, like lacey, red-inked,
toppled dominoes stamped
against her sides, and I didn’t
imagine the way her slender
leg would snap or go dust
beneath my wheels,
rather I imagined the way
she must have smelled
and how honored I should
have been to smell her,

had the traffic not been so fast,
I’d have taught my children
about the smell of new deer
to does, and I’d have photographed
her tiny hip, white as her marks,
just begun to poke from her
sweet rotting flank, or her
black nose and lips turned up, oh!,  
toward her first visage of monarch,
the last of the season.

Not a poem.

Noticing things?  So what.  Am I noticing.  Anything I haven't noticed before.

I noticed how the earliest leaves fall in the shape of tiny cups.  Turned upward.  What would I have thought of that before?  I'd never have stepped on them, angry at their optimism.  Years ago, if I'd seen them, I'd have picked them up, so delicately.  And their slow drifts from life would have caught my tears.  I'd have looked at their veins, still green and live inside.  And I would have shaken my head, maybe even run the outside of their cups along my cheek, close to the lips, smelled deeply.  Today, I stare at them from a distance, seeing how they collect on the lawn.  There are too many to count, and they fall as I watch.  Why are they all falling?  If I got down close, squatted down, I think I would see how they hold air.  I would wonder if the air inside was just ever so slightly warmer than the air outside.  I would dip my finger inside, as if into holy water, or checking the temperature of warming liquid.  I would lick my finger.  Taste whatever is in those tiny cups, fallen early from trees.

This is something to try tomorrow.

Hi. Old. Poems.

Well, shit.  Too many things to say.  Blogger isn't even the same anymore.  I don't even know how to change the fonts.  I accidentally deleted my pages.  I got my Master's degree.  I'm teaching some college.  My kids are getting old.  I'm (getting) old. I haven't written a poem in a month.  And I'm getting this odd feeling of being behind. I don't want to write, though, because I know the first thing that I smash out won't cut it.  The words will be insufficient, halting, ungraceful. And still it's fall again--it seems to happen every year.  So I'm starting to notice things.  So, here I am.  Old dog-woman, new trick-blogger.