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Text of Poems - Rites of Passage and Other Journeys
Adrianne (2006)
Awaiting Harvest (2003)
Birthday Candles (2003)
Carousel (2003)
China Cup (2002)
Elegy for a Brown Velour Sofa (2003)
Exhale (2003)
Intermezzo (2003)
In This Year of Patience (2006)
Landing (2003)
Ode to the Midnight Special Bookstore (2003)
Oxalis (2003)
Questions (2003)
Silver (2003)
To be a Strong Woman (2007)
Tsunami (2005)
Adrianne
Her presence persists in the photo in the coffee shop,
but there are cups of tea NOT being ordered
and there are questions being asked.
Her absence leaves steps without sound,
silent poetry on desperate waves
and streaks of blood on porcelain skin.
What lingers and haunts me now
is alien and distant and altered
a touch withdrawn in shame and fear.
His cherry tree has fruited
for the first time this very year.
We might expect a pie or two in early summer.
Will my fingers fashion a tender crust
to cradle the succulent fruit,
or will it lay prey for the birds?
The blossoms on his peach trees
survived the late frost.
Already he props gravid branches with stray lumber.
Will I bruise them for wine
and macerate them for jam,
or will the wasps mutilate their tender skins?
He has struggled with pruning
the apples and the pears.
His efforts will yield abundance in the fall.
Will steam waft from the kitchen
redolent of my mincemeat,
or will the worms take the crop?
Our hop vines have profited from the cool spring.
They have entwined the porch railings
and cones are forming.
Will his brew pot run over with bitterness,
or will harsh winds rob their essence…
following in my wake?
A flame is remembrance:
We light long burning candles
to commemorate the deaths of loved ones.
A flame is hope:
We light candles in prayer
to reach our dreams and overcome our fears.
A flame is passage:
We light hoards of tiny candles
then quickly extinguish them to cheer survival.
The flames we hold inside
are fragile enough
that breathing too much
might snuff them,
and breathing too little
might starve them.
I gasped with the pain of living
nearly smothering my flame,
and responded by creating
monochromatic numbing
illusions to enfold me.
With each assault
I wrapped this blanket
ever tightly about me
until it became my winding sheet,
as my flame grew dim
and ashes fell around me.
A flame is resilient:
Somehow it knows to keep burning;
somehow it finds pockets of breath.
A flame is persistent:
Smoldering, flickering and blazing
through adversity, adventure, and ascension.
A flame is eternal:
A phoenix gathers itself from its ashes
and burns with a fiercer light.
Today I light two candles:
A yarzheit candle for the fragile woman who was,
and a votive candle for the woman yet to be.
My daughter and I both listen to our blood.
She waits eagerly for its first twinge
and I wistfully for its last wail.
She squints in search of the first delicate blond hairs
while mine coarsen and silver.
She waits impatiently for her curves
while I struggle to keep them under control.
She preens coyly in front of the mirror
while I attempt camouflage.
She is frightened by her fits of temper and turmoil
as much as I am by mine.
She giggles with giddy infatuation
both recent and distant to me.
She wears my earrings in her newly pierced ears
and I wear her crystal charm for memory.
She twirls as her own carousel, blond hair flailing straight
as I take a different turn on the wheel of life.
Her eyes sparkle with the newness of living
while mine shine with steady eternal fire.
China Cup
She’d contrived some excuse
to invite me to her room.
I played along with the ruse,
nervously talking of trivialities,
my heart in my throat.
Perfect porcelain, China silk,
beads of dew on her neck and temple
anticipation shining in her eyes.
We caressed one another with lingering gazes
standing on the edge of perdition.
Her eyes prayed for direction
every breathless word an offering.
Furtive moves closed the distance
yet stigmatic hands were still.
A brazen desk lamp illuminated the Catholic scapula
Carefully discarded over the chair beside us.
I remember peering curiously into
a bright blue Community Cleanup dumpster
at the worn brown velour sofa
an oversized, overstuffed relic of the disco age
ignominiously tipped up on one side
pride stripped away
black chintz underlining torn and flapping in the crisp breeze
of a perfect fall day
Its springs sagged
and we propped it with plywood.
Its buttons popped off
and we clipped the jagged stems.
The pile had worn to naked black roots,
and the dust of ages rose
when its sleeping form was roused,
but ten years of our lives together
are enmeshed in the very fabric
Where you took my face in your hands
on our first date.
Where we surrendered to desire
one July afternoon
after three days of touching only with our eyes.
Where our guests
lounged and ate Chinese food by flashlight
during the hurricane after our wedding.
Where I laid in helpless despair
as our first child
drained its life from me.
Where I sat in state, like a Madonna
nursing our daughter, and later our son
dreaming of their futures.
Where it cradled my dishrag form through pneumonia
when I feared I would pass not only from life
but from our young son’s memory.
Where it supported your ice-packed,
Morphine sated joints
through reconstruction.
Where we comforted
fevered, pox riddled children
with Popsicles and Dr. Seuss and Betty Boop.
We have excavated Legos and barrettes,
scraped away Pop Tarts and lollypop sticks,
shared laughter and triumph,
watched the world parade by,
recoiled in horror at death and destruction,
numbed ourselves with A&E and Discovery,
cuddled our children before sleep,
collapsed in exhaustion.
Love-bed and sick-bed;
There is an open, pregnant, expanse in our living room.
We are adjusting, adapting, evolving
And your divots in the carpet are fading.
Exhale
Do you think you could pencil me in?
I know you have a full docket
but perhaps a few minutes
in your busy schedule
wouldn’t be took much to ask
for me to exhale.
We all had a standing date on Tuesday nights
Stitch and bitch, Sushi with Swayze
Free psycho-analysis of our failures
to understand the men in our lives
Mutual rationalization for pizza and chocolate
One by one, and two by two
our numbers dwindled
as we took refuge in the stability of marriage.
Tuesdays of women were replaced with Saturdays of couples;
everything in comfortable even numbers.
As the sole survivor on our island
I cast messages in bottles
that bobbed in a silent sea.
I’d done nothing wrong.
My singleness didn’t fit.
I came to understand the silence.
It was our independence that brought us together.
We unfolded so easily
yet withdrew and departed so suddenly.
An emotional elasticity
born of the habit of accommodating our men.
I adapted.
I formed new relationships.
I discovered new paths,
until one day I was the one
driving a moving van on the Cross Bronx Expressway
with never a backward glance.
Marriage afforded us the luxury of
turning in, turning away,
turning towards familiar and predictable comfort.
I had forgotten the seductive delight of a woman’s confidence
until I yearned to open the blinds.
I spread furtive wings
and their tips touch others.
We find one another through divorce and discovery.
We regroup and re-script our lives,
writing ourselves as the protagonists.
And now I’m standing in a driveway
by another well-packed van,
bestowing a timid confused embrace,
and watching a bit of my heart
drive away with shining eyes…
to the arms of her lover.
In This Year of Patience
In this year of patience
I have been tested
and found wanting.
In this year of patience
I have shunned your touch
to protect you.
In this year of patience
I have learned to make choices
and to suffer for them.
In this year of patience
I have fought for solitude
and found loneliness.
In this year of patience
I have found the courage to live
And set my face to the future.
Landing
Is there a moment
when you feel the meager thread
to which you grasped
fray its last and slip?
Do you feel yourself falling
or know you’ve already landed?
Do you mourn the last filaments
of bonds that needed breaking
or just cut the parachute loose
and walk away?
Should you have noticed the gradual fraying,
the threads departing the whole?
Should you have tried to mend it?
Should you have known it couldn’t hold?
Ode to the Midnight Special Bookstore
Your aisles whisper to me
in a perfume of paper and linen and gilt
rising from carefully numbered
lovingly packed boxes
joyfully flung open.
I long to stroke polished paper covers
against my cheek
and slide my fingertips
over the rough cut page edges
of cloth bound tomes.
I hear the secretive crack of the spine
As I gently open a long slumbering volume.
The scent of ink and glue rises
speaking in tongues
storming the castles
shouting with a thousand voices
to the quivering rain.
With wit and wisdom
malcontent and delirium
collective joy and angst
ooze from pages crammed full of
voices that could not be stilled.
Faucets that dripped, dripped, dripped
until they were impatiently
thrust on full
spending themselves dry.
Why does the Oxalis keep coming back?
I never water it
I only occasionally remember to
remove handfuls of dead leaves
from its dusty ceramic bowl.
Each time I am convinced of its demise
and prepare to pitch the dead mass
I am foiled by happy new leaves, peaked blossoms seeking the sun
and tender, bowed shoots
pushing through the loam and gnarled stems.
Does it matter how you enter the maze
as long as you keep moving your feet?
Does it matter which two pieces of the puzzle first fit
as long as the last one fits?
Does if matter who inspires you to pose the question
as long as you frame your own answer?
I do not fear time.
I will not be a grande dame
with blue roots -
A caricature of myself.
I will be a swaying silver birch
and embrace my maturity and my wisdom
as one in a sacred grove -
A wellspring of strength.
I will wear my silver
like a crown
like a halo -
as a goddess incarnate.
You tell me I’m a strong woman,
as if that were an honor, instead of a cross to bear
When you tell me I’m a strong woman,
You’re telling me that I don’t have the right to fail, to hurt, to fall.
Yet, when you tell me I’m a strong woman,
you expect me to be there for you, when you fall.
When you tell me I’m a strong woman,
you’re telling me that I’m not allowed to be human.
Tsunami
In Aceh, the children played on the white sands
while their fathers cast their nets.
When the sea was sucked back,
they gazed in wonder at the still mud
littered with thousands of gasping fish.
They scampered onto the fertile fields with delight
bare feet slapping with the fish tails
to gather the unexpected gift.
They didn’t know they were picking flowers
for their own graves.
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