WHAT LEADS YOU TO YOUR PATH ?

“I am my own woman.” Evita Perón

What Leads You to Your Path?

Pace,
a woman understands
her nature--
tracks of black and orange
mix between day and night.
A woman masters her stride.

Birth,
a woman puts all
questions to heart,
nurtures and protects
through to the moment
of balance.
It is a life of focused concern
which will not cease.

Truth,
a woman knows,
is theoretical,
yet her definition is concrete.
As a women, she forfeits
herself for what she
loves.

A woman says nothing;
she does not have to.

BETWEEN THE LINES

Lately, I have come across many stories of older people sharing or passing on a life time of love letters, which have been held dear and secret from their children or dear friends. A letter can hold a thousand words, express a thousand passions, or portray a thousand reasons to love in a single line. Have you saved a history of your loves in letters?

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. Jean-Jacques Rousseau”

Between the Lines

I find
our night sleeps
lightly, my one curled
body denies me comfort;
my hand wanders
over the soft curves
of my pillow case.

I find
a surprise sharing my bed,
close to my cheek.
I trace it with my fingertips,
a rectangular shape,
intentionally placed,
among my white bed sheets.

I find
your tender face
and remember
the warmth of your skin
as your gentle breath
once filled me.

The intimacy of four corners
of firm paper, us two
divided by
the questions of the world;
quotes of harmony fill
my veins and slip into yours.
The pearled moon and
I are sharing you;

my nervous hand slips inside
my white case,
skims over goose feathers
and knows where you rest,
each fold of you,
each delicate line of you.
I pull you to
my kissed lips, and then
clasp you to my chest,
my hands cradle your
anticipated
penned paper; I hesitate.

What if I dream of
a love letter written to
my heart?
I hold you there in the dark
and breathe in your
parchment scent.

Your words pressed against
my skin,
my beating poetry, your
paper and my flesh intertwined,
like ivy growing,
winding itself
around the vine
next to it.

What might your sly
words say to me?
Slowly as I lay with the
illuminating dark,
I open you, and
my eyes are owned
by your will.

“I want to be next to you;
I am next to you.”

ON THE WAY

Let the passion of your wings fill your lungs. Tracy Greenlee

"Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life"
— Pablo Neruda

On the Way

I cannot stop
the magnolia heat of
a Carolina morning; I
thirst for salt the sun craves--
your white velvet flower
opens for me, giving me
a droplet of sweet dew
leaving me with
aromatic honey that
fills the warm air.

I hear a fountain and
turn to see water
spraying over a statue
of violet bare breast,
crystalline confetti falling
onto a steamy afternoon,
my mysterious night lies
in the fate of the
coming dark.

I run into the
shade of your
sultry mountains,
the curving wet earth
filled with a cool
seduction underfoot,
tree bark touches
bare back leaving scratches
of crimson and love.

The wild play of shadows
palpates my pounding breath,
a landscape of you,
a time with secrets,
a glimmer of connection
allows me to continue
touching the tiny unashamed
flowers growing.

GRAVEYARDS AND AIRPLANES

I can still feel the smooth marble or the crumbling tomb stone under my youthful fingers as I ran through the ancient graveyard. I can remember looking into the vandalized dark boxes that once held the deceased, and thinking where did their bones go? Memories of our minds, some clear and timeless and others clouded like the night, seem to define the spaces of our existence.

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. ~Pierce Harris

Graveyards and Airplanes

A dense memory
of pure white clouds once was
drawn by blue crayola crayons
on construction paper.
Flying in and out of
of a girl’s fairytale life;

a worried hand with
a flesh colored band-aide
wrapped tightly around
her index finger knows
of life and death. She pretends
to know how to draw the 3 cotton ball
cumulous outside her Delta airplane
window.

On the ground,
memory plays in an old graveyard
behind her house.
Children
lying silently still on the granite box
tombs where weathered names
from the 1800’s were
replaced with their own
prone bodies. It was a game;
a grown-up game of life.

Like angels,
the clouds floated by,
a silver solitary airplane as their guide.
Her eyes the only movement known
to a young soul as she waited to be
found, found in peace.

HIBISCUS WATER

Non action is action. No decision is decision. Water seeks its level. It is in the simplicity of our acts that we see life with clarity. It is in nature that we can learn the truth.

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. ~Henry David Thoreau

Hibiscus Water

Consistently,
arriving as a rippling river,
with a furrowed field near by,
a falling leaf whispers its descent
through the clear sapphire sky.

Hibiscus-colored water
touches a sturdy trunk
continuously curling underground.
“You will have to stand
as I continue to flow,”
the water intuitively knows.

The marrow of the trunk
is firmly grounded in its earth
to ponder and contemplate;
her burrowed roots creep and
drink the water’s life.

Sparrows of songs muse and
crimson fragrance fills the air,
caramel reed and moss stone
exhale and lay completely bare.

The gold of hibiscus water continues
its journey along the river's veins,
gracefully bending, and moving
around polished rock and deep caverns.

Drops of water fall back into place,
as a blue crane takes flight,
and the water knows like the bird
it is simply the flow of life.

THE SHOT ABOVE HIS LEFT EYE

Standing on my third floor almost ten years ago, when I was nine months pregnant with my third child, I questioned everything that I believed was filled with gravity.

When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,
There arises the recognition of ugliness.
When they all know the good as good,
There arises the recognition of evil. Lao-tzu

The Shot Above His Left Eye

The face of terror was shot in the head and
as each flashing memory oozed from his skull,
an anonymous American face is still dead.

“Obama got Osama” thundered through the crowd,
infused with life and then withdrawn.
On some level, people don’t know what to do.

Cars sit in long lines of traffic continuously honking--
at first in frustration, but eventually in celebration,
New York City, ground zero, ten years later.

The operation that killed Osama bin Laden was
designed to prove he was captured, dead or alive;
on some level, people don’t know what to do.

He was killed by U.S. forces in a mansion north
of Islamabad, Pakistan. An enormously significant
moment in the fight against al Qaeda terrorism.

The mastermind of the worst terrorist
attacks on American soil was killed.
On some level, people don’t know what to do.

On many levels, I don’t know what to do.

CENTURIES OF A GIRL'S DOLL

Locked inside the the imagination of a young girls mind, a doll comes to life with a name, and as that girl grows the doll becomes hollow once again. My grandmother gave me her porcelain doll which her father gave to her when she was a small child. Over the last hundred years this doll has touched the lives of four generations of women. My grandmother's doll, Elizabeth, is still just a little girl from Germany.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old. Billie Holiday

Centuries of a Girl's Doll

Blessed are her
porcelain bones
and veins made of string
and her black ringlet hair
held together with
rusty hairpins, her
cherry-parted lips,
a silent enigmatic smile,
sitting on the top
of an immaculately made bed;
her linen eyelet apron with
stained brown spots
collecting minutes of
loneliness, waiting
in perfect perfection
while locked behind
forgotten time.
She is forever just
a girl.

ATTRACTED TO ROYAL NECTAR

May I quote myself: Know who you are and there you will find yourself.

“Independence - is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes” Mark Twain

Attracted to Royal Nectar

In escalating silence, Madame was significantly bold,
waiting, waiting, obsessing,
on crimson heart beats and blossoming love.

Intended for permanence, her passion jets in, guided
by the wind and wraps her gossamer wings around a
hummingbird’s fluttering heart, leaving her

astounded.

Emerald feathers flush in solemn crucifixion,
her nature leads her, her wings of age define her,
and her hovering pain equals the weight of her tears.

Wings perfectly folded, two black pools stare, refraining
an urge to preen, and search for purple and yellow and
red nectar flowers, an undeniable urge to be her,

unfortunately.

Blue trails of wake crash into passions chest petrifying
the truth that secretly exists, a surprising vortex
of feelings like impressionistic paintings

suspended between the wood and the air
solidifying a hummingbird’s plea and un papillion’s
desires. The two question where their next sip of nectar lives.

THE TRACK OF THE CORNFIELD

The memories of childhood can sometimes flood into our conscious world and I ask myself, why? Why do all of the sudden we remember something we have not thought about in decades? Is it a lesson that has implanted itself in our minds? That we need for our futures? Does that make life an arranged journey? So many questions and I have come up with this one answer for me, so I can write poetry!

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”
Albert Einstein

The Tracks of the Cornfield

Mesmerizing cornfields
in Maryland,
open car windows,
we drove on
traffic free roads until rising
in the distance was a diner,
The Paper Moon Kitchen,
which shared the dry
over-farmed, forgotten earth--
the soft brutality of life.
I was a kid, 12 or so
years of precious life,
1 harvest or so after
my father’s death.

Through tall August grass,
the creamy brown
kind that tickles your legs
as you skip through it,
sat a deserted and dented
black freight train cart;
an insignificant tombstone
standing solitary in a
neighboring field.

Sitting at the square table,
blue checkered curtains,
the grownups talk in code.
The 5 of us are released with
legs in full throttle,
stinging blades of dried grass
slapping any bare flesh;
we approach the carcass
of forgotten locomotion,
leaving tears far behind us.

We descend upon our train cart
climbing inside, on top
like a congregation
of cawing crows.
We talked of trips to freedom as a
dry summer breeze came through
the broken bare windows;

I stare and pray for my freedom
as I imagine my leather luggage
stored in the outside compartment,
and how my train was moving
into my future
I asked the conductor,
“How long is this trip to somewhere?”
as I fixed my bonnet and
straightened my plaid skirt
while sitting on a dusty wood
floor of the shell of a cart.

The dry air moved through
a train that did not travel,
like the stillness of a
storming summer heat.
I see the reality of
the steal in a weathered train,
the cracking erosion of red paint
snippets of our lives,
home to times wrinkles,
a memory of a passing life.

The sun starts to set in rays of
burnt orange and caramelized yellow;
a mother’s call is carried by the wind.
We all climb back into the
paneled station wagon and leave.
Many see nothing but a train,
a myriad of images
with emotion stuck on them
and if you chose to ride your life for
someone else, you pass your own.

A HIDDEN MIRACLE

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,there they return again. Ecclesiastes 1:7

I love the way the world works whether it is the omnipotent spiritual nature or the earthly steadiness of life. I believe with each breath, we have the opportunity for change, with each step we have a choice to move forward, and with each life time the blessing to learn. Taking all of our experiences and blending them into a balance of holding on and letting go with a bit of prayer to aide us might be called life.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. Pablo Picasso

A Hidden Miracle

We pray as the used
amniotic world splashes to the floor,
shiny blue squares under foot,
a soul emerges from another Cosmos.
A blooming red bud,
rivers turned to blood,
a new born, the first growing breath,
a wrinkled chin pushes to heaven,
saying goodbye,
with every thought we pray.

And with every thought
we pray--
pray for the blend of gods,
the black spotted sky of birds,
green grasses growing out
of cracked cement in the ghetto,
tiny spiders spinning webs,
weaving patterns of our invisible soul,
our slow rotating earth communing
with your beating heart,
pounding steady inside creation,
reverberating inside the cowhide drum,
universal ribbons connecting our
prayer reeds rising in a wet marsh.
With every thought we pray.

We pray as a mother prays for purity
in life’s first bloom of birth;
silence enters, holy waters touch,
as she holds her own exhausted lungs,
and her tears blend into seas,
the salt of times many oceans.
A school of fish swim into
the dark underworld, alone.
We exist and then we are gone.
The perfection of life.
We pray and begin again.

FINGERS FALL ON KEYS AND THEN ON ME

Let it be said: I seek the muse and pray she is in love with me.-- Tracy Greenlee

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. -:-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fingers Fall on Keys and Then on Me

Long, bony fingers play sideways
pounding fear into white keys,
soft black keys speak seduction,
notes flowing mysteriously,
eerily different to me,
melodies pushing into me,
coaxing me to fix love.
It will break your heart, if you still have one

A wooden piano bench supports a
black cotton shirt, a second skin to
a composer’s curling shoulders,
slowly the piano player is
slipping into the metronome of self.
It will break your heart, if you still have one.

Your tune of truth, reversing rest,
your neck bows, lips part, time flows,
words ribbon, foot drums, eyes glazed,
and your fingers and back and soul
evolve into a broken love song.
It will break your heart, if you still have one.

You are possessed by the song;
you are solitary in the stone room.
Your solo spotlight is burning, rearranging
over and over again as your psyche plays.
You flip the music sheets like years,
you play rhythms to suit your moods.
It will break your heart, if you still have one.

And my Halcyon days sway in and out,
inside love and contemplation and still I wait,
until you try and hearken back to another time.
It will break your heart, if you still have one.
When you try and find me,
it will bring you heart, if you still want one.

THE WALKABOUT GENTLEMAN

Happy Birthday to my dear friend Linda and my new friend Chris.

Through our walkabouts in life, may we always find the answers to mysteries and love in friendships. May we find the one thing that brings us happiness and let it lead us on the unknown path to our truth. This poem is the description of a man seeking the mysteries in a life we may not all see. The life of a man.

“I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost

The Walkabout Gentleman

On the train, wet lips whisper seductively,
a muffled whistle is consumed by the wind.

Eyes watch crowds of barren trees standing
in winter woods, waiting for spring it seems.

The pristine hotel, “Good Evening Sir,” neutral
hallways slowly collide, pushing the gentleman

into time and memory. Boots hunger for the crisp
city streets, a red light shines, there is pause;

what does the gentleman take in? What does
he leave alone or contemplate? He is drawn to

a white sheer curtain in a second story window,
blue jazz, fighting, rituals, lovers, and stories.

It is his midnight walkabout luring him and
teaching him the intricacies of his fertile mind.

He turns down West 20th, a diner winks “Open”,
a movie of sorts called the secret life of a man.

It is a sporadic interruption from his daily life;
it is a customary walk of an aborigine’s heroic life.

A horn screams from a yellow taxi cab, a manhole
spits steam, a tall woman is wandering, he is on foot

alone. It is the walkabout he chooses to fade into,
the gripping songline of his need for experience.

Why do any of us go for a walkabout through an
unknown wilderness like it is our inner most home?

PARK BENCH

All my life I have had the fortunate habit of staring. I am fascinated by the way people interact, how they dress, what their mannerisms are, their eclectic personalities, and how intrinsically different and yet the same we all are. Do some staring today and see what you can learn about yourself and the person you are staring at.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. Flannery O'Connor

Park Bench

On a dedicated park bench
I watched a man just stare,
Staring into the air,
staring into colored leaves
memorizing something unseen,
staring around the barren branches,
staring into moving water,
where the fallen leaf once was
floating. He was staring.

Today I found my self
on a cement step staring.
Not at the trees or
their magnificent colored leaves,
not the brown brittle oak leaf
shaking like an aged hand
falling quietly to its end,
not at the creek that effortlessly
flows. I was staring.

I was staring inside myself
Watching my heart beat,
With my staring eyes open
feeling the coarse of my hair,
I was staring inside my being
Asking it for answers to questions
that I hoped age would answer.
I was staring at my tattered soul
wondering what went wrong
And what I think I found out is
we all stare.

I was staring like people I watched,
and realized we all have questions,
we all have sadness and loneliness,
or a broken heart that is bleeding
staring brings silence in solace,
sometimes tears running like rivers
or colors of unwanted choices or
a moment of discarded emptiness.
We all were sitting and staring
waiting for our answers.

DEMOLISHED HOME

The story starts at home. Even though the structure may not withstand the rigors of time, the energy of home is locked within our hearts, and that is where the story begins. The ghost of this Susquehanna house still lives inside my mind as someone's home every time I drive by.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost

Demolished Home

Last night,

I drove down Susquehanna
and your hazy road shivered,
as I recalled, where your lonely
dignity once stood proud.

Palpable white and silver stones piled
near, lingering echoes of crashing memories,
mortared phantom dust settling on
a disappearing silent home.

A child playing hopscotch on a
hot sidewalk,
ice-cream dripping, making patterns
of splintered star bursts,
red and yellow tulips,
cracking the green earth,
blessing your door step:
all vanishing in one day.

And in the moonlight,
searching the arc of your site,
a bony tree waves goodbye
and I bless your vacant
graveyard.

BLENDING

I have learned about the power that lives inside of me by the way the season change, by the way the world changes, and by the way I change. I know that power is a matter of my mind, a matter of my soul, and a matter of my strength. I trust a feeling of peace in my heart because it comes from honoring my womanhood.

Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water! Eleanor Roosevelt

Blending

Every morning, about this time,
a church resting about a mile from here,
rings their bells. A lawn of
apple trees, heavy with fruit,
bless the manicured grass.
Colliding pregnant clouds
mosaic the rich blue of the sky.

The church structured from
gray rectangular bricks,
planks of hard wood,
a black medieval door, a steeple
housing the flared dome of vertical music,
all equally rich in their tone,
know nothing is permanent.

When it's breezy, as it is this morning,
I can hear the echo of the bells,
a practiced toll
whispering your name in my body,
allowing me to believe in
the beauty of the universe.

I am drinking red wine in bed,
knowing the breeze this morning,
with you--
sharing the dance of church bells
feeling the damp changing air
warm, kind mottled earth,
visiting my square window.

Under the white sheets,
the downy-soft cream of feathers,
I watch you,
as you
slowly, as to not miss the silky bouquet
of swaying berries drawn to your lips, and
shimmering tendrils worship
your regal purple cheek bones,
laying in lassitude, I am
struck by being a woman.

TWO BODIES

Touch the intimate quietness of your heart and in that moment, find peace.

"They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Two Bodies

Come lay with me
on mirrored sheets
of time,
cotton worn thin from weight and oil.
Come lay with me
and blend your body into
the warm core of mine,
come lay with me and
quiet the squalls
of screaming words.
Skin to skin,
two breaths,
nursing baby,
red grape into wine,
water soaking into earth,
a blanket stealing a chill—
come lay with me
and make me forget,
forget my troubles of the day.

THE SECRET FEMME OF PARIS

Through my research of Paris in the 1930's, I found the nocturnal pleasures of Paris luring me to want to learn more about it. A whole universe lived under the cover of darkness, a shower of violet sparks. Could the mysteries of another way of life be devoured simply by reading about it or does it have to be lived to truly understand it? Is it out of necessity or out of want?

“The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” Agnes De Mille

The Secret Femme of Paris

Is it night time yet, kiss curl?
devourer of the dark,
gray smoke spiraling,
scavenger doves
picking at the cobble
stone streets,
white breasts skimming
black tuxedos,
enchanting beguine.

A towering gas lamp
illuminates
a beehive of artists and
bohemians,
buzzing and proclaiming
Parisian mysteries--
dance halls and cafes,
blood-red lights
reigning Joan of Arc.

Flowing incense from far away,
surreal portraits,
cubism countries,
impressionistic policies,
loves’ debauchery,
poetic prophesies
of a frenzied city spinning
in a tornado of coquetry.

Is it morning yet, naiad ?
The naked silence of drunken bodies
mirrors the sumptuous
sacrifice to the Sapphic alter,
offering
a warm cayenne current
rippling to a slow
fidelity of affairs.

SO RIGHT FOR POPPIN' PINK

I have discovered the lipstick prints of my girls' pursed lips around my house, and as bittersweet and monumental as it is, those prints make me smile and realize growth cannot be not be stopped, whether it is the daughter or the mother.

Lips that taste of tears, they say,
are the best for kissing.
~Dorothy Parker

SO RIGHT FOR POPPIN PINK

Lip prints forming silent words, ghost
words that make my arms ache to hold you.

Lips painted pink.
Leaning over a bathroom sink, she
stares into an oval reflection; no
more years than a budding teenager.
Chipped fingernails derail a lid
and big eyes gaze at
pink rising from a black lipstick case.
She pushes wind-blown hair from her face
and smears the colored wax and
glycerin on parted lips.
The tip of her tongue tastes vanilla
icing; thoughts examine her stained
satin gloss; fine lines of matted
confidence slip over her defined
lips, yearning to be
grown-up lips of pink, and fire red.

I find faultless lip prints left
abandoned on a bedroom window,
the entertainment cabinet,
a narrow hall mirror, also
discarded school papers--
all used for quick theatrics.
All perfect prints of DNA, all
goodbye kisses to me as I clean.
I imagine whose lips they belong to--
my oldest daughter experimenting,
my youngest daughter mimicking
what a kiss might be.
They press their lips firm against
an obscure surface, a clouded
exhale, a sticky muah, and left behind
is their mark. A signature of sorts,
their picture of what a kiss should say.
Lips pursed, mouth parted, possessing
grooves of identity, each girl growing up.
I leave their majestic blown
kiss for me--their mother.

BODY

Feel the divinity of your body, your temple, and the chance your soul has been given to be carried through the clocks of time. It is a privilege that we may only think about when we slip away into sleep or when something exuberant happens in our world. Find a minute today and honor the miracle your body is.

And remember, no matter where you go, there you are. ~Confucius

Body

Caught in a dream,
hills of wine,
ringing iron bells,
molecules of steam,
dancing above her body
as capillaries of rose
heat under her velvet skin.

Invisible bindings restore
sanity and the sacred rhythm
of a crystalline
breathless memory--
juxtaposed to the clock
of her passion
mixed into an earthy love.

THE PRESENT

The mortality of life captured in stone, captured in a memory, and captured in the balance of time. We walk on the slack line of adventure, just slightly leaning back so we can see into the future, and there we find the balance of mind and body in the ever present.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. Patti Smith

The Present

Inside my life,
my yesterday is found inside a memory.

In the dark of alleys,
my heart ponders in the silence of night.
In the gray of bridges and skyscrapers,
my shadow resembles words like
past and death.
I breathe in the clock tower of my moment.

Outside in the city,
scriptures of mango vapors streak the sky,
written words of hope
and love illuminate the white.
Curls of rippling flames
parallel the moss of emerging light,
creating shadows as burning
lava looms over a sheet of snow.

Woken by spring,
quiet shivers reveal a life’s
authentic lips,
presses deeply into my face.
My heart beats in sync
with the breast of morning.
The slow change of day,
leaves no shadows looming.

HONEY

It is said that everything we need to know we can learn from nature. We know that after a thunderstorm, there is the sun, and on a lucky day, there might be a snow shower on a spring morning with the birds singing in the background. It's the last gasp of winter trying to hold on before mother nature slings off her winter fur and puts on the halter dress! Find the delight in whatever sings to your nature and encourages you to remains true to your art. The moment knows.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Anais Nin

Honey

The moment knows
the expansive land,
melting past the mind in the
crowded gypsum room.

The moment knows
slow, dancing snow,
cold rain splashing,
veins of water dripping
down the window pane.

The moment knows
rolling thunderous storms
dancing across verdant fields,
feeding the hidden divine.
The buried soul continues to grow.

The moment knows
lightening, white lighting, illuminating
the mango’s pink hews, an
intervention of light on
a sunrise of clouds.

The moment knows
time floods the truth as
twisting vines grow
up the trellis purposefully.
Dignity will fill your throat

The moment knows
the eclipse of the moon,
the river’s white face and
eyes that are slaves to
memory’s ink.

The moment knows
berry-red wine traveling between
goblet and bottle,
momentarily suspended in time.

The moment knows
time parts to hear a whisper
lost in a second.
Unearthed dirt exposing
an opening to sanction
honey-feathered air.

The moment knows
invisible wind holding hands,
touching rays of truth.
Roots forging into earth,
a tree reaches vertically
for one more breath.

SECRET OMA

Some say that the face is the mirror of the mind. Does that mean the inside of the mind or the outside perception of our existence? Are we evolving into who we want to be by creating and acting in new ways? I question this concept and ask, when we exchange one idea for another, does this create secrets? Or is it another facet of our personality, discreet and dependable? Live your secrets to become who you are.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Secret Oma

Under a concave of branches,
cut and perfectly formed
into a dome once filled with sap;
some insignificant was talking to her
but she could only hear her
own blood-filled words, hear
her own secrets embedded in
the spiral of her thumb print,
hijacked into fine lettering,
tattooed in hieroglyphics,
splitting into the
mysteries of her double mind.
Regularly she flees into
a storm of something exhilarating,
a smoking burn of racing tires,
the gas fires; the slow dance
thrills her to the justification
to peruse a hot evacuation,
extenuating the possibilities,
setting up the metaphors inside
her tangle of words. It’s
her preconceived picture,
an actor’s improvised dominion.

Maybe a diary of secrets lives
in her, a track of dualities,
a veiled thread of meaning?

Layer upon layer of mascara,
black lines of distinction,
a crossover between white lies
a master’s artistic interpretation.
Her laced canto voice slips
from another made-up life,
sultry within in her plot, curled
auburn locks hiding half a face,
a solid blood-line, a living statue,
a strong nose on a chiseled profile
suggests something, something
as her gray eyes penetrates you.
What can she have?
What can she have?
At the expense of your signature.

ODE TO A POET

It is through the connections of life a poet can put words down in ink. It is through these subtle puzzles of unraveling mysteries that we find inspiration and creativity. It is crashing these two worlds together and painting a picture with their images, hence poetry.

In vino veritas [In wine is truth].
Proverb quoted by PLATO,

Ode to the Poet

I spiral down into your porous cork,
releasing your breath--rich
air oxidizing your mouth.

Fingering fine crystal, I lure
you to my lips;
in silence I admire

your soul--the inside of
a forgotten sunset.
Your smell--a mixture of an era.

Your blood—a burning sovereignty
soothing my throat, a tingling
deluge eclipsing my breath.

You commingle your
garnet phenomenon with
my pounding red heart.

TRESTLED LOVE

Knowing the profound impact of love and the healing powers love can transcend, I find love to be a trellis of vines interconnecting into the mere essence of life. Each breath we have feeding the root of our heart; each shimmering electrical pulse acknowledging the power of what lives between souls. Found in the darkness of the night, our fingertips become our eyes.

"I got lost in the night, without the light
of your eyelids, and when the night surrounded me
I was born again: I was the owner of my own darkness."
— Pablo Neruda

Trestled Lovers

Timeless tantric lovers mold in shadows,
mossy stone archways, a ritual for the

soul; borrowing the energy of night, an
indulgent apparition; fatigued daylight in a

rustic pleasure garden, vines wrapping and
entwining flesh; driven adoration--

black, sanguine, white--love inspires.
Bastions of stability, written auguries,

downpour of delight to the extraordinary creation;
sensitive fingertips stretch, tracing languid hips,

dance of lips, a transporting kiss, tears of resilience,
undiminished grace of passion, relentless breath.

Quiet secret night mirroring life, profound
in precision, emitting honeysuckled fragrance.

RAINY NIGHT

Even in times of change, we have to believe we will have a chance at a new sunrise. Negative thoughts can swirl through our minds like a storm leaving a wake of destruction, and in the next howl of wind a positive ray of sunlight can shine--in that beam we will have a moment of clarity. What is it that we can awaken to and change?

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~Saint Augustine

Rainy Night

Tsunami storms erupting from the earth--
wild raindrops hide from the moon light.
Years of yellow papers piled high on the
side table next to the sagging bedside;
black debris falling from the mind,
scattered across worn-plank floors--
wordless glares, cold fingertips,
sweating palms, smearing lines,
ticking time--a wall of water, and
headlights banging around
her empty bedroom.

She walks alone in dreams, a
silver river of broken mirrors,
doorways to bitter moments; roads
of worn black asphalt assaulting
her soul back to pounding rain.

Breath, pulse, beating rain, breathe--

Swirling through dense thorny words,
staring wildly in the eye of the storm,
a weary clouded mind begs
her weeping willow for forgiveness,

breath, pulse, beating rain, breathe--

Wrapping beating fingers around burdens,
a blank stare of questions,
emotions melting across bare shoulders,
black words are tattooed tombstones,
sharp wounds that keep bleeding, and
shattering small scarlet scars,
seeping blue in sadness.

And so it goes—
the sun creeps,
the day breaks--she
picks up another paper story,
reads words of a woman roaring,
and redirects her scheduled prose.

IS THIS SEAT TAKEN?

I wrote Is This Seat Taken? after hearing a elderly woman at a poetry conference talk of her life. Her story began as young woman and her first trip to New York. She spoke of her experiences through war, depression, technology, love, and of course, poetry. I took a snap shot of her younger years and fit her character to this black and white photo of a woman in Europe (the photographer is unknown). I created a persona in a poem.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker

Is This Seat Taken?

It is 3:30 a.m.; she is thirty one and
questions the thoughts dangling
over her misery; 3:32 a.m. and alone.

It was a script of questions,
it was open season, a nest of hornets,
one more trip around the personals.
She drove her car to New York,
one way streets, concrete to velvet rope,
a zoo of mania. She did not know
Manhattan; she only knew
how glamorous she was.

She thinks of having a cigarette,
searches with her hand
over silvery satin sheets,
glistening like the ocean;
she finds the red and white
Marlboro pack,
hidden inside her gray pillow case
with a half-used matchbook
embossed from
a trendy French restaurant.
The night is over.
It was a dream she once had, a flame,
red and hot--A man.

He burned like her heart,
it lasted no longer
than thirty minutes and the scar singed.
Pain lies. Love is a concept of the mind,
she thought--
lost and found in no
more than one hour.

Shackled to a ghost of her fantasies;
the blood of love slips past her lips
like rings of gray smoke.
The venery of her escape is hunting
for black and white
photos; she says, as the sun is rising,
it shadows her reoccurring stories.
A pain howls from inside her
for someone to save her.
Therein lies her war.

SOUL

We should be intimate with the invisible energy living inside our bodies; even as we depart, the energy gracefully departs with us. Do we care for our soul the way we would care for a broken limb? Do we sit in peace under a tree and listen to our soul's message? Do we open ourselves enough to hear, and then have the ability to act upon our truths? I have been lain victim to this neglect at times, but nothing can stop the spring from opening her petals.
Mark Twain said:
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Soul

Soul
filling the inside
of your lungs—full,
full.

A heart burning
inside
of your fire--trust,
trust.

Light forcing
inside
of your life--breath,
breath.

A gold river
moving under
your skin,
skin

the divinity
of a kiss,
kiss,
which

shadows lightly
on the back
of your neck,
neck,

all languishing in
your body that is
intimate, intimate
to your soul.

1978

Bloodlines flow through the integrity of every seam of our lives, and we take with us through life the laughter, tears, and memories of family. We look at family and we see the past in their experience, we feel the truth of their present, and we learn the future by their mistakes. We are a revolving, spiraling mirror, and with persistence we can change for the better the flow of our bloodlines through example.

“I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other” Rainer Maria Rilke

1978

Fabric place mats, the color of sage, are
miniature versions of the rectangular
kitchen table my grandmother and I sit at.
She sits in her armless chair; I across in the other,
silently, I am weathered, a doubtful teenager.
I stare at her aged manicured hands--her ten
fingers flawlessly fold and unfold the coffee-stained napkin.
Her Parliament hard pack and her monogrammed Zippo lighter,
a present from her deceased husband, is
stacked perfectly on top, waiting for her craving.

Rose seems folded with memories, as we sit remembering --
A childhood sledding accident leaving her with
Tic de Leroux; three brain surgeries to alleviate the
pain paralysis, leaving her blind in one eye, masked like the
Phantom of the Opera, a widow still living, and out-living her son.
Her perfectly folded napkin squared to the place mat, out the
window leaves fall from the oak tree like her falling empire,
the tree my father once climbed, and click the zippo lighter opens,
butane fluid fills the pink air, her thumb rolls the flint and a
flame burns the end of her white filter cigarette.

Half of her soul sits in the light, remembering silent movies
of her life, and again she folds and unfolds the paper napkin,
gray smoke curls from two long fingers, one eye looks at me.
I ask her again.
“Tell me the story of how you came here from Germany. Tell me how
Pop asked you to marry and the dances you went to every Saturday.
Her wrinkles began to disappear, as the two of us just sit,
and fold and unfold her memories. Her memories of leaving school
at 16 to work in her father’s office to make money during the depression.

Her heroism empowers the child left in me, her love folds over me, makes
me forget a bloodline of histories, not a choice of ancestry. I believe
I have something courageous that she sees in me, I memorize her folding.
My grandmother, a compass rose of women, replaces the memories
living in my head, all while her past is replacing her present dread.
She carefully opens her pack of Parliament and pulls out another cigarette,
a yellow flame perfectly arched disappears into that moment of her life.

HOW I KNEW I KNEW

Yesterday was the anniversary of my fathers death, and today is the birthday of my 16 year old son. My heart is filled with memories, beautiful and tragic, my soul knowing our generations will continue to create and move forward. I wrote How I Knew I Knew about my father. At times, I see my father in my son's face; it is odd because my father's face stopped changing the day he died in 1976, stopping  my memories of him. Cherish your family and Happy 16th Birthday to my son, Vaughn Joseph.  This poem was published in the Fox Chase Review. http://www.foxchasereview.org/10WS/Contents.html
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss

How I Knew I Knew…

I didn’t know what you knew,
I just didn’t know you.

I couldn’t have know this was the last car ride,
in your new-blue Cadillac, with smooth-white leather seats,
automatic windows and me.

I didn’t know it would be our last drink, together,
at the bar named the Brandy Iron on the
south side of the Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia.

I should have know the car wash and the promise
of a sugary-cinnamon treat as a reward was our last stop,
while waiting patiently for you to finish your full drink.

I didn’t know what you knew,
I just didn’t know you.

It was me on Saturday morning that sat with you,
you and I in our Lucky Strike and sulfur filled room,
maraschino cherry juice trapped under clear bubbles.

You made me memorize the wisdom of football
life never stayed the same, health and wealth,
your time played the odds on your mysterious game.

And you died leaving a bereaving family,
crying icy tears, year after year,
an ephemeral question of impending trust.

I didn’t know what you knew,
I just didn’t know you,

as we cruised your yacht down the Chesapeake River
with so called friends wiping memories from your children’s
wind burned fears, Frank Sinatra’s sorrowful plea

echoing over your cremated skin and bones.
Your charred vessel coating the top of a quiet Still Pond
tempting the bellies of hungry fish.


I will never forget the whisper of your last I love you,
a full moon lulled me to sleep in my four poster bed,
I was hugging my worn-brown, warrior teddy bear.

I didn’t know what you knew,
I just didn’t know you,

Visceral memories revisit through the weight of one
cherry, sinking so slowly to the bottom of my tall glass,
your drink is finished, memorial red roses long wilted.

And…
All I could think of as a child,
was…
I knew you where food for a
tiny starving fish.

And…
All I can think of as a woman
is..
I didn’t know what you knew, and
I don’t think you knew either.

MY LOCUS

It's wonderful to watch a pretty woman with character grow beautiful. ~Mignon McLaughlin

We teach each other. We help each other. We admire each other . We encourage each other. Let us each be the phenomenal woman we are meant to be. As a mother, I teaching my daughters how to become strong women, even if it is in the simple act of hanging clothes. We all have our purpose no matter the simplicity or the difficulty. Ultimately, I, too, grow as woman as I teach and learn with my daughters.

My Locus

Clothes pins of sanded wood and metal,
white plastic-coated clothes line,
a purple basket of mangled wet clothes.

A woman bending and stretching,
heat sucking the wet from hung fabric,
a breeze competing with the kissing sun.

A beautiful movement, the shirt
applauds with the wind in an orchestrated
dance of her strong back and graceful chore.

Locust sing in harmony with the summer.
She is a woman, uncommon among
hung dry clothes, regretfully unnoticed.

Wrapped in the heat of time, a woman
knows the power of her mind, as the
water knows it will slip from wet fabric.

A TOUCH OF MAGENTA ONE AFTERNOON

What are our definitions of creativity? Are we like street artists who have to be like guerrilla fighters--painting on the streets with minimal supplies, being watched as they create, being part of the tourist experience. Creating is an intimate act, and yet like voyeurism, we like to watch something as intimate as the process of inspiration and then creation. I suppose some wish they could paint or write or compose and what about the lovers of art, can they be a part of the process, the internal skeleton of creation? Can that be enough to keep the process going? The I Ching reads...

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd.

A Touch of Magenta One Afternoon

A confetti breeze is felt on a
gingerbread storybook street;
a luminous easel refracts
magenta from a mackerel sky.
A Machiavellian man,
a seraph of art,
paints from a somber palette,
hidden behind
a misconduct of reverence,
his nameless vice—
a nude woman.

Nestled close and woven,
observers matched in
committed fabric,
two women watch
the artist work; they are illuminated
by the moon, entwined arms, entwined breath.
Single words expose what they feel--
beauty, fluidity, passion, art--
All while sharing the affinities
of a tortoise shell hair clip.

Standing sealed, holding an
elbow to perilous advantage,
a compass of confessions,
a bright light of exposure,
a complementary portrait of
a silenced woman,
fragile as quiet lovers.

Art is a stroll, a beautiful place
on a public street of Paris; heat
fills hearts with infinite possibilities,
love is as elemental as color like paint
layered onto Sappho’s easel.
A brunette and a blond—roman a clef,
they hold their fears through the equinoxes.

The nude--a polarized myriad of surfaces
emerges off the face of the canvas.
Their minds—fractured
and overlapping with reasons.
No white purity of diversity while
allowing a tender joining;
beads hung low into
the cleavage of discovery,
all sewn into the
internal seam of a woman.
Once they’ve seen enough,
still arm and arm, they move on.

WEST BANK

We think we are seeing images, as they are, as we think they should be, or as our brain would like them to be. I find the mystery of perception to be fascinating. I find the world of creativity transformation into art compelling. I wrote The West Bank about Her Mother's Lover, (the novel Rachelle, my writing partner and I have laboriously given our souls too), as a artistic expression of the time period. In Paris, 1930, life was a mixture of art, feminine coquetry, literature, and dance all joined in one of the sacred temples of Montparnasse. As Hemingway said-- "If you are lucky enough to have been in Paris, then where ever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast." Allow this poem to move its erotic energy like a dance set to words and let it feast on your soul.

West Bank

A place of faces, underground,
pearls and ties share
souls of the
same kind. Stemmed
glasses of wine,
rocks in
bourbon or rye.

The lover sits at a small
round table, focused
on her other self.
Tango music arouses,
a pearlescent hand
from a French-cuffed sleeve
swirls caramel liquor, a burn
curling in the air--
A sultry masculine art.
Small shoulders held tall,
black leather belt
enhancing a curved waist,
and a white pressed shirt.

She is standing,
partnering a zinc bar,
smoking.
Onyx slip-dress
opened dangerously low
to the small of her back,
delicate muscles
linger
under her pale skin.
Waves of sienna hair pulled tight
in a French knot;
charcoal eyes,
crimson-stained lips,
swan chin,
shoulders soft-- her
lost femininity found.

Over her shoulder,
with an earnest gaze she
meets her lover’s eyes,
back suggestively curved,
charming smiles exchanged
“aime-moi, l'amant,” she mouths.

From the lover’s seat
she is driven,
compelled by
their secret.

Standing and drawn across the floor,
gliding through the air, cologne’s
breath wraps around
a familiar silhouette.
The lover has
memorized her flesh;
knowing fingertips
slowly slips inside her dress,
marrying her sensitive waist.

“Will you have a drink with me,”
her lover adjusts her tie,
her hazel eyes fixed
on the lips of yes, fingers
slip her necklace to her back.
Tiny pearls roll over her spine.

The woman in the onyx dress
is guided by her lover and she
languidly sits, her
fingertips smooth her lover’s
black trousers.
Her neck holds a strand of pearls.
She lowers her eyes from her lover,
her thoughts glazed from the heat
of conventionally known ways;
she is sure their legs are touching.

Others, masculine and feminine,
fill the sumptuous salon.
Her lover orders
her a Kir Royale.
Red lips touch glass with the softness
of letting go, hand holding the solid
stem of a flute.
Love fills their veins
with the sweetness
of shared beauty.

“Will you dance with me?”
Her lover whispers,
lips tender to the cup of
her ear.

Breath caught and with a smile,
she nods her head yes. Rising and
looking into her lover's eyes,
the sky opens wide,
the secret is broken.
Souls are free,
body to body moving,
slow dancing.
Her head lies on her
lover’s shoulder,
she breathes slowly,
slowly, slowly.

It is a surreal moment lost
in the West Bank of Paris as
souls wrap
around
the underground and turn
around.

HEAT SHIVERS IN EQUILIBRIUM

There is something HOT about heat when it is 7 degrees outside and snowing, and I am warm inside. Recently I have been fascinated by the power of the sun and the comforts of warmth and the sheer power of heat. Heat lives in cycles, in races, in love, in fire, in explosives, and in the invisible power of the hot transferring into the cold body. Heat spontaneously gives pleasure, power and warning until all is equal.
Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the Eternal. Dante.

Heat Shivers in Equilibrium

Heat breaks boundaries, thermodynamics,
latent and sensible forms taken for granted.
Fire, water, love, a momentary hot spell

breaking through polished sand, heating inside,
exploding outside, blushing pink flesh. Heat
fused between bodies burrowed under bed sheets,

passion heats within a kiss, the hot iron of a
skillet, heat from the sun transferring and flowing,
heat inside your mind craving droplets of living.

Your heart beats inside heat, 98.6, homeostasis.
Strong fingers rub heat into bones, blood moving
and turning her beauty into soft bodies of liquid

and lost within another thought, she becomes solid.
She opens her ceiling of another universe, seeking
the zenith, she transports into other heated forms.

Yellow heat lives inside eyes closed, it is hot.
A U of beach chairs in the middle of a living room,
the fervor of spinning molecules repels sleep, leaving

a room full of bodies in heat. Outside in the cold, silver
branches wait for spring and a black crow with oiled
feathers is perched motionless in the gray of the sky.

Heat escapes as blowing steam from nostrils;
a female red fox mainlines across fields of snow.
Hot blooded muscles frame fur-covered mass.

The heat of red wine settles down throats, raw heated
conversations, a fireplace consumes and returns warmth,
trees are flattered by the continuation of the seasons.

In nature, outside our bodies--inside our hearts,
Mother nature is a driving force on earth,
a spontaneous disambiguation of the final heat.

Turning Pages: LYRICS AND LIFE

Turning Pages: LYRICS AND LIFE: "IN HIS LIFE   John Lennon had magic in his mind.  His words and music brought people together, challenged them.  He stuc..."

I love the mix of emotion and passion, Roe you are an inspiration. Check out my friends new blog... She is a writer too.

BEAUTY

Live in the moment. Feel the perfection of knowing you are exactly where you are supposed to be-- Ahh, yes. Appreciate your own beauty, allow chocolate to melt slowly on your tongue, smell the thawing earth, know who your friends are and tell them, and of course drink wine with them. Each day truly is a gift. Each day we have a choice to forgive and learn and change as we live in the present moment.

Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. ~Chinese Proverb

Beauty

In the body of an airplane,
freedom over state lines,
lost in pillows of
white clouds;

in the bottom of a glass
of dark red wine,
the chocolate slowly
melts inside
her mouth;

her lips, full, inviting,
invigorating--
enough to bite,
to taste the hidden
moment of life.

PINK PLASTIC TEA PARTY

I am anticipating an early spring break, the budding crocus, the tender scent of melting earth, the turn in weather to be a dependable truth, but as a little girl has taught me, we can not judge the outside until we understand the inside. Some how we want life to give and yet it is all changing with a swift swing of words or wind or ways. Like a tea party set up on an outside table in the final light of a winter afternoon, we hope things will remain as they are until the morning, they might not be-- The world can change, people can change, we can change. Today, let us be present and know to enjoy the moment. Let us learn before we judge.

Pink Plastic Tea Party

On a Tuesday afternoon in February
when the weather is unpredictable,
when the earth is soggy with melting snow,
when the sun is on her slow faithful turn--
all defrosting her hibernating soul;
a little girl sets a tea party for four.

Moon follows and window
frames begin rattling,
heat pipes start banging;
waning leaves keep blowing,
no one noticing the carefully
placed tea party prepared
that day in the yard.

Each precisely placed plastic plate
swirls through the swollen night;
the dreams of imaginary playmates
tumble across the first scent of spring;
crocus silently pushing begin to emerge.

And on waking,
the groggy face
of a five year old
looks out the kitchen window
and discovers, under the
sepia sky, that life changes
with one swift hand
of the hissing wind.

FRIEND ME

I have finally set up my own facebook account. I know, I know, so many thought I was a face book hater. I am not, well not anymore. Earlier in the week I witnessed a little boy doing something very sweet yet made me question how we interact. His endearing act inspired me to write Friend Me.I have battled the web vs. the physical contact of friends and it was one of the reasons I shied away from the social network. Now, I see the change in the world and how we have learned to communicate in new ways. Since we are friends, cause you are reading my blog presently and maybe read something I wrote on facebook, feel free to share my poetry and Friend Me!

FRIEND ME

It‘s a stomach virus
invading my house,
so I drive right to
Rite Aid to buy

a water bottle and Tums
for the upset stomach of
my nine year old daughter.

In line, in front of me, is a
little boy pulling at his
mother; shunned, he
looks at life differently,
patiently waiting for his toy.

His attention is attracted by
the magazine rack and
finally he settles on a face,
a mug shot, I might say,
of a man with
blue topaz eyes who is
staring eye level with him.
In a quiet mantra,
I hear the boy whisper--

“Your face,
a nice face you have.
I give you a kiss,
on nice lips, you have.” And
he kisses the face on the paper,
a picture looking oddly like a
computer screen.
“You have nice lips.”
The little boy continued to say,
to the freckled man
on the cover of Time magazine.

This face, on display, on
the cover of a magazine.
His face, a possible facebook picture.
THE face--
that taught the
world to be connected,
was awarded
the man of the year
at the swollen age of 26.

I can’t stop staring at the boy.
Does he think he is the real McCoy ?
I think his mom is facebooking; she fiddles
with her smart phone,
the cashier behind the counter
is counting on a lull… so he can do it too.

“It’s a nice face.” I hear
the 5-year old boy
say. “You have a nice face.”
And he kissed the face
once more. He stares at
the glossy picture, perched
like the head of a mannequin
on the silver metal magazine rack.

It’s Mark Zuckerberg, who
created an open information flow,
revolutionized and minimized, I realize.

The miniature gold-framed glasses,
balanced on a four-foot frame
reflects the face of
the youngest billionaire onto this boy--
not blocked by an internet firewall.

It’s cool to be a social net worker,
to jump the fence as a philanthropist and
a web protégée with almost a Harvard degree all
in the year of 2010, also studying Mandarin Chinese.
Can we guess why? I figure it is

nothing the little boy shouldn’t understand as
he stood there kissing a man with a nice face.
He is not misunderstood, he is free and knows--
we all want to be accepted,
to be friended, not unfriended, to be connected,
to be virtually touched, even if it is by a
face on the web or the cover of a magazine.

PILINGS

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet."
—Plato

It is in our memories that we realize our lives have meaning. Memories are so important no matter how old you are or how many years have passed to recall them. Can we consider ourselves blessed if we can remember? My father passed when I was just 11, my memories are few, although they live strong in my heart. He was a powerful man who burned himself into the recollections of many untouched by time. My fathers favorite Plato quote was said enough times to etch the words upon his urn.

When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them. --Plato

PILINGS

Sitting on a polished dock,
four dangling bare feet hang,
he weaves rope into
loops for cleats for his boat.
A taper candle burns between them,
standing in a puddle of
hardened white wax.
Nylon line singed on the
tips of his burned finger prints;
he does not even cringe,
as her father marries
frayed strands of rope
creating a noose.
She sits in silence with him
and waits for his approval,
he thinks of work,
she breaths in his sandalwood scent.

He moves in discipline,
as the girl memorizes
the meditation of his heart, and he
masters the ritual of his weave,
her bent legs swing in rhythm,
she stares.
Beads of sweat roll down his temple;
a mallard duck floats by,
looking for scraps left behind,
pushing his orange beak
through the brown Chesapeake.

His massive fingers braid shiny threads
until all ends become blended
into one rope spliced by two hands;
she braids her long hair,
pretending her hands are his.
The nylon melts, burning black,
sending little curls of smoke to
seal the fate of a secure loop.
She watches
the candle die, alone with the
setting sun, on the dock with the boats.

IRREGULAR HEART BEATS

I woke up last Thursday morning knowing I had to visit my mother in the hospital and then at nine o'clock I got the call from the school nurse. The day turns from morning to blur. With all the energy of life flooding my veins, I have to cover the care for my mother and be a mother to my son. His heart. The struggle of my childhood, the challenge of my adulthood, the source of beating life. It is all in our hearts, in the steady beat of our existence. It is what links us through generations. A grandmother, a mother, and a son.

Irregular Heart Beats

Bump, bump, bump, skip a beat.

A beaten ring murmurs from the grungy house phone.
A call from the school nurse--your son, please don’t worry,
has an irregular heart beat--I detected it at a routine exam,

here in the high school health suite. One, two, three,
irregular arrhythmia. I sent him back to class.
You should call his physician immediately.

Bump, bump, bump, skip a beat.

The Bell phone, with the umbilical cord attached to the wall,
shook in my hand; we never answer this line. I retreat.
My son inherited the broken heart of my father--I repeat in my mind.

Hopscotch, pig tails, running free, playing babies, ambulances
searing emotion into my spinal cord; I look up from pretending--
“Your father is going to the hospital, again.” My mother said.

The tightness in my chest demands my return to my full-
grown body--bump, bump, bump, bump. My heart is fine.
I live in the shadow of a throbbing silhouette of sorrow.

Through the phone receiver, a voice continues to whisper,
words like heart beats and skipping, irregularities and doctors,
all past history alarming my chambers, stifling my faith in mothering.

Bump, bump, bump, skip a beat.

I hang up the phone gently. Trembling still, the steady
beat reminds me, burning tears choke me,
my heart a Cartesian diver measuring the pressure.

Electrical impulses in his heart that coordinate his heart beats
don’t function properly, the pediatric cardiologist explains to me.
An EKG and an echocardiogram and a halter monitor, and we will plan.

Bump, bump, bump, skip a beat.

Sticky leads and wires. Fluttering red lines scratched on paper.
No irregularities. A cool dark room, warm gel, birds singing, Doppler,
ultrasound screen, electrodes, my son is lying shirtless, and I witness his heart beating.

The chambers are filling, the chambers are emptying; I am looking inside
the body of my son, looking inside his heart , one heart beating, and all I see
is an ultrasound of my baby inside of me, moving and beating in steady rhythm.

My son is living his life, sometimes with an indiscretion. I touch his head
gently, and I watch the direction of his blood, blue and red,
flood and squeeze and dance like a fetus, an entire life pumping continuously.
 
I listen to the lob-dub the muscle is making, the quiet chirp of the
electronic bird behind me, bump, bump, bump. I take a moment to breathe.
I am filled with meaning, with mothering, with what a heart provides--love.

Bump, bump, bump.

I take my eyes from the screen and look at my son, his body taller than mine,
chest hair, strong arms, blue eyes, he is my history and with two hearts,
I hear bump, bump, bump, bump. A perfect steady beat inside of him and me.







 

DEATH

Am I ready for death?
I sat in my mothers hospital room in a gray pleather chair; the respective place for a visitor or a daughter. She slept and slept the pain away from her back surgery; I waited in silence. Not that death is knocking on either of our doors, but I was compelled to ask myself the question? Am I ready for death or to experience death? Um...NO! Death is funny in hospitals. I rub my mothers head, and think. It lingers in the walls the way drunks hang at corner bars. I feel it everywhere, an institution for recovering health, and this leads me to think of how the human body has this miraculous talent to heal itself. And...the invisible drive to go on. It is the secret human power and when you feel the shimmer of life force, inside you, you know it is not your time.

Death

The essence of what is left--
lingering, singing, laughing;
even in the coffin, her
energy feels like breathing.
Dirt on wood, wings escorting
a soulful journey--
shadows of emotions living
in recesses of quiet mornings.

Is it in death, we find life? Or
in life, we see the invisible?

PAINTER, POET, AND PRIEST

Where does inspiration come from? How are we able to link what we see, our experiences, and what we touch, and turn it into paintings or poetry or song or dance? I, as a writer, have disciplined myself to step aside and allow the muse to flow through me. I believe we are each a work in progress and should practice living presently, and with that, try to pick pieces of life out of each day, whether positive or negative, and turn those experiences into something that creates meaning to all our lives. I challenge you to find inspiration in your day and create meaning from it. I am the POET. May the muse be with you. P.S. I took the picture below when I was in Paris at an American book store, I thought the irony in it.

Painter, Poet, and Priest

In difficulty, my vigilance helps maintain my strength,
I sit in the second seat next to the water fountain,
a fluorescent prayer candle helps illuminate my sanity.
Gates of seats, mine is also next to the magazine rack,
I face the front of the reception desk; I watch patients
being greeted by an elderly woman. Please take a seat.

Under construction, the hospital is, a painter
wearing white Sherman-William pants, covers
black marks left from gurneys and carts and
rubber tires of wheel chairs with white paint.
I sit, as my mother is being prepped, and on his way
to another place, the painter stops at my row of seats.
He casually asks if I am deep in thought and if I am okay.
“I am passing time,” I say. He understands. Life is long.

It is the look on my face? Is it the waiting room?
Is it the white paint I need to cover the dark worry?
Is it a life time of visits for the grace of my parents?
A priest comes along, white collar, concerned compassion.
“You are in deep thought. Are you okay?” I really start to
wonder; I look down and check to see if my white shirt
is unbuttoned. Can they see into my broken heart?

I shift in my seat and think about a drink--
not from the water fountain, and answer,
“It is a short procedure.”
“Is it serious?”
“It’s not death.”
“I understand.”
Does the priest see the cloak of loss on my face?
Does he think I should let God whiten my way?
Maybe the painter and the priest are special today
because all I want to do is poetically capture their peace.