1/31/24

 Some say this the two-hundredth of January,

and are as weary of it as if it were 

cold leftover meatloaf again

or their boss's face.

I shall miss it, though.

When I was 25, I saw Jim off at the train station,

his rucksack slung over a bony shoulder,

and I cried on the empty platform

not realizing until he was gone

that I loved him. 

January brought heavy wet snow that made me sore with shoveling,

then it turned to ice for a while, and now slush.

My heart is forever surprised and jumps when touched,

then sags as it dies like the snow, a stuttering death that repeats itself. 

I was wrecked as the melt set in,

the old familiar malaise in its favorite straight back chair.

Some say this is the two-hundredth of January,

and feel numb with it as if medicated. 

I hate to see it go, as I always do, my favorite season except for Fall.

Its sharp, unsentimental freeze breaks my ease,

and I know, even as it goes,

that I love it for how it hurts me

letting me know I still can care. 

_______

for What's Going On? "It's Wednesday" 

Music: Mazzy Star Fade Into You

Promenade In Green & Gray

 

Spring is the season of madness,

as fine and also bitter as any high always is in the end.

Every doomed thing that grows boasts in beauty,

and who wouldn't finger the new green blades?

who wouldn't close their eyes in the warm stranger sun and sigh?

Every heart is a blind radio, and what good is the word or song

without someone to hear it, turn toward it,

and seem to know the meaning?

Summer is a fever we invite, because we long to be feverish.

What fool thinks a bonfire will burn a hundred years? 

Look, legions of fools consumed by the thing that feeds them,

vanishing because we long to vanish, and then crying, lost, surprised.

In autumn, I have felt myself fall in a million pieces, until I stood

naked as any idiot tree. I was beautiful in a million ways,

pick me up, press me in pages, even just one leaf between leaves,

but I end up with all the others, up against some fence, silent, far from home. 

Winter is the season of stillness, and those who have stored up sorrows

find they do not lack for much. Snowy ground makes others much clearer--

where they've come from, where they're headed. There's no need anymore

to build with strips and shreds, we become our own nest and wait,

astonished and patient, a quiet station at rest in the moonlight. 

_______________

for Desperate Poets "Desperately Different". 

Title adapted from the song Green Rocky Road

Music: The Motels Only The Lonely

First Love

 Hey, old girl,

I can't bear it, you know,

to go back.

You're gone anyway.

How can that be?

How could you hold my whole heart for years

and then be gone from the world?

I remember the green! 

The bright lawn in the sun, and the dark green

you wore, the color of forests, and later, Great Lakes blue.

I remember the cloud of rising cigarette smoke

in the warm evenings. 

There were fights sometimes,

even the odd drunk falling down.

It didn't matter.

What I remember best is the heartbeat excitement

of seeing you there.

I recall a rainy Sunday in autumn,

you wearing red, white and blue as if it were July.

Everyone we both knew was always there,

dressed in white like heroes. 

I loved you madly from the moment I met you.

No matter where I traveled,

I always came back to you, my comfort, my heart,

the one beloved constant 

in the uncertain confusion of my childhood, my youth, my middle age. 

Sometimes, still, I dream we are together.

Hey, old girl. 

The one word I can never say to you is "goodbye."

You were my sanctuary and so I ring the bells for you,

shout once more for the home team,

recall the steep aisles, the vendors, the big scoreboard

of Tiger Stadium, the love of my young life,

________

for Dverse poetry of place and space, hosted by Ingrid. 

Music: Frank Sinatra There Used To Be A Ballpark 

Lilac One

 I saw the devil standing in front of Lilac One

with the dawn across his shoulders

and his shirt cuffs undone

He said, "Why are you waiting, and who waits for you?"

then the dawn turned to diamonds

of peculiar blue.

The devil is lonely though he prowls Lilac Two

and his heart is a magpie

in a mirror that flew

with itself to itself in a blur of time spent

in evening's cold courtyard

by feigned accident.

The devil said, "Nothing can mar Lilac Three

though tomorrow's black roses

are vased there for thee."

Then he shook his hair out like leaving a love

that he's carefully carved--

that's a lot to think of.

________

shared to Dverse OLN. 

10 Lines About Lucy Medicine Crow

 The dog she got was black and white and wild

and loved the world as a fool, or God does.

For her part, she loved two things--dog and child.

No love for cold or calm or rest because,

starved with fever is what she is, and was.

The dog will dream, the child will change unseen,

calling from their secret side, "Come with us

and speak no more the name that we have been."

Her hair turned white in change from black that was,

a semaphore for fading feet and paws.

______

this form is called a decuain.

I'm Not Waiting For You

I'm not waiting for you--
I'm just a still spot in a moving world.
I'm a headlight on a night road--
a moving object in a large stillness.

I'm not the same as I was
this morning, last week, or last year,
but my name is the same, and I still get my mail
general delivery, from the old clerk or the new.

See the sky? It doesn't care
if we kiss or turn our separate ways.
I'm not waiting for you,
but I'm here just the same,

seeming still but always in motion
like stars, like wheels, like a heart beating softly to itself.
______

for Sunday Muse #56. 

Things Placed In A Velvet Box

It doesn't matter to me, anymore
if your buried name feeds flowers or wasps or nothing at all.
All day there is bread on a board, and a book's pages rolling with the breeze.
There is rain and minutes dying and both the best and least of these...

The things I placed on velvet, in a box
as children or idiots do, with fistfuls of forget-me-nots 
staining fingers blue, as ink will do
when spilled across pulped pages, entre nous...

It doesn't matter whose way 
is the less foolish one
or which moon 
will rise on the ash of a setting sun.

_______

for micro-poetry. 

The Woman Who Does Not Trust Roses

The woman who does not trust roses
consults a dream her lover has left
concealed between sections of orange.

Breeze loves roses, 
both stem and bloom.
The woman who does not trust roses
reads by fingertip the morning moon.

Her lover's dream 
is of breeze in a secret bower,
and crescent hips gone almondine. 
______

for both "camera FLASH! at Real Toads, and Flash 55 hosted by my BFF Hedgy.

Almondine:
 Adjective

1. Garnished with almond slices.

Usage notes

Unlike most English adjectives, almondine typically follows the noun it describes, rather than preceding it.

Origin From French.

Noun (plural almondines)

1. A gemstone that is either a deep red garnet or a purple spinel.

Nickel & Rose

I would go to Mass, if I could be alone there
to love the dim light, the flowers,
and place a nickel in the plate, when the nickel is all I have.

We hang on our crosses,
hang around after death,
hang our hopes on a rose stem that bends and vanishes.

Here is a rose.
Here is a coin.
Here I am, tiny in this vast space.

I would go to Mass, if you would come with me.
If you would whisper to me that's it's all true,
and does not die--
the dogs I've had, 
the women I've loved,
and the men, too.

"Peace be with you."
"And also with you."
I think,
peace is overrated;
give me a dream about a nun's kiss
and a sacred heart that stays, like a nickel in a rose bower.
_____

139 words (so sue me) for Magaly's "Dearest Book, I Wrote You A Poem."

The book I wrote for is Robert Girardi's novel "Madeleine's Ghost."

Image at top: Maud Feely, 1910.

Nuns

The nuns kept birds
and, by necessity,
kept it from the diocese. 

The nuns kept chaste,
but kept birds against the loneliness
because symbolic husbands never come home.

I live in the nuns' quarters,
now renovated with appliances and art on the walls,
but still silent at sundown.

I know what a calling is,
and for that I am as quaint as a rare sparrow.
Is there even such a thing?

Mornings, I think about you,
but I keep it to myself; only my body knows the lie
I tell, by my silence, my hymn unsung.

My love, you are a birdkeeper.
You've sent me a picture, and your face is the air;
before I can think, my arms open,

knowing more by instinct than any censure can deny.
_______

for Real Toads birds challenge
 

Letter To An Old Love

I have arrived here, no wiser.
I'm sorry, a million times over,
but for what? All and nothing.

I meant well.
I was hopeful.
Weren't you?

Every beginning is a poison tree.
I know this and still I
tend each one as a favored child
and wear the blooms in my hair like an ingenue.
________

For Kerry's 55 Plus at Real Toads. The "plus" is to write with your favorite tearjerker song in mind. Here's mine: