so...this is late, but Poetry Thursday

Sonnet V

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,

As once Electra her sepulchral urn,

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn

The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see

What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn

Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn

Could tread them out to darkness utterly,

It might be well perhaps. But if instead

Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow

The grey dust up….—those laurels on thine head

O my belovèd, will not shield thee so.

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred

The hair beneath. Stand further off then! go.

end of an era

I have been holding on to some news. I am not sure if it is because I was in a bit of denial or because I was worried that if I said something, it might not work out.

I got a job.

It's in New Jersey.

So I have been packing up my life.

And, as my car decided to keep to the timeline I imagined, even though I stepped away from the PhD program.

That is to say, in January it started falling apart, slowly, and painfully (for me).

There was no way to take the car with me. I couldn't even get it south so I could give it to my father's friend. Though I think I have successfully convinced my dad that it wasn't a good idea to give it to the friend who couldn't possibly have the money to sink into making it really drive-able again.

So, I had to make a decision of what to do with the car, the little green machine that has been my constant companion for the past 16 years.

It drove me cross country, away from my ex-husband, into my new life in Oakland.  It drove me to the next new life in New Mexico.

It served as my phone booth on those long drives between Oakland and Oxnard ... and sometimes, when I couldn't bring myself to talk to others, as the safe space where I could sing or cry or both.

It was faithful and dependable and constant.

I agonized about the decision, truth be told, though I might not have shown it. In the end, I decided to donate it to KQED in lieu of all the donations I have not been able to make in the past few years. Even as I was sure it was the right thing, it was so painful to let go.  I drove it down to the big avenue below my house so that the flatbed truck could more easily hook it up.

As I walked back up the hill to my apartment... to that messier before completely packed state, downcast and tears in my eyes, I spotted a car just like mine parked just where mine had been not twenty minutes earlier.

I am not sure what it means except that I thought, oh, you came back... may my little green car be happy either in someone else's home or as the parts that make other little green cars go...

oops... poetry Thursday a day late

Beauty

~Ariana Reines

               Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre

               (Baudelaire)

These poisoned sensations have to be

Accepted if they’re to be

Overcome. Looking

Up calories on my phone

Not that I’m counting

Don’t even like numbers

It’s something vestigial

It comes in bad minutes

To teach my body something's in control

Something little & unholy, wrong idea

Of information, chiseling a transparent minute

Into myself with the afterimage of a form

If I did this kind of thing

On the bigger machine it’d be

Worse. Worse

Things than this are bombing

The world. A terrible

Fate is coming to power tomorrow. I’m reading

The early poems of Sherman Alexie. Desolation

Of secular life. I remember the luxury of speculating

All mystical traditions grew up

In the souls of a disciplined few

Turned in on themselves while under

Occupation by tyrants. That was then. This

Morning I could see one comfort: to become rock

Hard. Could imagine one comfort:

To have become rock. I had no

Imagination. I had his. I had theirs. “Formalism

& grammar are ways to be thin...” masochism

Merely thought of, the idea of a calorie

Most boring way to feel womanly doing itself to me

This morning I was panicking, burning, I was desperate

Scanning the body of my bedfellow

Its beautiful cheeks & chin

& long smooth abdomen

My silence growing fat like an old fruit

Still making me sick

It makes me sick I longed

For the wrong thing

I longed for death. I dreamed of stone

--

sent by hand

19 January 2017

Poetry Thursday - back posting

What comes, will go.
What is found, will be lost again.
But what you are is beyond coming and going
And beyond description.
~ Rumi

Signs

My sister loved animals. On more than one occasion she told me they understood her better than people. So, it is easy for me to see signs of her in the animals that I meet.

She was the one who loved animals, but I was the one that animals always wanted to talk to or be near.

I have come to understand that animals appreciate my alpha vibe.  They are so happy to have someone else be in charge, and naturally wired to be drawn to the herd.  It works on cats, too, but in a slightly different way than dogs.  For some reason when I talk to the cats, they stop and listen.  It's a thing.  I have no control over it.  It just is.  The thing is, it used to really bug my sister, and all others that are animal lovers, that the animals would come to me for comfort and safety.

Now it makes sense that when my sister wants to communicate with me, or others, that she does it through animals.  My brother comes to me in dreams. And more than once he has actually reached out and touched me.  But my sister is less direct.  She shows up in possums and birds and butterflies.

Here are some from my long walk last week:

In these bushes is a moth (I think) black with a white stripe along the wings who followed me around on my long hike the other day.

I tried to get a picture of the large, yellow butterfly that was also hanging around, one of these landed on my head briefly.

Here was the black/white stripe one ... I just missed the open wings by a second.

Poetry Thursday

My Mama moved among the days

~Lucille Clifton

My Mama moved among the days

like a dreamwalker in a field;

seemed like what she touched was hers

seemed like what touched her couldn’t hold,

she got us almost through the high grass

then seemed like she turned around and ran

right back in

right back on in

Poetry Thursday

Heart to Heart

Rita Dove

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.