Poetry Thursday

No Ruined Stone
~Shara McCallum

When the dead return
they will come to you in dream
and in waking, will be the bird
knocking, knocking against glass, seeking
a way in, will masquerade
as the wind, its voice made audible
by the tongues of leaves, greedily
lapping, as the waves’ self-made fugue
is a turning and returning, the dead
will not then nor ever again
desert you, their unrest
will be the coat cloaking you,
the farther you journey
from them the more
that distance will maw in you,
time and place gulching
when the dead return to demand
accounting, wanting
and wanting and wanting
everything you have to give and nothing
will quench or unhunger them
as they take all you make as offering.
Then tell you to begin again.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face
~James Weldon Johnson

The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.

And in her voice, the calling of the dove;
Like music of a sweet, melodious part.
And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
And all the gentle virtues in her heart.

And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Watershed
~Tracy K. Smith

200 cows         more than 600 hilly acres

            property would have been even larger
had  J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
        waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed     
                                            did not want to sell
            but needed money   poor health       
mysterious ailments

Not long after the sale cattle began to act
deranged   
                      footage shot on a camcorder
grainy          intercut with static       
Images jump repeat      sound accelerates     
      slows down       
                    quality of a horror movie

the rippling shallow water       the white ash
      trees shedding their leaves
                                               a large pipe
discharging green water   
                                            a skinny red cow
hair missing      back humped
                                             
a dead black calf in snow         its eye
      a brilliant chemical blue 

                                            a calf’s bisected head     
      liver     heart    stomachs    kidneys         
              gall bladder      some dark      some green     
 
cows with stringy tails         malformed hooves         
      lesions      red receded eyes        suffering   slobbering     
                  staggering like drunks

It don’t look like
                             anything I’ve been into before
                                 

I began rising through the ceiling of each floor in the hospital as though I were being pulled by some force outside my own volition. I continued rising until I passed through the roof itself and found myself in the sky. I began to move much more quickly past the mountain range near the hospital and over the city. I was swept away by some unknown force, and started to move at an enormous speed. Just moving like a thunderbolt through a darkness.


R’s taking on the case I found to be inconceivable

It just felt like the right thing to do   
                                                                a great
opportunity to use my background for people who
                                 really needed it
   
                                 R: filed a federal suit
                                          pulled permits
                                              land deeds 
                                                      a letter that mentioned
a substance at the landfill   
                                               PFOA       
                           perfluorooctanoic acid

a soap-like agent used in
                                               Scotchgard TM
                                                                          Teflon TM

PFOA:                 was to be incinerated or
                              sent to chemical waste facilities   
                                    not to be flushed into water or sewers

DuPont:
                 pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds
                          into the Ohio River 
                 dumped tons of PFOA sludge
                          into open unlined pits

PFOA:
             increased the size of the liver in rats and rabbits       
                              (results replicated in dogs)
             caused birth defects in rats   
             caused cancerous testicular pancreatic and
                          liver tumors in lab animals   
             possible DNA damage from exposure
             bound to plasma proteins in blood   
             was found circulating through each organ     
             high concentrations in the blood of factory workers 
             children of pregnant employees had eye defects       
             dust vented from factory chimneys settled well-beyond
                          the property line
             entered the water table
             concentration in drinking water 3x international safety limit
             study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer
             worth $1 billion in annual profit

(It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before)   


Every individual thing glowed with life. Bands of energy were being dispersed from a huge universal heartbeat, faster than a raging river. I found I could move as fast as I could think.


DuPont:
               did not make this information public
               declined to disclose this finding     
               considered switching to new compound that appeared less toxic
                        and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time
               decided against it
               decided it needed to find a landfill for toxic sludge
               bought 66 acres from a low-level employee
                        at the Washington Works facility

(J needed money       
                                         had been in poor health   
a dead black calf           
                                         its eye chemical blue       
cows slobbering             
                                         staggering like drunks)


I could perceive the Earth, outer space, and humanity from a spacious and indescribable ‘God’s eye view.’ I saw a planet to my left covered with vegetation of many colors no signs of mankind or any familiar shorelines. The waters were living waters, the grass was living, the trees and the animals were more alive than on earth.

                                 
D’s first husband had been a chemist
                                                                     When you
worked at DuPont in this town you could have
everything you wanted
                                          DuPont paid for his education       
secured him a mortgage           paid a generous salary
even gave him a free supply of PFOA


He explained that the planet we call Earth really has a proper name, has its own energy, is a true living being, was very strong but has been weakened considerably.


                                                                   which she used
as soap in the family’s dishwasher     


I could feel Earth’s desperate situation. Her aura appeared to be very strange, made me wonder if it was radioactivity. It was bleak, faded in color, and its sound was heart wrenching.


                                                                Sometimes
her husband came home sick—fever, nausea, diarrhea,
vomiting—‘Teflon flu’

             an emergency hysterectomy
                                                                  a second surgery       


I could tell the Doctor everything he did upon my arrival down to the minute details of accompanying the nurse to the basement of the hospital to get the plasma for me; everything he did while also being instructed and shown around in Heaven.


Clients called R to say they had received diagnoses of cancer
         or that a family member had died

                  W who had cancer had died of a heart attack

            Two years later W’s wife died of cancer

They knew this stuff was harmful
            and they put it in the water anyway

 I suspect that Earth may be a place of education.

PFOA detected in:
                                American blood banks 
                                blood or vital organs of:
                                                                            Atlantic salmon                                                                                                     swordfish     
                                                                            striped mullet
                                                                            gray seals
                                                                            common cormorants
                                                                            Alaskan polar bears
                                                                            brown pelicans
                                                                            sea turtles
                                                                            sea eagles
                                                                            California sea lions   
                                                                            Laysan albatrosses on a wildlife refuge
                                                                                          in the middle of the North Pacific       Ocean       
 
Viewing the myriad human faces with an indescribable, intimate, and profound love. This love was all around me, it was everywhere, but at the same time it was also me.


                                        We see a situation

        that has gone

                                  from Washington Works

All that was important in life was the love we felt.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League
~Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr.

’Tis strange indeed to hear us plead
   For selling and for buying
When yesterday we said: “Away
   With all good things but dying.”

The world’s ago, and we’re agog
   To have our first brief inning;
So let’s away through surge and fog
   However slight the winning.

What deeds have sprung from plow and pick!
   What bank-rolls from tomatoes!
No dainty crop of rhetoric
   Can match one of potatoes.

Ye orators of point and pith,
   Who force the world to heed you,
What skeletons you’ll journey with
   Ere it is forced to feed you.

A little gold won’t mar our grace,
   A little ease our glory.
This world’s a better biding place
   When money clinks its story.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

On Contemplating the Breasts of Pauline Lumumba
~Brenda Marie Osbey

Pauline Opango Onosamba Lumumba 1937–2014

When it is finally ours...this beautiful
and terrible thing....
—“Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden

1.
we like to imagine that liberation comes in the natural order of things
carried on such fabled winds of change that
even in the heat of assassination
slaughter and awesome dying for right of millions, or
else some solitary
beautifully ordinary brother
cannot be missed or misconstrued

but there are so many added costs and taxes
as to trip us up quite easily
in all the clamor and bravura of this liberation business.
and then, of course,
the grief-stricken bared breasts of pauline lumumba—

no half-century long enough to bury
the blank and heavy forward-propelled pace
widow flanked on two sides by men
daring
aching to protect her and she
already worlds beyond—

who among us looks on those breasts
and is not bowed?

2.
beloved companion the letter begins
beloved companion

we are not alone
and history will one day have its say

how does one look into the frank, unstoried eyes of one’s child and say we are not alone?

how does one address the letter that reads
whether i am free or in prison alive or already in death’s maw?
to what khakied and accursed postal worker falls the task of bearing
so hard and heavy final and unbearably dear a letter?

in what corner of
one’s dank and filthy cell is it written?
where do the flower petals of one’s springtime dress fall away to on
     receiving it?
and what is the weight of those hands, slim-fingered and otherwise
     empty
full now of driest air
coming slowly slowly
from neighboring forest and savanna?
when does the gnawing of marrow begin to tell
the ages-old story
of the death even of hope
when after everything
after all
we are not alone?

3.
month of the wolf
month of solemnities and annunciations
as good a beginning as any
january then surely was seasonable enough for death by torture by
     beating by
shooting by three adept and clearly necessary firing squads for
     three men already half-dead
fully bloodied from head to heels
orifices swollen to proud flesh ripe-red for the plucking
one at a time in a row from that tree
buried unburied dismembered doused with acid how
how many ways to kill
men whose ideals
clearly were that much more costly than
uranium?
uranium.
yes.

january
seasonable for mourning-time—
assassinating martyr-making widowmaking time of year

4.
they liked in those brief months
they liked to report on your loveliness, didn’t they?
european press couldn’t get enough of you—
your slight waist and native grace
the pretty way you held the pretty child
how you held to the arm of the young hero-husband
so clearly perfectly patently marked both for victory and for early death
eyes wide with all the world could then imagine of vicious and reverberating grief
pretty young wife and mother become symbol become widow
to generation and to continents history and biographers—
nothing said of the shambled life from center to border
flight into egypt beyond and back again
death-startled children in tow.

what will they write in a single decade’s time of how
you yourself chose the warm tenth-month of
sacrifices and of minor feasts, lesser saints
fewer and requisite number of martyred virgins
told no one of your journey—
december and death in your own bed—
asleep
asleep alone as ever you were
leaving now fully alone continents grieving
worlds humbled
contemplating now and forever, again
bared grief-flattened breasts
as earth
as at the inevitable and deliberate coming
of end times
of hope.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Child’s Pose
~Brionne Janae

imagine your heart is just a ball you learned to dribbled up
and down the length of your driveway back home. slow down

control it. plant your feet in the soft blue of your mat and release
it is hard but slowly you are unlearning the shallow pant

of your childhood. extend your body—do not reach
for someone but something fixed and fleshless and certain—

fold flatten then lift your head like a cobra sure of the sun
waiting and ready to caress the chill

from its scales. inhale—try not to remember how desperate
you’ve been for touch—yes ignore it—that hitch of your heart

you got from mornings you woke to find momma hysterical
or gone. try to give up the certainty she’d never return

recall only the return and not its coldness. imagine her arms
wide to receive you imagine you are not a thing that needs

escaping. it is hard and though at times you are sure
you will always be the abandoned girl trying to abandon herself

push up arch deep into your back exhale and remember—
when it is too late to pray the end of the flood

we pray instead to survive it.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Dark and Lovely after Take-Off (A Future)
~Yona Harvey

Nobody straightens their hair anymore.
Space trips & limited air supplies will get you conscious quick.

My shea-buttered braids glow planetary
as I turn unconcerned, unburned by the pre-take-off bother.

“Leave it all behind,” my mother’d told me,
sweeping the last specs of copper thread from her front porch steps &

just as quick, she turned her back to me. Why
had she disappeared so suddenly behind that earthly door?

“Our people have made progress, but, perhaps,”
she’d said once, “not enough to guarantee safe voyage

to the Great Beyond,” beyond where Jesus
walked, rose, & ascended in the biblical tales that survived

above sprocket-punctured skylines &
desert-dusted runways jeweled with wrenches & sheet metal scraps.

She’d no doubt exhale with relief to know
ancient practice & belief died hard among the privileged, too.

Hundreds of missions passed & failed, but here
I was strapped in my seat, anticipating—what exactly?

Curved in prayer or remembrance of a hurt
so deep I couldn’t speak. Had that been me slammed to the ground,             cuffed,

bulleted with pain as I danced with pain
I couldn’t shake loose, even as the cops aimed pistols at me,

my body & mind both disconnected
& connected & unable to freeze, though they shouted “freeze!”

like actors did on bad television.
They’d watched & thought they recognized me, generic or bland,

without my mother weeping like Mary,
Ruby, Idella, Geneava, or Ester stunned with a grief

our own countrymen refused to see, to
acknowledge or cease initiating, instigating, &

even mocking in the social networks,
ignorant frays bent and twisted like our DNA denied

but thriving and evident nonetheless—
You better believe the last things I saw when far off lifted

were Africa Africa Africa
Africa Africa Africa Africa Africa...

& though it pained me to say it sooner:
the unmistakable absence of the Great Barrier Reef.

Poetry Thursday, Rilke as birthday month approaches

Pietà
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Fills now my cup, and past thought is
my fulness thereof. I harden as a stone
sets hard at its heart.
Hard that I am, I know this alone:
that thou didst grow—
— — — — — and grow,
to outgrow,
as too great pain,
my heart’s reach utterly.
Now liest thou my womb athwart,
now can I not to thee again
give birth.

Not Poetry Thursday

The Broken Man’s Permission
~Aaron Coleman

A crocodile slips its earth-toned body
back into the river, in silence, violence down
and for its nightness

I cannot see the water. With fear
I am alone. Slick rocks smile thin anonymous light, they lie

about what I am. I see and try to hold
my body in my body, trace a vein
from the base of my palm through

the crook of my elbow, armpit, home—home
makes no sense. I’ve given up on what I know.

This blindness is a mirror turning
back to sand still hollowed, where
every sound is amplified. I want to be the crocodile’s

stomach that is my father, teeth
that are my mother, vertebrae

that aggregate the spine that are loves, knuckled
angles casing nerves. It’s me wading around
inside, mouth open. A humid numbness dense, low,

beneath the undertow: hands that coax and claim
my scaled neck, soothe and pull

each knotted shoulder. I give in to a third of moon caught
in cloud, its orange-grey halo drawn away
from what can be named, known. A curse and prayer

to go unchanged within this water, my movement
foreign, a rootless gurgle, flit of river vines

caging the dwindling
river’s brutal bed, the gorge, flushed
with new food: the blue heron’s bone-flight collapsed,

tangled feathers along the mudglut bank’s
saliva, lifting like shame in the open.

Poetry Thursday

Bridge Called Water
~Diana Marie Delgado

I wrote hard
on paper

at the bottom
of a pool

near a canyon
where the stars

slid onto their bellies
like fish

I wrote:

      …

I went through
the mountain

through the leaves
of La Puente

to see the moon
but it was too late

too long ago
to walk on glass.

     …

Near those years
when the house fell on me

my father told me
draw mom

in bed with
another man—

          …

From a plum tree

the sound of branches
fall like fruit

I’m older
no longer afraid

my voice like water
pulled from the well


where the wind had been buried
where someone was always

running into my room
asking, what’s wrong?

Poetry Thursday, contemplating the quest

:: Searching for My Own Body ::
 ~Yesenia Montilla

Which is to say that like a good theoretical objectified body, my identity was created not by me but by the various desires and beliefs of those around me.
– Daniel Borzutzky

My body is a small cave door                   
it’s a slick whale  a jubilant
sea of tall grass that sways
& makes its way across countries       
& lovers             I love          love-making
I don’t remember a time when           
I wasn’t interested in touch
I have these breasts
& some          would want to come   
on hands                   & knees to worship them             
call me flower           or                    desert
Maybe I was only supposed to be
stone or a baby eel                 
long & layered                      a nun?
I don’t remember ever saying
             yes                   just     no
I am searching   for my own body 
not the one I was told is so                 
I want to be always  open             
             like a canyon
Maybe I was only supposed to be         
tree or temple           
In some circles I am
just an open gate       
a sinful  bauble 

Once someone said you are             this   
& I  never questioned it

I am searching                       my own body 
for                   God   

or someone like her—

history repeating

Ugh, somebody opened this piece from many years ago last week, and I read the title and fell into the same trap.  Or, maybe the universe brought me to it.

I wonder what kind of judgment I pass on myself.

Though, I will say this, I am battling (to no avail) against the rewritten history. It explains, in part, why it has been such a rocky few months.  If only I had a better attitude... since my father has seen fit to let me know that I have a bad attitude. Damn straight.

I am still trying to figure out how to have the appropriate boundary that allows me to hold on to the history I know and still exist with them in their rewritten history. I mean, I cannot force them to live in the history I believe any more than they can force their history on me.

Where is the fine line that I can walk where I am not hurt, even when they live out of their understanding of history?

Is that line wide enough to walk in safety, or will it always be like a tightrope?

Ok, need to go to yoga or do more meditation.

Happy Birthday, Dr. King

My thoughts move to Dr. King all year, and especially this past year. I have wondered so many times how he might have taught in the time of Trump.

We think of Dr. King as a leader, often, and as a pastor, for those who are more religious. But, I think of him as an organizer and a teacher.

So, for his *real* birthday, I decided to read a sermon that he gave, something new to me.

I chose the sermon about The Man Who Was a Fool.

He describes the issue the foolish man encounters, and how we are in danger of falling into the same trap in this way:

We must always be careful in America because we live in a capitalistic economy, which stresses the profit motive and free enterprise. And there is always the danger that we will be more concerned about making a living than making a life. There is always the danger we will judge the success of our professions by the size of the wheel base on our automobiles and the index of our salaries rather than the quality of our service to humanity. There must always be a line of distinction between the "within" and the "without" of life. [here, Dr. King footnotes The Parables of Jesus, Buttrick].

Dr. King's analyzes of the use of "I" and "my" by the rich man, and ties it back to our need to be more cognizant of our connections to the rest of the world/humanity rather than our own perceived self-sufficiency:

[The Foolish Man] failed to realize the interdependent structure of reality. 

And so often we fail to see this. Something should remind us before we can finish eating breakfast in the morning we are dependent on more than half of teh world. We get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for a sponge, and that's handed to us by a Pacific Islander. Then we reach over for a bar of soap, and that's given to us at the hands of a frenchman. And then we reach up for our towel, and that's given to us by a Turk. And then we go to the kitchen for breakfast, getting ready to go to work. Maybe this morning we want to follow the good old American tradition, and we drink coffee. That's poured into our cups by a South American. Or maybe we are desirous of having tea. Then we discover that that's poured in our cup by a Chinese. Or maybe we want cocoa this morning, and then we discover that that's poured in our cup by a West African. Then we reach over for piece of toast, only to discover that that's given to us at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention teh baker. And so before we finish eating breakfast in the morning, we are dependent on more than half of the world. [a footnote lets us know that this section is paraphrased from Leslie Whitehead's 1936 publication titled Why Do Men Suffer?]

Surely Dr. King would update these observations, our world is ever more interconnected and dependent within and without our national boundaries. We do less and less for ourselves in this world, and mostly have no idea how what we have in our hands had gotten there.

But, perhaps most important in this sermon is how Dr. King connects this issue to race relations in 1961:

For what is white supremacy but the foolish notion that God made a mistake and stamped an eternal stigma of inferiority on a certain race of people? What is white supremacy but the foolishness of believing that one race is good enough to dominate another race? What is white supremacy but the foolish notion of believing that certain people are to be relegated to the status of things rather than being elevated to the status of persons? There is no greater foolishness than the foolishness that accompanies our inhumanity to man.

Lest you think Dr. King was not considering all angles of this situation, see what he said immediately after the last statement:

And the converse is also true. Black supremacy is based on a great deal of foolishness. It is the foolish notion that the black man has made all of the contributions of civilization and that he will one day rule the world. I am convinced, as I have said so often, that as Negroes we must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship, but we must never use second-class methods to gain it. We must not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage, thus subverting justice. Not substituting one tyranny for another, but we must seek to achieve democracy for everybody. God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men, God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers and every man will respect the dignity and the worth of human personality. Whenever we fail to believe this, we indulge in tragic foolishness.**

He goes on to talk about our abundance and how we might help others around the world... but I will let you read on. It is beautiful and it very well might have made me more religious if the priests in the pulpit were preaching this kind of truth. *Might* because I have other unresolved issues with organized religion, but I digress.

You can read the whole sermon here. You can search for other things to read here. [Yes, they are published in volumes, but if you click through to the volume, you can also see the PDF to many of the documents.]

**And, yes, we would hope that Dr. King's use of "men" here would have been supplanted with "humans" or "people," but I have faith in Dr. King's sense of humanity.

hunger

I acknowledged the hunger. I wanted to say this morning, but it might have been yesterday.

It had to have been yesterday because I am five and a half hours into the work day, and the first food has passed my lips. (Full disclosure: I had TWO coffees.)

I acknowledged then, whenever that was, that the only sensation I have been able to feel lately is HUNGER.

I realized in nearly the same instant that I can barely remember eating something that felt satisfying ... or that didn't taste like cardboard.

All these realizations brought me back to the depressive state... the sense of overwhelm, the feeling of being swallowed by all the obligation. [I wrote about it a while back, but only in the journal, it didn't make it here.]

Now that I am thinking about it, I remember thinking early this week that exercising might make me less hungry. It often does, however strange that may seem.

But, the truth is that I am STARVING because I am so desperately unhappy and feel trapped and overwhelmed and and and...

Acknowledging the hunger helps to make me less hungry for food and note the need for something else.

Something else... ugh... I am going to go to yoga again tonight. Hoping that will also help.

I just talked with a friend, though, who was able to remind me that I have not even been home for 2 months yet, and had to deal with so many small and large crises. She reminded me how long it has been since I have been alone.

[I was wistfully remembering the "long layover" day I got in San Francisco -- where I splurged on a hotel and didn't call anyone instead of trying to meet up with folks. I felt guilty and yet I truly enjoyed not having to abide by anyone else's schedule, just for a day.]

I really needed that reality check.

Less than two months and I feel like I am drowning. I felt like I was drowning at less than six weeks.

I know this, I have to stop feeling guilty for taking a nap, doing my crossword instead of anything else on the to do list, and ask for help. I am really not sure who to ask for help, that is a bit of a sticking point. But the very, very least I can do is not pile on myself. That is a job that all the others in my life relish and do with gusto.

Poetry Thursday, life right now, adulting

Things Haunt
~Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

California is a desert and I am a woman inside it.
The road ahead bends sideways and I lurch within myself.
I’m full of ugly feelings, awful thoughts, bad dreams
of doom, and so much love left unspoken.

Is mercury in retrograde? someone asks.
Someone answers, No, it’s something else
like that though. Something else like that.
That should be my name.

When you ask me am I really a woman, a human being,
a coherent identity, I’ll say No, I’m something else
like that though.

A true citizen of planet earth closes their eyes
and says what they are before the mirror.
A good person gives and asks for nothing in return.
I give and I ask for only one thing—

Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me.
Hear me. Bear the weight of my voice and don’t forget—
things haunt. Things exist long after they are killed.

Poetry Thursday - oops, back dating

In the Next Yard
~Helen Hoyt

O yes, you are very cunning,
I can see that:
Out there in the snow with your red cart
And your wooly grey coat
And those ridiculous
Little grey leggings!
Like a rabbit,
A demure brownie.
O yes, you are cunning;
But do not think you will escape your father and mother
And what your brothers are!
I know the pattern.
It will surely have you—
For all these elfish times in the snow—
As commonplace as the others,
Little grey rabbit.

Poetry Thursday

Shards
~Aline Murray Kilmer

I can never remake the thing I have destroyed;
   I brushed the golden dust from the moth’s bright wing,
I called down wind to shatter the cherry-blossoms,
   I did a terrible thing.

I feared that the cup might fall, so I flung it from me;
   I feared that the bird might fly, so I set it free;
I feared that the dam might break, so I loosed the river:
   May its waters cover me.

Poetry Thursday - oops, back dating

While looking at photo albums
 ~Kay Ulanday Barrett

Before everyone died – in my family – first definition I learned was – my mother’s maiden name, ULANDAY – which literally means – of the rain – and biology books remind us – the pouring has a pattern –  has purpose  –  namesake means release – for my mother meant, flee – meant leave – know exactly what parts of you – slip away – drained sediment of a body – is how a single mama feels – on the graveyard shift – only god is awake –  is where my  –  family banked itself – a life rooted in rosaries – like nuns in barricade –  scream – People Power – one out of five – leave to a new country – the women in my family hone – in my heart – like checkpoints –  which is what they know – which is like a halt  – not to be confused for – stop – which is what happened to my ma’s breath– when she went home – for the last time – I didn’t get to –  hold her hand as she died – I said I tried –  just translates to – I couldn’t make it – in time – I tell myself  – ocean salt and tear salt – are one and the same – I press my eyes shut – cup ghost howl – cheeks splint wood worn – which is to say – learn to make myself a harbor – anyway – once I saw a pamphlet that said – what to do when your parent is dead –  I couldn’t finish reading  –  but I doubt it informs the audience –  what will happen –  which is to say – you will pour your face & hands – & smother your mother’s scream on everything – you touch – turn eyelids into oars – go, paddle to find her.

Poetry Thursday

Song
 ~T. S. Eliot

If space and time, as sages say,
    Are things which cannot be,
The fly that lives a single day
    Has lived as long as we.
But let us live while yet we may,
    While love and life are free,
For time is time, and runs away,
    Though sages disagree.

The flowers I sent thee when the dew
    Was trembling on the vine,
Were withered ere the wild bee flew
    To suck the eglantine.
But let us haste to pluck anew
    Nor mourn to see them pine,
And though the flowers of love be few
    Yet let them be divine.

Poetry Thursday

Amid the Roses
~Alice Dunbar-Nelson

There is tropical warmth and languorous life
    Where the roses lie
    In a tempting drift
Of pink and red and golden light
Untouched as yet by the pruning knife.
And the still, warm life of the roses fair
    That whisper "Come,"
    With promises
Of sweet caresses, close and pure
Has a thorny whiff in the perfumed air.
There are thorns and love in the roses’ bed,
    And Satan too
    Must linger there;
So Satan’s wiles and the conscience stings,
Must now abide—the roses are dead.