A friend of my youth has died, and another is probably dying. Microcosm. The world is in a perilous state. Macrocosm.
Anger & Grief
Anger
What is anger?
The conflicting stories
and silences?
The moments blocked?
What is anger?
The empty spaces
where I turn away,
wanting?
What is anger?
Is it this anticipation of loss:
the burnt-out remnants
of old miseries?
***
Grief
What is grief? Stumbling by haunted spaces
and turning away from your empty chair?
What is grief? The evening silences scratching
the scabs of your amputation from me?
Sackcloth and ashes pool behind my empty eyes
imprinting memories where your smile fades
Where is the garden you have abandoned?
What song is playing as you pull away?
Bleakly I walk and walk on muddied paths.
My stories now lost; their endings destroyed.
All sunsets are grey; all voices not yours.
There’s nothing I want and nowhere to be.
Then comes my scalding tears in their scarring tracks:
a slow stinging that solaces me in this deadened time.
Fury
Only when I am finally and irrevocably
awake
Do I sweep up my mistakes and
Bundle them into the oven where
I watch them shrivel and
Dance
And shrink.
I listen to their gasps and
Screams
And bathe in their
Arid aroma,
Shaking
My head,
My heart hurting.
Compostable Dust
I imagine death
socking me
as I change lanes,
my hair flying as
it did in my youthful dancing
I imagine death
dulling me
as I lounge
watching war and weather casualties
on the tv news
I imagine death
surprising me
while I stretch in yoga class
earnestly trying to reach
more
I imagine death
counting what years I have
left
and know more deeply
that I am dust.
My Body, My Mother
My body is my mother
And I don’t like her.
She’s getting old and fat.
I hide from her, ignore her
And frown at her clothes.
She doesn’t take care of herself.
She wants me to exercise her
And I don’t wanna.
She should take care of herself.
And not bother me.
My body is my mother
And I want to love her.
I want to feed her what she needs
And show her how to move and play.
It’s hard, but I need to feel her love.
August 6, 1945
I was conceived before the atomic bomb, and born after it was dropped, after we humans gained the power to commit species suicide. I weep for those who died and suffered in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
Things Change
Many years ago, I had to take a course in Anglo-Saxon literature. It was intense because I was one of only 3 students so I couldn’t even skip occasionally – and I would have liked to. The only thing I remember from that course was this chorus from a long poem. As I remember it, (not according to the modern translation,) the poem was about feasting at the high table, followed by the chorus –
“That passed away, so shall this.”
Later, another verse about being in the middle of a storm on the North Sea, followed, of course, by the chorus –
“That passed away, so shall this.”
When I think of the Biblical quote about there being a time for everything, or the Buddhist concept of impermanence, I remember the message of this Anglo-Saxon poem – everything changes; nothing stays the same.
Mothering God
After reading Sarah Bessey’s Out-of-Sorts
Imagine God offering Her breast, and feeling such relief, such joy, and such pleasure when I latch on;
Imagine the gaze of a smiling God, companionably putting Her arm around my shoulder and listening seriously to me;
Imagine God, whispering a question that unblocks my understanding and my heart;
Imagine.
Imagine God waiting for Her child’s tantrum to lessen, the pounding fists, the bites, the screaming;
Imagine God with yellowing dark bruises and browning bite-marks, patiently, hopefully rocking Her child;
Imagine God gently singing a lullaby to Her exhausting, exhausted child;
Imagine.
Imagine God in a coffeeshop hoping for Her cell to ring;
Imagine God wanting to listen and support me as my life bumps and flows along;
Imagine God watching the sparrows outside and then smiling as Her phone rings;
Imagine.
Writing in the Coffeeshop
Safely sitting in Whole Foods, this bastion of the upper middle class, watching all the young singles on their phones, and older singles on their laptops, not raising their eyes or speaking, even to themselves. Like them I’m writing essentially to myself. I wonder if I should text two uncertain connections. I wonder if I’m the same as the others as we all sit at every other single table, careful not to get too close.
Summer Highway, 2017
Clover pinks the roadside
and wild verdant greens
flood the fields,
while among the distant trees
stand the grey gaunt leafless branches:
silent witnesses and warnings.
Learning Living 