NaPoWriMo2020 Poem 7 of 30
Haiku
Gravity
kisses inhale souls
one look and hearts catch fire
love’s strong gravity
Halfway There
Saying goodbye with only distant plans for reunion makes the empty new morning swallow you whole.
On rising we are required to remember our person is no longer in our daily world. Like the thousand times we reach for a phone to call parents with a question or to share news before it hits us that they have both been dead over a decade now. So much a part of who we are; a limb, a vital organ; stunned that we live on without them.
The letting go is like pushing off from shore and swimming into open-ocean towards a destination out of sight. Do we put some effort in and try to get there faster or pace ourselves in case it’s farther than imagined? The thing is, with every passing moment we know we’re getting closer. The starting place is behind us now; the day we said goodbye. And every day a little grief weight drops and bit by bit – lightness takes its place. Before we know it, we’re half way there. Closer by the day to being home than we were yesterday and that’s a good thing. A hopeful thing. And on the day we decide to make plans again clouds disappear and joy rises like crocus up from March snow.
We’re halfway there. See you soon.
Poetry Day: Never
Never
…and if I had never
heard your name
would the sound it makes
still echo
in corridors of memory-
brushing the walls
like velvet and fire-
hammering the soft middle of my heart
where hope lives-
leaving it bruised
and aching
decades later?
What I’ve Seen…Reaching 60
Tomorrow is my birthday. It’s a big one. Sixty. At this auspicious moment I am wondering how the hell did this many years pass so ridiculously fast?
When my kids were young teens itching to do something they weren’t ready for yet, I would get out the construction tape measure. I would lay it out to 100 inches and chalk where their ages fell and how long their wait really was to participate in the activity that eluded them. Then I would point down the line to how many more times they could do that forbidden thing in the one hundred or so years they had to live their lives. It made the two inches from 14 to 16, when their driver’s license would come seem like the paltry eye blink that it was.
Looking back down my own line of numbers, already passed, I am embracing my million moments that drew together to make me. Gathered knowledge is just hoarding thoughts until you share it. For what it’s worth, these are some of the things I have seen.
Even if you grew up watching shows like Friends and assuming adulthood would be a constant coffee klatch with your across the hall neighbors, you will spend most of your time alone in this life. Unless you are conjoined, this is the way of the world. And if you can’t be at peace in your times of solitude, why in the hell would you think other people would be interested in spending time with you either? Learn shit. Get interested and then you will be interesting-to yourself and to others.
The greatest lesson for young teen abstinence should be the fact that the first person you get naked with will-in all likelihood-not be the last. With the exception of the four couples you will meet who are childhood sweethearts-you will swim into and out of tubs, ponds, raging rivers and oceans of love in all its forms until you find somewhere that becomes your place in the world. That’s where you will build your home- however early or late in life you find it and trying to pitch a tent anywhere else will give temporary shelter and nothing more.
When people close to you lash out it is usually because they want you to love them more than it appears you do. If you pay attention, people will tell you what they want-so listen.
Most people, even the most hardened among us, still have a soft, gooey center and if you are paying attention and listening you can figure out what they love. That is what made them gooey like that in the first place. If they showed you the gooey love, they shared the keys to their castle. Honor that.
There are seven billion people on this planet. When you are not famous, the statistical magic of finding one person who can see you for the blazing light you actually are is a gift rarer then the most expensive gemstone. Own that.
Real love never dies. It only changes shape to accommodate the way you live now.
The secret to happiness is this: figure out what you want and find a way to ask for it.
Love is your own personal experience. It sparks and blooms inside your own head-like a private revelation; a movie only you can see. Even if the object of your affection does not return your ardor with the same intensity or at all, never hold regret for having felt that feeling. To know what love feels like is like visiting the most beautiful place on Earth. Not everyone will go there in their lifetime but you have, and you can tell others what it feels like to stand in the center of all that beauty; what it is to see the blazing light of someone else and have it warm your soul even if it’s just for a moment. It will change you forever; no matter if life or death moves you far away from that other person, it will remain part of who you are now.
What I have seen while I have run, swam, played, danced, loved, fought, created, walked, crawled, bled, cried and laughed my way through the sixty years on planet Earth comes down to this: love. It always comes down to that. And on the last day I get in this life, it will still be about love; who I loved and who loved me.
That is where I have a cave of treasure like Aladdin. I remember all the love my heart has felt. It fills my pens, my brushes, my cooking pots and the large broken parts inside of me. It is my gold.
The Japanese have a practice called Kintsugi. It’s a ceramic pottery ritual where a beloved broken vessel is pieced back together with molten gold used like glue. It gathers the shattered parts together; making it whole again in a new and beautiful way.
Today, I will visualize all the love I’ve known as gold and let it fill the cracks and broken parts of me to make me whole like the day I was born only different…better. It will be my private gift to myself; the strengthening of my weak places. What I’ve seen in my sixty years has been a kaleidoscope of wonder and I am filled with anticipation as the curtain rises on the next act.
Poetry Day: Cactus Flower
Cactus Flower
Creamy cactus flower
bouquet out of reach
guarded earnestly
there will be no souvenirs
lucid dreaming carries me
off to somewhere else
til I’m half a step removed
a movie out of sync
as what I was and who I am
come close to touching hands
for just one golden moment
time slows in its dance
and then once again
I am standing in that desert
looking at a chance
that the world ahead
held a certain sign
your heart beating next to mine
for a breath or two
it was me and you
then time rushed ahead
regained its bruising pace
in this dreaming place
and I was looking at your face
the same yet different now
silvered round the brow
though eyes will never change
a lifetime passed between
what you meant to me
and who you are to someone else
but for just one golden moment
time slowed in its dance
until what I was and who I am
were almost touching hands –
they left a blossom on my palm
an offering from my past
a single creamy flower
plucked from a cactus tower
message clear and plain-
an exchange for all my rain
Nurture Nature In Our Blood
Today it’s Mother’s Day in America. That’s a nice thought but it leaves out millions of women who mother in their own way every day they live.
More than a day for mothers of children, this is a day for celebrating the sacred feminine that lives within all women.
Some hold a child
Some care for family, friends, strangers and any who need their touch.
Some embrace the furred, feathered and finned.
Some grow the foods we eat with loving hands.
Some nurture the flowers and plants that bring us beauty.
Some hold instruments to their bodies and call out the music and the art that feeds our souls.
We women are all nurturers in our own way.
We care for and feed everything that grows
and with our care
they all grow – better.
From one to another, here’s to all the Nurturers in all their beauty.
Poetry Day- Elixir … for Valentine’s Day
Elixir
Viscous fluid
once known – that filled our fragile lungs
nurturing as we grew
forming out of nothing-
Fluid breathed that once expelled, left us yearning
for the fullness it offered every open space within.
Expelled and replaced by some
Sad substitute necessitating constant vigil-
Until – one day- again
a breath taken becomes so much more than
all the breaths we took before.
This breath, this invisible treasure –
holds pure essence of another
mingled in its molecules.
We taste on tongue and inhale deeply-
memory of something lost
that fed and formed us
Now back again-
filling every open place
and we are home.
It comes unseen on random breeze
Impossible to anticipate.
Its elixir
Poured by angels
Down parched throats
Anointing each remaining breath as
Worthy food
To feed a hungry soul.
It is no wonder-
Should it leaves us-
Why we gasp and whither
Having lost it twice in one life.
Jar of Wonder
I’ve used the last of the lotion I concocted several months back and I can’t seem to toss out the cool jar. It’s squatty and round and it once held a moderately pricey and amazing royal jelly body butter from Savannah Bee Company.
Custom blending makes me feel like an alchemist; scooping and stirring and sniffing this and that to decipher its compatibility with the other bits and bobs. I do the same thing with spices, much to the entertainment of my family. Oh, crap. Here she goes again. It starts as a chore because I’m out of something that I need. Once I get going, I fall into the spirit of the scavenger hunt around my home. Every bathroom has some Bermuda Triangle area of lotions and potions and tiny tubes and bottles from hotel stays and gift baskets that I open and smell. If it passes muster, it comes with me to the kitchen.
I start with something thick and un-tinted like Nivea and add a few tablespoons of it to the jar; then the fun begins. A teaspoon of Curel, another of Jergens another of some cocoa butter weirdness and on it goes until it’s almost full to the top. At the end, I add a big dollop of some perfumed cream with a soft and lovely fragrance like the old Breathe Romance from Bath & Bodyworks which, of course, they no longer make just because I love it. Luckily, I’ve been a miser with my last jar so I save it for mixing like Merlin would have saved his stash of dragon blood for spell work.
I’ve made a tiny treasure of this oft used vessel and now call it my Jar of Wonder and the lid bears some of my artsy handiwork and sparkles like a starry night. It seems so much more lush and decadent with the beauty lid when I go to rescue my indoor-winter sand paper feet and hands.
The point of all this is that when I found the jar empty this morning, my first reaction was the same as it is when so many good things end; a downslide into an inventory of all that once was and is no longer at my fingertips. It’s just a jar for cripes sake. I know this. But, cut me some slack. I live in mid Michigan; the second cloudiest place in America, so my vitamin D sunshine levels are dangerously low in January.
And as it turned out, while I was on my search for ingredients, the more I found, the deeper it sunk in that I do indeed have far, far more of everything of this sort than I could ever need. Even if that means I have a whole lot of a little of this and a little of that.
So, it’s not a 40 oz. vat of royal jelly body butter. No matter. If I had a giant container to mix and stir in, I could probably make 40 oz. of my Wonder Cream and be up to my neck in it for months to come. And is that not the way of all our “I don’t have enough…” stories?
Maybe we don’t have Jay Leno’s garage full of cars and motorcycles to choose from that might match our outfits today, but we can always find a way to get from point A to point B and that was the goal anyway.
Perhaps we aren’t in the throes of big-big love at this part of our lives, but we may have a dozen friends and family members who collectively fill our cup with joy and that is really something.
So I don’t have any royal jelly body butter left, but I do have all this other stuff that, together, works remarkably well.
The point is, when you’re feeling like you’ve just run out of something and you’re going to feel its absence because you have come to count on it, go on a scavenger hunt in your life and see if you might have a variety of things you can notice and celebrate and bring together to make your own Jar of Wonder to soothe the rough spots in your life.
Look around. You just might surprise yourself.
POETRY DAY: Soul Mates
Soul Mates
If the soul that was created
the same moment that my soul was made
were to walk in the world with me,
to stand beside me,
look into my eyes,
to put his mouth on mine,
we would burst into blue flame
and the light would make the nighttime day
– a wave would tear through the air
shaking the trees,
rattling windows;
people miles away would turn towards the sound
of joy/pain/ecstasy
and they would blush at witnessing
so intimate a moment
of two strangers.
What A Woman Wants
This is a reposting of a piece I wrote for my old blog. Still appropriate as the topic and the truth of it will never become outdated.
Recently, I’ve heard a slew of conversations about what women want; guys talking, of course.
It’s usually laced with hands being thrown up in the air for comedic exaggeration or sometimes, blind frustration, as if they are painstakingly attempting to resolve a solution for quantum gravity.
Do you honestly want to know what a woman wants? Can you handle it? We’re all adults here and if this is too adult for you then you shouldn’t be concerned with big people things that are real or messy, so go read a crafting blog. OK, here it is.
A woman wants someone who will walk up to her, wind their fingers into her hair and kiss the stupid right out of her. A woman wants someone who will see her when she’s happy, when she’s sad and when she’s pissed off and they will find all of those moments equally adorable.
A woman wants a senseless argument to be ended with your lips on hers and your arms around her making smooth circles on her back while you tell her how much you love her and that this is a moment that will pass.
A woman wants to know that she is enough for you and she wants to know that your heart stops and starts again when she kisses you back.
A woman wants someone who will tell her to open her eyes because you want to see how you make her feel just as you slide into her. And a woman wants to know, without a doubt, that since you found her, no other person in the world except her, is ever going to have a chance to hear you say that again.
That’s what a woman really wants. This isn’t rocket science. It’s the same stuff she wanted when she was 15 years old and the world was not really that complicated.
Not a single one of those things will cost you one thin dime. What they will cost you is a wide open heart and a willingness to be all in; to be there through every glorious, steamy, crazy, beautiful, angry, joyful, tragic and magnificent moment and, it will be worth it.
That’s what a woman wants.
Word Ninja Girl 