Retablo by Judy Dykstra-Brown, jdb photo
Deep Voice
How do the lessons go when the student is the teacher, too?
That deep self writes clues in poetry
using a dream world to reveal the truths of day.
I trace its verity around my mind—
a well-known pattern
that has worn a groove I can’t escape.
Still hoping for a new ending, I pace the same old trail.
They are a fantasy, my hopes,
I must be taught the facts in Braille.
The prompt word today was trace.
On a Candelmas Afternoon
A woman with a white umbrella
strolls the empty plaza,
meeting the long-skirted bead vendor
who makes her hourly crossing from the beach,
her tray still heavy after five hours of trudging under the sweating sun.
Palm shadows of a lazy afternoon
brush over, but do not disturb
the sleeping dog who fills the pavement
in front of “Abarrotes Gloria.”
Under its dusty awning on a bench
meant for customers notably absent,
through one imperceptibly cracked-open eye,
the sleep-nodding senora watches for
anyone to stir the calm of this mid-afternoon.
That eye opening wider
as two young men on loud motorcycles
circle the plaza in Izod shirts
from the used clothing booth of the mercado,
leaving a tree-shaking breeze
that filters through shadows
to stir the fine hairs on her arm.
okcforgottenman pointed out that this poem reminds him of Nanci Griffith’s song “On Grafton Street.” Since it is one of my favorites, too, I’ve asked him to add a link to it here.
Having driven head-on into a concrete wall, I have worse wounds elsewhere, but this 9-inch abrasion on my neck caused by the seat belt is the most painful. Thanks, okcfm for suggesting aloe vera.
Fortunate Misfortune
I’ve been branded by good fortune, garroted and bruised
by the air bag that inflated and the seat belt that I used.
Why do I say thank-you, in spite of all my pains?
It could have been my spinal cord. It might have been my brains.
My car is not so fortunate. I fear its life has ended.
The impression the wall made on it they say cannot be mended.
Once more I’ve dodged a bullet. Once more I’ve stayed alive.
I’ve used up my sixth cat life in order to survive.
Cuts and bruises all heal up. A car can be replaced,
but I cannot overlook the lesson that I’ve faced.
I want to give up worrying about how life will end.
I have no need to worry. I have three lives left to spend!
Impression is today’s prompt word. It also seems appropriate for the later prompt, survive.
cat·a·pult : a device in which accumulated tension is suddenly
released to hurl an object some distance, in particular.
Two times in the kitchen—hurrying like a fool.
One time on the terrace when I tripped over a stool.
Three times in the hall when I stumbled on the stair.
The wall my forehead hit each time needed no repair.
Not so my skull which needs new paradigms inside
of how to live my life by slowing down my stride.
I am scared of my subconscious—it’s refusing to be tamed.
If I do not learn its language, I’m afraid I’ll soon be maimed.
When steps and mops in pails and stools taught me not at all,
my stubborn subconscious launched me at a wall,
totalling my car—a frighteningly close call.
Bruised and sore, I hear the words the doctor said,
“Take these pills two times a day and spend five days in bed.”
Six bad falls? One totalled car? I finally do the math.
Something wants to put obstacles in my path.
It says, “Take off the running shoes. Reduce those trips to town.
Loll around a few days more in your dressing gown.
Never do more than one thing. Give each thing its time.
To think I can do all of it is simply asinine.
Why do I think that I should be continually busy?
Why go up on ladders when I know it makes me dizzy?
The less I do it seems there are more I shouldn’t do’s.
Somedays it’s an adventure just locating my shoes
and cell phone and my glasses and finally, my keys.
Then I drive to town for broccoli and come home with blue cheese.
When did it get more difficult? It seems this is all new,
and yet I wrote about those falls a year ago or two.
A catapult propels one up over the wall
and over every obstacle that could cause a fall.
Why avoid the catapult? Why think that I should be
the person I was yesterday—that one no longer me?
Ironic that the catapult instructs me to slow down,
leave prat falls to the stunt man and the circus clown.
“Put some space around the things that you think you should do.
Take some time to hear what life’s trying to tell you.
All this beauty for your eyes yet often you don’t see it.
That same beauty within you waiting for you to be it.”
Catapult is the daily prompt, but this poem certainly also works for the prompt Reprieve.
Hesitation
As I recite my Sunday Psalms,
two butterflies alight like balms
upon the leper’s outstretched palms.
Thus nature intervenes and calms
the remainder of my qualms.
I fill the beggar’s hands with alms.
The prompt word today was “qualm.”
Night Chorus
Village dogs out in the dark—
first they howl, and then they bark.
A filling moon spills from a cloud.
That’s when the dogs become so loud.
Each of my dogs is in his bed,
though they’d rather be outside instead.
My dogs and I silent and still
as outside voices speak their will.
The little burro brays consent.
Wind in the palms nodding assent.
I have my qualms about leaving Morrie and Diego out all night to converse with the neighbors. I spoil all their fun!!!
Final Curtain
Do not rest on your laurels. Do not dilly-dally,
for you never know what action will end up as your finale.
The prompt today was “final.”
jdbphoto
The prompt word today was “maze.” This is an extensive rewrite of a poem written three years ago.
Reincarnation
Two things of value that are fleeting––
life and love both set hearts beating.
Both sadly lost by types of cheating:
one by libido overheating,
the other just by unwise eating.
Once over, though, both bear repeating.
The prompt today is “temporary.”
It is the difference between that present handed to you by a person who says, “It’s only a tie,” and a package under the tree squeezed and prodded at—perhaps a corner loosened or a hole poked in through supposed accidental handling, pondered like a good detective show. Who wants these mysteries revealed before their time? What value in the present whose contents you already know for sure?
The magic of Christmas for some is that faith that the girl, untouched by human lover, gave birth—and it is that sort of faith that “saved” the world. If we knew the whole truth of that story would all it prompted fall into the hole covered all these years by mystery? The whole world seems to be standing more on what we don’t know than on what we absolutely know empirically—what we can prove.
Unexposed
And so I look at the picture of my young mother
in her cotton housedress and saddle shoes
holding her baby in front of her in her stroller,
whole contraption, child and carrier,
a foot or two above the ground,
and there is mystery in the reveal.
I do not hear what transpired to cause this pose––
whether my father caught her carrying me
from the porch to sidewalk and said,
“Here, Tootie, turn around,” and snapped the picture,
or whether my older sister planned the pose.
Perhaps some movie star was snapped in a similar scene
and my mother and sister, like two conspiring fans,
planned the shot to steal the glamor formerly reserved
for “Photoplay” or “Look” or “Life.”
There would be no reel-to-reel
in any normal person’s life for years.
No movie camera to tell me exactly what my mother and I were like
before my memory took hold and even then,
what I remember of childhood is
more like reflections in a lake that color and change
depending on the clouds or rain,
distorting the light like moods.
My Aunt Peggy’s house,
always remembered as feeling like
the color chartreuse,
and I will never know why––
that smell of a friend’s house that became associated
with her memory more than any concrete proof of
the spinning film of a movie projector.
I do not know my mother’s voice at thirty.
I did not witness myself since birth
by either sound or sight.
There is a different mystery
to a past caught
in boxes of Kodacolor prints
curling and yellowing in a closet
than one documented like a science experiment
with every event taped and filmed.
Where does the mystery of you reside when you see yourself
so clearly, as others have seen you all along?
What does it leave for you to try to discover?
No tapes.
No film.
No Internet.
No Skype.
No YouTube.
No home movies.
All of our pasts were once wrapped up forever
with only our fingers poking in the edges.
Only our voices asking,
“What was it like the day when I was born?”
What do you remember about the day when. . . .?
(This is a rewrite of a poem I wrote three years ago.)
