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.)
Planting Seeds
My father planted row on row,
straight furrows where the wheat would grow
nourished by the winter snow.
He knew the how of planting, and when.
He’d watch for all the signs and then
plant his yearly crops again.
Though farming’s in my family tree,
the seeds I plant are furrow-free.
I scatter seeds, then let them be.
Fanned out by an erratic hand,
they grow wherever they may land,
or thirst and wither where they stand.
If planting were a matter of need––
if I’d a family to feed,
of course, I’d plow and water and weed.
But as it is, the mystery
of what might grow means more to me
than the science of agronomy.
And though he worked from dawn to dark,
Dad’s life was anything but stark.
He paused to watch the meadowlark
and trace its flight from post to limb.
He watched the clouds catch light, then dim––
and a single drop course down one stem.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today had to do with planting a garden.
jdbphoto 2016
New Foal
From his mother’s teat, the new-born colt
raised his head with a sudden jolt,
his new world noisier than before
as the truck drove up with its engine roar.
A small boy sat with his window down,
surveying the scene with a subtle frown
as the older man jumped out to walk
slowly toward him, lest he balk,
and reached a hand to touch his coat,
fingers exploring, as though by rote,
feeling bones, sinew and muscle.
“This one here will have some hustle,”
he said to the boy who stood beside,
thinking of his horse who’d died.
“You want to name him?” his father said.
The boy’s toe shuffled. He hung his head.
The tiny colt looked up and snorted—
edgy now, but well-deported.
He moved to the boy to butt his arm.
His nose was soft and smooth and warm
as it nudged the small boy’s skin.
His father watched the pact begin.
I saw this unusual colt alongside the road almost a year ago. I pulled off as soon as possible to snap a few shots and have been waiting for a chance to use them Not exactly a new-born colt, but close. I’ve been waiting long enough!
The prompt today is “jolt.”
Remember when the Saturday Evening Post had a feature entitled “The Perfect Squelch” that featured a different perfect comeback every issue? Well, then, you must be as old as I am.
Spare Tire
My blind date worked out most sublimely.
First of all, it was most timely,
for my ex had told me he
would be there with another she.
I waltzed in regally well-armed
with date both handsome, rich and charmed.
His tux immaculate, his dental
work just out-shined by his mental
acumen. He quoted Proust!
So when my ex came up to roost
on a chair next to the mirror where
I was perusing my form and hair
and said we made a lovely pair;
I answered, “Him? He’s just a spare.”
He poked my middle, then tweaked my nose.
“Well then, when your spare tire blows,
they’ll come in handy, all those guys.
Or, you could simply exercise.”
“Timely” is the prompt word today.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a ghazal. A ghazal is formed of couplets, each of which is its own complete statement. Both lines of the first couplet end with the same end-word, and that end-word is also repeated at the end of each couplet.
My sisters and I. Strangely enough, there is not one photo of my mother and father and the three of us girls together. The only family photo ever taken was before I was born.
Following
The youngest of three, every day down unpaved roads, I tracked my sisters’ footprints.
Nancy Drew wannabe, who needed fingerprints when I could read their footprints?
My mother’s closet a treasure trove, hidden wonders lay obscured on the tallest shelves.
I fanned her dresses with my fingers, slipped into red high-heels that bore her footprints.
Careful where you walk, my father warned, parting tall grass near the homestead ruins.
Fearful of snakes, I fit my own feet to matted grass that marked my father’s footprints.
That frightening choice of colleges facing me, I knew no other way to decide
than to go where she’d gone, and follow in my sister’s footprints.
The obligation of college over with no more paths worn by other feet to follow,
I chose Australia, Indonesia and then Africa––following imagination’s footprints.
My niece’s teeth clamped to the old saxophone as its mouthpiece snapped in two,
worn by each of the girls in our family and then by her, as she followed in our footprints.
full moon morning 2 jdbphoto2017
Morning Matins
Cuddled and chirruping, choirs of birds
trill from their tree limbs in boisterous herds.
Like broken crystals, they tinkle in showers,
cacophonous clashings from high hidden bowers.
We cannot see these hermits in their hiding.
Until the sun rises, they will not be gliding
smoothly on air currents, sliding and slipping,
deft and most daring while doing their dipping.
Now a clashed chirping, like the chipping of ice.
The cooing of doves and a rooster crows twice.
The masked moon is waning, obscured by the light
as the first rays of day do away with the night.
Then the wrens take to wing and the grackles glide in.
Flycatchers and orioles desert where they’ve been.
They make their curtain calls, then spread their wings
in pursuit of their breakfasts and other bird things.
vermillion flycatcher jdbphoto2017
Being a night owl, I am so rarely up at 5 in the morning that it has been years since I’ve experienced the awakening of birds in the full moonlight before the sun has yet come out. It was like a concert listening to birds awakening, still obscured by darkness and their sanctuaries of trees.
The NaPoWrMo prompt for day 12 was to use alliteration and assonance in a poem.
full moon morning, jdbphoto2017
4 A.M.
It is too early to be stirring, the world is still asleep.
The sound is all still slumbering, the darkness is too deep.
No dayness stirs the nightness. No touch is reaching out.
No stirring and no blowing. Not a whisper. Not a shout.
When I wake before the world does, it seems the end of things
instead of the beginning, when the whole world sings.
Sun rises and the birds demand. The dogs whine for their feed.
All the world around me awakens to its need.
But for now, they are all sleeping. It is a lifeless world.
Its eyes and ears and mouth closed, around me densely curled.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to use alliteration. This is quiet alliteration, like the poem. Not too much. Just a touch!
Racing Man
I’ve parked you in my dreams
where you sit sputtering,
engine racing,
ready to be off
over the next hill
as always, reaching to release the parking brake,
adjusting the seat back,
never noticing the rear-vision mirror
is slightly off-kilter.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a poem that is a portrait of someone important to you.
