Affirmation
That crepey neck.
I’m going to look like my Grandmother.
But I refuse to wear blue tennis shoes like her,
and when my jewelry starts turning black,
I’ll stop wearing it.
I won’t use straight pins for buttons
or rat my hair and roll it in a bun.
I won’t save Cracker Jack prizes in canning jars
or give all my money to the Seventh day Adventists.
I will not save food in my purse to take home from family dinners,
and I won’t let so many cats sleep in the henhouse.
Glimpses
At times you were the problem and at other times the buttress.
At times my lost direction and at other times my compass.
You were my kindred spirit, my teacher and my lover,
and when you went away, I felt that I could not recover.
I saw your face in everything—in rivers and in clouds.
A dozen times, your profile. Your retreating back in crowds.
Love dies but does not vanish. It has a thousand faces
seen at the least likely times in unexpected places.
Facts we can’t face up to in our mutual lives
swarm around in memory in buzzing swarming hives.
Facts as sweet as honey. Facts that sting like bees.
Niggling facts that seize the mind to torture or to tease.
It is a constant truth with love that one will first depart—
an act that seems so far away when love is at its start.
But the truth is always looming. Death will end what we’ve begun.
That inevitable setting of the brightest glowing sun.
Prompts today are things with faces, buttress, kindred or recover.
This huge African Tulip Tree (Flame Tree) shades the entire courtyard at the Chapala Society, but from where I sat, I could see only two blooms at the very top–20 or 30 feet above me. This is one of them.
Wire Crow
A black crow formed of bent wire, specific in its detail, with the look of chicken wire, yet intricately twisted by hand. You had seen me come back to it again and again at the art show and had taken note. You, who usually harangued me about how hard I was to buy for, asking what I wanted, making me responsible for my own gift. How I hated Xmases and Birthdays for this reason. Hard enough finding the perfect gift for you and your 8 children and my family, but to have to pick my own gift? Unfair.
Yet this gift, a surprise on my 42nd birthday, so perfect. A reminder of that black crow poem you had written about the end of your first marriage and the decline of your second that poem that ranged so far and wide that it included even me, gathering your children and taking them to safety when we broke down on the freeway. That first poem not about past loves, but casting me as heroine––a part of your official biography.
This crow, however, has seen beyond you. Seen your death and my relocation. It sits on the highest shelf of my sala, bent over a Mata Ortiz lidded bowl that has an ear of corn rising up from its lid, as though the crow is about to feast on it. It is one of the objects that gathers you around me, even now, 18 years after your death: the wooden statue you carved in Bali, your giant spirit sled of copper and hide, your Tie Siding sculpture that fills the corner near my desk, the spiral lamp–one of our favorite collaborations.
My whole life seems a continuation of that collaboration—your pulling out of me the art and words that surround me now on my walls, my tables and swirling through my head, disconnected or connected. Metered in rhyme or collecting into paragraphs—all parts of my life. Art we inspired in each other, pulling the world in around us with wood and stone and metal and paper and ideas and words. That metal crow a part of all of it that I have overlooked for so many years now. Of the few objects brought the long miles from California to Mexico, this crow was selected innocently, perhaps more by intuition than by conscious thought, and yet it stands, highest of all, to project its message.
No one who has formed us ever dies. New loves do not cancel out the old. Like one glorious recipe, our lives accumulate ingredients. Sweet and salty, tart and crusty, effervescent and meaty. Like your presence. Ironically represented by that crow that is mainly emptiness, really. Or perhaps unseen mass. Like thought. Like poetry. Like love. Like a forgotten important detail suddenly remembered.
Mary asked to see some of the results of the timed writing exercises we did during our retreat. This is one I did where the prompt was to write about an object. I believe it was a 15 or 20 minute writing.
This is my half of the beautiful bouquet from Leslie. I love the mix of old-fashioned flowers and moved it around the house as my activities took me here and there.
For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.
Sex Education
It’s a rite of passage. At the beginning of the chase,
we make do with kisses all about the face
with our mother’s staunchest warnings that we should wage a war
to maintain our chastity as in days of yore.
But TV is an oasis of fleshy predilections,
a veritable manual of “how to” sex directions.
Add to that the internet and to our folks’ remorse,
we can view every possible form of intercourse.
No more that gentle manual slipped into our hand
by an embarrassed mother whose speech is neatly canned—
birds and bees and butterflies, instructions prettified—
that certain code of etiquette that could not be defied.
So the twenty-first century deals with acts of love,
presented not with gentle push, but with a mighty shove.
Leave the loving out of it. The act is what we’re after.
Forget the gentle wooings, the tenderness and laughter.
It seems the world is doing its best to turn our teens
into walking, selfie-taking, loveless sex machines—
taking what they want so fast that they do not perceive
that love is also giving—not just what you receive.
Love techniques are fine so long as learners also see
that dealing with their feelings requires maturity.
Take care in your choosing. Make sure that you both love,
so when passion finally finds you, it fits you like a glove.
Prompt words today are passage, wage, oasis, staunch and chase.
My friend Leslie gave me a huge gorgeous bouquet when she left to go back to the States. When Yolanda came to work the next day, she was admiring it. I asked what her favorite flowers were and she said the lilies, so I split the bouquet in two. Here she is with her half. I’ll show you mine tomorrow.
Reined-in Adventure
My first mount was a hobbyhorse, I’d ride him up and down
all around the basement, if not around the town.
In summer we would come outside and ride along the walk
that my sister used for hopscotch–all scribbled up with chalk.
With reins clipped to his harness, I maintained a healthy clip.
Careful over sidewalk grooves, avoiding every dip.
Never did he tarry as we hurried on our way,
for when we reached our destination, I would feed him straw and hay.
Then, being very hungry after my vigorous ride,
I’d put away my pony before I went inside
and I’d become the pony and my mother would feed me
carrot sticks and cabbage hay, sitting on Daddy’s knee.
I’d whinny with each forkful. I’d toss my head, then prance
upstairs to my nap to dream of England and of France
where policemen still rode horses along the city streets,
racing after robbers and other heroic feats.
And in my dreams, my horse and I would have a glorious ride
more dangerous than earlier rides we had had inside.
Charging after bandits, fording rivers and
forsaking backyard sidewalks for dirt and stone and sand.
We’d clamber up steep mountainsides to try to find a pass,
then kick up rocks while sliding down to sail through fields of grass.
We’d conquer all the beaches, then roll through fields of clover,
having wilder adventures until my nap was over.
Prompt words for today are hobbyhorse, harness, groovy, tarry and straw.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 