ATONEMENT

An unworthy deed, an unkind word
The deepest hurt unleashed
Ongoing rift, abyss
Nothing left unsaid that doesn't crowd my heart
Engaging anger, then despair, and, at last, acceptance.
Myself poured out on the altar
Enveloped in my need for family and understanding
Not so long ago I offered myself up
To solve our differences, but you said no.

Are you happy?


I wish there had been a table between the two of us
our hands folded together upon it
when you looked up at me, sincerely asking,
Are you happy?
I wished you'd asked me more than once in thirty years.

You were at the kitchen table paying bills, I
was anchored at the stovetop turning something into dinner,
while the grandkids chattered noisily between us.  I was, at that moment,
content to hear their little voices like music drifting through
and over us.  You seemed to want to hear, Yes, yes, wildly so!

I hesitated then said, Right now...yes, moderately.
Moderately, you repeated with a half-smile, neither pleased or displeased.
At peace, at least, I explained.  You stared at me in silence
as if wanting more of an explanation, something that is not
common between us.  I continued on,

I like the house, and the garden is so lovely, and the grandkids
are so sweet, blathering on until the interest faded from your eyes
and one of us was needed to solve a small child's problem.
All those days of quiet between us when I longed
for your strong hand around mine and a conversation that began with

Are you happy?

The landscape of dreams
An uneven belief that I will recover
From what is said and what is seen.
Recover to midnight in my own room,
or to morning.
No sense making meaning, but
I ponder hours into the day wondering
What was I trying to say to Myself.

I Prefer


My small side garden where
a cabbage butterfly plays chase
with its twin and the sun is
scalding the color out of the sky, where
the unpainted fence is brindled
with leafy, limbed shadows
the shrubs left behind.  Here the dull
clunk of the wooden wind-chimes and
the mumble of bees down deep purple
throats are music.  There are pots and beds
full of blackening compost and discarded
leaves and petals lay on the lawn.

We Long for Youth

When youth meets age, passion urged to mellowness,
Ourselves engaged with
Time, the unacknowledged guest,
Often turns our thoughts toward Death.

Innocense lost!
Oh, anger’s cost!
In old age we know our truths!
Our children grown
With babies of their own,
As memories live—we long for youth,
Oh how we long for youth.

This is a response poem to T. E. Brown's poem, When Love Meets Love.  Here is Brown's poem:


WHEN love meets love, breast urged to breast,
God interposes,
An unacknowledged guest,
And leaves a little child among our roses.
O, gentle hap!
O, sacred lap!
O, brooding dove!
But when he grows
Himself to be a rose,
God takes him—where is then our love?
O, where is all our love?

Maple Leaves

Citrine bits scatter sown over

The lake’s memory of black quartz

Drift like golden light-filled dories.

So the sowing goes all day

Across the broad field of the water,

Off and on, in gusts of well-populated wind.

But sometimes in an artful dropping,

One by one, each leaf settling on its twin

Until the maples lose all their inhibitions.

List poem:

I am a secret

longing to be whispered,

I am the clock face

you must check time and again--

my hands steady and deliberate,

pushing forward.

I am the blue which precedes

blackest night, indigo and iris,

the blue of forget-me-nots which follows dawn.  

I am bright and dark,

a welcome and a warning.

I am a slow and studious

walk through the woods,

a joyous leap from the driftwood log.

I am driftwood, changed by water and sun

and dead to the place I came from.

I am the most inner pink crook in the conch shell

and I am the broad smile of sky

over open pasture.

I am the honest cold pain

of ice cubes between the teeth,

I am the spreading warmth of sun on shoulders.