Thursday, March 25, 2010

Lag time--don't go away!

I must confess my plate has been quite full
So little time for pen or poetry
My writing life's experienced a lull
Not much figurative activity

But come back soon, stick with me yet a while
Soon comes the month of national poetry
And I will post a ditty ev'ry day
Though it might be the very death of me

Oh, to meet such a glorious, happy end
As sharing poetry each day with friends!

I promise not to give you 30 days of tortured iambic pentameter, though!

Friday, March 12, 2010

Thirty years

Sometimes being nine was hard
But when I saw your beige van—
My chariot—in our driveway
Nine was right where I wanted to be
And everything about you
Was just right:
Your white shoes
Your white belt
Your Old Spice
Your pink shirt
Your Frank Sinatra eight tracks

But most of all
It was your way of announcing
My entrance:
“This is my granddaughter”
With an implied
With whom I am well pleased
And your way of proclaiming,
Affirming my desires:
“Give her whatever she wants”
She deserves whatever she wants

You were the one
Who thought I was perfect
And deserved donuts for dinner
And to stay up past Johnny Carson
And to dip my French fries
In whatever I wanted
“You’re Number One,”
You would whisper
“No one else is.
No one else could be.”
It was just you and just me.

A few years ago
Thirty-nine was really, really hard
And I mourned the possibility
Of your van in my driveway
And felt deeply, truly sorry
For myself
But then I ruined the moment
By looking at your picture
And then looking in the mirror
And seeing the lines of holy obligation
Running over your face
And then mine
“This is my granddaughter,”
You whispered.
Now get up off the floor and start acting like it.

This was in response to readwritepoem's prompt #117.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Perhaps

Perhaps it is just
A remembering
Of our birth
The warmth of dark waters
Their tides pushing out and drawing back
And then the breach
The departure
The severing
From what tethered us
To the womb
Or to the earth

Perhaps the folly
Is the focus
On the when
The chronic need for timepieces
The turning back and forth of anxious pages
The distraction
The cleaving
To the notion that
Death comes later
And birth was then

Readwritepoem prompt 116 gave us this compelling image by h. koppdelaney to work with.