Uncategorized – Press Send Poetry

Clean for Tomorrow

Women before me look out past their sinks.

My mother with a lawn

of full trees and cardinals.

My grandmother in an alcove

of cheery wood cabinets.

I see blue Norman Creek as day slowly melts.

Familiar porcelain aches fill my sink.

Cookware, utensils, all

spent pots and pans.

Burnt-on leftovers,

Stuck crumbs hanging on,

Hands pruned in water; spine bent to task.

Watch plucky bubbles soon find rivulets

of air. Feel tension ease

as you look up and shift.

How doused we are with

indelible fortune. Tonight, I

chose scrubbing. To be clean for tomorrow.

[Written in April 2020]

Garlic Bulb Miracle

Written back in 2020 while I was on pandemic furlough … seems like a perfect post for today!

Dark kitchen corner,

a forgotten

bulb bursts

open. Single green

arm reaches out

and instantly air

like a rush of

electricity zips

down verdant

limb, a first breath

of vast unknown.

Rustle imperceptible

of former self, there is

no going back, only

brave burgeoning start.

Here, Time, Gather

Here, time to gather myself

To gather hands

To gather together my hands as if in prayer

As if to hold myself in a way that is kind,

As if to create energy that is bigger than myself

But is still myself

My Self holding hands together, to gather

In a moment, all of what is and what can be.

Silver Linings

Pandemic furlough –

My Walden pond.

A chance to sit quiet

On a snowy couch

With Sandburg and

Whitman, and my great-

Grandmother who,

With silver thread,

Ties the past to my

Future roads. How

She loved Frost asking:

Which one will you

Take?

all i know is nothing

all i know is
i know nothing,

air invisible now
feels viscous.

inhale and accept, i
exhale to let go.

grief is outrage is
paralysis is promise

is a messy reaction,
nodding and grimace.

don’t look to me,
peer closer and within.

i may know nothing
but i can learn.

when air becomes
voice then we may

see intangible
become action,

the many breathing
new life like light.

Over lunch, a mantis settled for my Stella de Oro day lilies in the
blazing west sun on my roof deck in Baltimore. A capricious whim,
or calculated move – its motivation irrelevant. To the immediate south,
basil sage perfume, and wild-eyed purple petunia. Air conditioners
hummed mildly for the mantis on a deepening yellow bloom and
just as motionless as a cat perched two roofs away. I watched, captivated.
I willed the insect to move. Electricity rushed the wires. A car door closed.
Wind rustled pollen loose as a police helicopter
charged us to the east. Not one spindly leg twitched. I looked up.

– a liminal space, a sudden tumblingwhirring cacophony of
skin
and privilege
and good blocks
and protection, and
murder and
bad blocks and
fear and
and grief and so much grief –

Then looked down. Mantis had moved while the rotor blades roared.
It perched upside down mindful, head bowed,
tiny insect arms set in prayer. Steady as the sirens followed
like clockwork. Steady as we thought of our neighbors, knowing not a single one.

Written 7/11/16

I’m with the majority

Today I think
1 of 2 people love poetry,
one half is convinced 5 of
12 words deliver peace, and
the rest are worthy of
derision, humiliation, and worse.
90% want freedom
from rhyme, 6% love
structure, the others
undecided. I heard 2.75% of grown-
ups are afraid of the dark, which
seems low, and 83%
of kids still believe in
multiplication, which seems high.

I’ve made
my camp with the majority,
who is always right. 1 of 2 of us
is happy about it.

Written 7/11/16

35

35 is
of the world
and not,
a stew of overjoyed
and discontent.

Maybe when I’m older
the balance changes?

I know when I was younger,
the scale slid far below
the line of happy; Things were so
dramatic then.

35 forms a crossroad,
a slow settling into your own bones.

Possibilities shine in the distance,
dirt glows under our feet

written 6.6.15

Everything is Waiting For You by David Whyte

Last Sunday, I was able to participate in a wonderful event called Dancing on the Fragile Edge of the World: A Scholarship Concert of Music and Poetry with Michael S. Glaser (my former college professor), Brian Ganz, and Deanna Nikaido. I’d like to share one of the featured readings from this event here in an effort to share the love, light, and positive energy that the event gave to me.

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Fiercely, we hold on

We are never more rooted
in this big universe than
when our eyes sting and
our heads hang heavy for loss.

When we, a procession of sun
glasses, watch, shifting feet,
as life disappears back into
those thick familiar arms.

Our backs, clothed in black,
savor warmth, unaware that
we are at once joyful and empty,
and crying for ourselves

mirrored in the lowering. How
we know deeply: absence
of something weighs more than
substance, and we fiercely hold on.

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