Tag Archives: poem

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.

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.

Molting Skin

please leave me alone tonight

it’s time for me to tackle
the high mountain of my soul –
reach into the deep caverns of my heart,
pull out my deepest fear,
place it slithering on an empty chair across a table
set for tea for two:

i will wrap my hands around
heated porcelain, examine blue corneas,
take a long steamy sip, molting skin
talking and talking and talking

the truth spills out in a hush:
this snake suns in the shine
of my smile every day, this snake
sings merrily as it swims down
my arteries, quivering, alive,

i try to write it all down before i forget
but the words keep spilling,
keep cooling, disappearing,

the tea is over, and
i sleep more soundly than ever.

Fallen Petals by Alice B. Johnson (1958)

I hope you enjoy the following poem by my great-grandmother Alice B. Johnson (taken from her book, Where Children Live, 1958)

Fallen Petals

I cannot see the brown earth turned
Upon white petals gently blown
Upon the ground where I should spade
My garden plot. Have I not learned
I must not waste one precious day
Of spring? Somehow it will not stay
And wait for seeds that should be sown –
Why MUST I let my heart be swayed
By fallen petals of yesterday –
Why can’t they gently blow away?

Deliberately (To a Man Who Does Not Exist)

To a man who does not exist,

let me save you some trouble:
we will end.
Maybe then you won’t cry when I leave you
for a some day with delicious edges.

We will begin like all others, with a wink.
As light stretches long shadows, we
will gaze beyond a mirror,
nodding to our naked reflections in acquiescence,
and appreciation for the way time reflects in us
like tree rings.

Then some day
I will come to you deliberately
closing the distance between us
with purpose until none is left.
Our bodies will lock together like the
perfect puzzle pieces they are.
My hand will trace history down your spine
while you read aloud from my breasts.

The story ends always the same.