As I was driving back from an appointment yesterday, I saw something which made me write this haiku:
Small clumps of late snow
fall from outstretched tree branches
like drifting petals.
Category Archives: poetry
March Haiku
Filed under poetry
Runoff (a poem)
Today’s weather makes it possible for me to post this poem from a few years past because it looks forward to spring.
Runoff
Last snowcover
outside my window,
once mounded smooth
as new-spun meringue
and clean as a carton
of unscooped ice cream,
now grainy and brittle
and friable beneath my feet.
It’s melting, melting.
The water flows across
still-hard ground,
and escapes into city sewers,
but in my mind,
I hear the rush of rivers
splashing, foaming,
racing me toward springdom.
Filed under poetry
The Long Shadow
Once, in a barren strip of land
between highway and train tracks,
a groundhog’s head
popped up from his hole
to survey his rodent kingdom.
He caught my eye as I waited there
for the stoplight to turn green.
Twenty years on, I rarely pass
that still-empty patch of dusty ground
without recalling his grizzled face,
wondering how long he survived
in such a desolate place,
and wishing I could have told him
he left tracks upon my soul.
Filed under poetry
Tuesday (a poem)
I was looking through a poetry file for something else this morning when I came across this: a poem I wrote during the early days of dating the man I would eventually marry. I’d forgotten about this one. Now, after having been married to Michael for nearly 24 years, I can barely remember ever feeling so insecure about our relationship. For some reason, this sweet relic of our past really cheered me up.
Tuesday
When I come back from lunch
(where I’ve smiled and talked of you)
I rest my hand upon the telephone
wondering, as I do each week,
if librarians ever take flirtatious phone calls.
Or would it make you blush before an ancient
white-haired woman who needs your help deciding
between Jane Eyre and Ben Hur?
By Tuesday I no longer feel
your warming arms around me—
four more days to crawl through
before you hold me once again.
I’d only have to call you,
hear your voice across the wire,
for the memory of your kisses to return,
but I will not dial
for fear of a white-hair woman.
Filed under poetry
Brinkmanship
Child of the Cold War,
trained to see mushroom clouds
as the avatar of devastation,
entertained by movies
about Day-After desolation
and gamma-ray mutation,
I now, to preserve my life,
must submit to
intentional radiation.
Is it any wonder
that my primary reaction
is cogntive dissonance
and bemused mystification?
Filed under poetry
Blue Freckles
Not sure if I’m going to be doing a whole series of cancer poems or if these are just a temporary product of adjusting to my new state. At any rate, I found myself writing this in my head in the middle of the night as I lay unable to sleep. I’m still too close to it to judge whether it’s any good, but I decided to post it anyway.
BLUE FRECKLES
Lying upon unyielding plastic,
I stretch out my arms,
not to the side like
crucifix Jesus,
but above my head
in the age-old sign of surrender.
In the next room,
a technician flips a switch,
sliding me into
a whirring, clicking tunnel,
so a machine can scan my contours
and locate the exact spot
from which a surgeon excavated—
not buried treasure—
but life-threatening malignancy.
That task done,
the tech tattoos three indigo dots,
on my sternum and
each side of my ribcage,
a trinity of blue freckles
to serve as a map for future treatment
and the guiding stars
of my voyage to survival.
Filed under poetry
Time Shift
Wrote my first poem of 2014 this morning:
Time Shift
Since the moment I learned that
an enemy agent had infiltrated my breast
and would need to be dislodged
with an assassin’s knife,
my life has been filled with
strategy sessions and
commando campaigns
controlled by specialized generals,
rather than myself.
Accustomed as I am
to storing my hours in a measuring cup
and doling them out meticulously
according to the red lines on the side,
I now see my days run away from me
like carelessly spilled water
escaping through the nearest crack.
Filed under poetry
Lament (a poem)
A few months ago, I had a strange experience as a writer. I woke up on the morning of my birthday with this poem in my mind. Apparently, I had written it in a dream.
Lament
In the elongated shadows,
cast by the setting sun,
I stoop to pick handfuls
of beans for supper.
The rest of the crop have grown
bloated and fibrous,
the product of distracted neglect.
In the clapboard house behind me,
my sister sits by a window,
dreaming of some future escape.
Our father wants her to marry
a farmer as past his prime
as these beans,
a man who will never be
a strong support
for such a tender,
fruit-bearing vine.
And I, rooted to this land
by love and obligation,
am as mute and
helpless to intervene
as a stump.
Filed under poetry
Great Blue
I am the heron
standing in the shallows
of a man-made lake,
balanced on bamboo legs,
feet splayed firmly
on a precarious bed of eroded stones.
Focused on the water,
waiting so intently for a sweet-fleshed fish
that I do not heed the humans
gawking on the bank.
Beneath the shimmering surface
just a flicker of racing shadow.
Plunge toward it, beak open…
Sudden displacement of water
stirs up a silty murk
yet cannot obscure the vision
of my future.
Filed under poetry
Eternal Flame
I wrote this poem four years ago, when I was struggling with the temptation to give up writing. I nearly did give it up. I began to study painting intead, and I barely wrote for at least a year. The artwork, however, was enough to keep the flame flickering, and two and a half years ago, I started writing The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte. Now, in two weeks, I will have achieved my lifelong dream of having a novel published.
If you have a calling, think long and hard before you ever decide to give it up.
ETERNAL FLAME
In a rocky cleft
beneath the willows,
burns a quavering blue flame
that I alone must tend,
arcing my body into a canopy
when the rain pelts
or smothering snow falls.
In all weathers I must feed the fire
scraps of paper, broken pencils,
and fingernails torn as I scratch and claw
through the bricklike clay of my spirit,
hardened by years of rejection,
yet fertile still when gently watered.
Dig through unyielding earth for
wood chips, abandoned cardboard,
any and all refuse
that might feed this insatiable muse,
my burden,
my calling,
my obedience.
Filed under poetry
