Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Just more words

Unfinished

In the years before the gods died
the earth spun slowly,
It was a detail he'd recall in his later years,
when the sky had blurred to faint arcing lights.

But in those early Falls, the stars  demanded notice.

On the warmest nights he'd count them, pixel-by-pixel,
from the front seat of a parked station wagon,
until the numbers picked a cadence for his dreams.

But he had lived too much since then to consider
whether he should wonder where they went.
Instead he gave his effort to the forgetting,
as he had much to forget.

There was the night the heavens kneeled
and with misdirected kindness, whispered,
"Go home. You are a man. The Gods have died."

And so he did. And so he was.
Too abashed for questions.

Had he been watching from the Ford
he would have noticed then
the long melancholic droplets converging
into rivulets racing sideways down the pane,
leaving him nothing to count.

But he wasn't watching.
In time, the comets were just a habit;
even their fecklessness went unnoticed.
No matter. In truth,
their final leave was concealed years before

in  Providence's passing...

~Mari Nichols

This was my contribution to  One Shot Wednesday, the Web's poetic flashmob.

Of course, I have a thick skin and constructive criticism is always welcome. As always, I encourage (read: beg for) all comments.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

The handy homeowner isn't.

Dear Basement,

This isn't my basement, but it's
a fair representation.
I really hate you. I'm tired of fixing your guts: from the furnace and the pipes, to the cable wiring and gas lines.

If it weren't for you, I may have been able to fool myself into thinking maybe I could actually do it all. Well, "it all" in the "I am woman, hear me roar" sense;  not the literal all-inclusive "all" sense, if you know what I mean.

You win. Are you happy?! I'm admitting I can't.
Please leave me alone now.

Signed,
One tired, wet, annoyed and not-so-handy Homeowner

P.S. Oh yeah! And your walls were not meant to be permeable.  Is that really so hard to understand?

Saturday, April 16, 2011

a graduation



a graduation      (for Heather)
   
The moon has been your guide in the land of the rising sun
   and your companion on the shores of human genesis.
In Hiroshima, you didn't filter the far-off echoes of a once-withered earth
   before turning to walk with the ghosts,
   or begging to hear from slaves, scholars, and immigrant children.

A pilgrim, you’ve learned to listen to their stories
  and shamelessly tell your own, 
  drafted with sacrificial goats, political rallies,
  and volcanic hikes to views shared with the gods.
You understand not many can speak of finding serenity
while finding cracked, thirsty lips
  on the dying brown people, in the cracked thirsty earth
  of a dying brown desert.

You’ve learned about oppression and depression and life
  from books filtered through your experiences,
  and from life filtered through nothing but its living
  and your passion.

As you speak of this, they will declare you learn’ed.
And though I'll photograph the moment
  through the lenses of my unearned pride,
  my contentment will be in knowing

  you've also learned that love finds the music,
  magic weaves the forest canopy,
  and a rhyme can feel alive.
I believe you’ve discovered people needn’t be taught fantasy,
  though all dreams must be encouraged;
  and finding a child who believes in unicorns
  will excite your hopes in hesitant times.

Woman, my child, that you also understand
  how travelers must be brave yet humble
  and getting lost can mean a new route home;
  that the luxury of having can’t compare to the riches of giving,
 
and that in exchange for loving passionately
   your word can call an army to encircle you;
That you understand means you are ready.

   Humbled, so am I.

Love,
Mom
———-


The intro, moved down here based on feedback :)

In a few weeks, my daughter will graduate college. She has an impressive resume: she's been playing the violin and cello since she was in elementary school, she earned her black belt in Karate her senior year of high school and then left immediately to re-do that senior year as a Rotary exchange student. She learned Japanese from her classmates in a public Japanese high school and followed that up a few years later with learning Wolof from her Senegalese exchange family while she improved her French as a student at the university there. She spent school vacations teaching a college course to male inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary, working as a maid in Yellowstone, doing a senate internship in Washington DC, and sunburning as she left water and food in the Arizona desert when she worked and camped on with a border humanitarian group. And of course, she spent the academic years working with ESL students in an elementary school while carrying  full course loads and writing for her college newspaper.

That she has experienced so much of life thrills me. But it's who she is that makes me proud. I'm proud of her for seeking out the experiences, for grabbing life by the horns and riding it like a wild bull. I'm proud of her for being able to love with all of herself and for leaping into the unknown as though she was a 500 pound sumo wrestler and not a 5'4" waif. And the relationship she has with her sister and three brothers makes me choke up every Christmas when they're all home. Her experiences throughout her college years have definitely helped mold her into a strong and capable woman, but she has been a force of pure stubborn joy since the day she was born.

If you're reading this Heather, congratulations on all that you've achieved so far. I'll see you soon. You'll be able to spot me in the crowd pretty easily, I'll be the one sitting with a ghost beside me and we'll both be beaming while watching the woman you've become. Enjoy the next few weeks; they will be both an ending and a beginning.

It's true. You've only just begun.

With all my love,
Mom
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One Shot Wednesday: A poetic flashmob.