Total=32pages!
Photos: Mekos sunflower photo, 4 pieces from Susan and Todd
KARA: add one or two of your poems
Poet Chat with Elizabeth Gray
1. What does poetry mean to you?
I'm not sure I can answers what poetry means to me as much as how it plys a part in my life. Poetry is one of my main ways of searching for the divine. It seems to nurture a deep solitary part of me--I generally have at least one poetry book with me at all times, and reading poetry, any kind of poetry that I like, really, is as natural to me for inspiration, comment on life, and companionship in solitude as opening and reading a Bible verse might be for someone else. Even poems that do not profess to be about anything faith- or spirit-related to me offer a glimpse of something true and individual: that moment when someone else has pulled something glittering from the fire and handed it to me--both of us, the poet and I, holding naked fire and realizing that that is a natural state. A sound therapist I have studied says that studies have shown that when choposing music to listen to, people prefer most music that is slightly different than how they are feeling in that moment. Poetry is like that to me: I read poetry because the poet asks not only "meet me here" but "let me take you someplace"--and it's a place I would not quite be able to egt on my own, because the doorway is through the soul, mind, and words of another human being.
2. Why did you start writing poetry?
Well, my answer is pretty prosaic. I started writing poetry "way back when" as an adolescent to individuate myself, to do or express something uniquely mine. I did it both because I was trying to find out who I was and because I got feedback for doing it fairly well. Poetry is still a growth process for me. i think one reason most poets and artists create is to urge forward their spiritual individuation process--to recognize their true nature and bring that into the world; writing poetry allows me to find both the heart and the sharp edges of who I am, and through that, allows me to be in authentic relationship with others. Poetry is a unique way of being both truly who one is and held within a community of readers, writers, nature, and anything else that grows in the world. A friend of mine who is an art therapist belives when we create, we go into a creative place of dissociation that allows the inner unconscious, the essence of the divine, to work through us. Our identity is lost during the creative process in something bigger. And when it is done, we find we have expressed ourselves, and learned more truly who we are from what we have created. Even when I write persona poems, or "I don't know where that came from, that's certainly not what I believe" poems, we are exploring the narure of the world through allowing its possibility in us. Writing poetry is both a bardo and a guide through a bardo for me.
3. Where are you today in your poetry career?
I have to laugh. I don't have a clue. Recently, as part of my graduate work, I have had the wonderful experience of editing an anthology and being in touch with poets across the country, and working with local poets as readers to create an audiorecorded anthology. The work to get there was long and hard; the audiorecording piece with the other poets was a high point of my life. It was so alive, so joyous! Also as part of my work in grad school and as a therapist, I have explored the use of poetry in a therapeutic context with people who are dying or grieving. I'm currently putting together a benefit reading for Hospice of Seattle to take place in March--seeing the possibilities of poetry as community action is also exciting to me. But what I want most right now is to get back to my writing. For the past half year, I've been doing work as an editor and sometimes an academic. A half year can bring a lot of changes, and right now I'm not quite sure who I am inside, and I want to write again to find out.
Heart Anemone
by David Sutherland
For bruise, freckle, fever: the windflower,
the saturnine fern, clumps of daisies and wands
of lupine edge a path along a hedge
where catmint, rose and delphiniums breathe.
Cessation then movement are tealight's extravagant grounds
or earth to hold you tightly in fist.
As palms lobe over you showy sepal, in crown
and lips parting to an expanse of teeth.
The place in floruit weeps the old story,
the broad things in staircase and study,
the golden fleece of age unaffected.
But all that flattery gets you in this white autumn
on the scale of change, is a slight shiver
parceled in a clove hitch of lips whose kiss
tightens more to reflect on.
Whispered Voice
by Robert A. Clay
A slight breeze is created as you pass,
the question is if you'll touch.
Your hand glides slowly along my shoulders,
I feel the passion I've missed so much.
To inspire emotions out of nothing,
to know the withdrawn feelings you release.
To allow needless walls to tumble,
our synergy gives me comforting peace.
You can sing me to sleep with your whispered voice,
after I have combed your hair with my fingers.
The scent of "Wings", the glow of a candle,
creates the image that I allow to linger.
Minutes are seconds, and hours are minutes,
and in the morning a sweet good-bye kiss.
Then I search carefully for your hair on my shirt,
my souvenir for the days you'll be missed.
-from My Heart's Memory
"Not Like You"
by Sheri Hess
in memory of Dakota
I am a mother, though not like you.
You cradle your sweet baby in your arms,
Mine are empty, but I hold him in my heart.
You brush her soft, curly hairand tie pretty pink bows just right,
A lock of his hair is tucked neatly in a book.
You pick daisies and tie them in a chain for her to wear around her neck,
I cut lilacs and arrange them in a vase to place by his grave.
You look forward to dreams and plans,
I hold on to memories.
I am a mother, though not like you.
For Anton Erland Bloomquist
1/13/00
by Anna Sorenson
I see you running
In a meadow of spring flowers.
You are perfect and at peace.
There are others, too
All basking in the light of the sun.
But my heart still breaks
When I think of you.
My loss far outweighs thoughts of your joy.
You will never run in earthly meadows.
I cannot know you, or hold you
Or kiss your lovely face.
YET.
But the day is coming
When reunion will take place.
I will know you, and hold you,
And kiss your beautiful face.
Wait for me.
I love you.
Fishing
by Adam Clay
Uncle Ned was a poet, but mom
always said he was just plain schizophrenic.
The way he'd catch a poem was to
stick his fingers in the ground, waiting
for one to nibble, which was his cue,
his duty as an artist, to stick his
whole hand into the Earth
and pull this iambic pentameter
creature from the fiery depths. He never
had a book, and I don't think he was
ever published, but he spent the
better part of his life, just off
the rotting porch, fingers in the dirt,
ears to the ground, waiting for a
sonnet or even a haiku to bite.
THE BROWN NOTEBOOK
by Allegra Wong
previously published in New Works Review, Summer 1998
My mother is dying, in isolation, on the top floor of Saint Anne's
Hospital in Fall River. Through her windows, she sees the gray
iridescent spires of Saint Anne's Church and the silver-green Taunton
River where she swam, after sauna with Finnish friends, when she was a
youth. This bone-colored December morning she is concerned she is late
for high school, and she cannot find her brown notebook. I tell her I
shall find it for her. Later, I do.
I find her notebook again one afternoon six weeks after she has died.
It is in her Hixville dressing table, beneath the broken House of the
Seven Gables plate which she had wrapped in an old Adams Bookstore bag.
I lift her notebook out of the drawer, take it to the shuttered bedroom
window, and open not to a draft of one of my mother's junior year
themes, but to a letter written by my grandmother to my dead sister,
Shelley.
Grandmother writes of the robins who visit the Fall River garden path
each day outside her downstairs bedroom window, the stone path just past
the larkspur and bee balm, alongside the bells of Ireland. My
grandmother tells my sister she thinks the visiting robins have
something to do with a visit from her. From her bedroom window, my
grandmother tells my sister, she watches every morning as my mother
fills the bird bath with warm water, listens to the frog she calls
Ichabod Crane plash in the pond ringed around with white and green
quartz stones, and rakes the soil around the double red peonies growing
along the Downing Street picket fence.
As I read my grandmother's lines, I smell the Downing Street soil.
Just as I smell the soil of Oak Grove Cemetery. The rotting oak and
maple leaves mix with dead geraniums and sweeten the cemetery turf.
Jonquils and pansies shoot up around my sister's pink gravestone, then
die. The breeze makes the branch tips of the willow on our family plot
brush across the face of a stone angel on someone else's.
I am a little girl, and I sit with my mother on our white wrought-iron
bench during our afternoon visits. My mother leaves bell jars of dried
statice on Shelley's grave and on those of her father and grandparents.
The robins visit. Their vermilion breasts flash among the gravestones.
I smell these memories.
I turn to another notebook page and remember robins visit my mother
every summer in Hixville, too, although she calls juncos the true
mourners, the true bearers of her grief as they sit among the dry
grasses and milkweed outside the kitchen window seal-colored November
afternoons.
Beyond the kitchen yard, and beyond the shuttered bedroom window, the
pine woods are moist and deep, and my mother writes on the last page of
the brown notebook: Dearest Shelley, I should like to begin a kind of
spiritual diary so that I can talk with you.
But my grandmother in Fall River sees the robins through the window
from her black iron bed, and she calls their daily visit a visit from
her granddaughter. She writes in the notebook she hopes she will be
lucky enough to see Shelley in heaven. Until then, she tries to be
quiet, she says, just as Shelley asks her to be.
I turn to other pages and find my mother's notebook has been shared not
only with my grandmother, but also with Shelley. I can draw, I can
read, I can write ... I can draw, read, write. Draw, read, write. I
can.
Shelley prints the words again and again. She is in the first grade at
the Davol School. It is 1955, the year she dies. She prints her
stepfather's name on a page by itself. So he will love her, as she
loves him. She prints her name, alongside his, and above hers, she
prints mine.
Dear Shelley, I'm very lonesome today. I keep looking for you. My
grandmother writes my sister another letter in the notebook with the
brown covers.
Shelley has printed 'Thank you' on several of the pages. Thank you,
Mr. Green, Miss Sullivan, Mrs. Burke. My mother has written on the
lines in between. What would you like for Christmas, Shelley? A book?
Originally my mother used the notebook for attendance-taking at her
Saint Mark's Episcopal Sunday school class. The names of her pupils --
Marita, Agnes, Jon, Linwood, Constance -- are listed for 1942-43. On
other pages are her pupils' grades received for the tests they took. Her
note to herself for the upcoming Sunday school Christmas exchange that
year mentions she will give each of her pupils a copy of Dickens's A
CHRISTMAS CAROL. The minister, Mr. Atwood, plans to read the entire
story at the Christmas service, and my mother's pupils will follow along
in their own books.
My grandmother writes to my sister. Dear, There are two little robins
come to see me every day. I feel as if it was you coming to see me, for
I'm awful lonesome without you. I hope I will meet you, if God thinks I
may, I will be so happy then. We will talk together, not of worldly
things, but nice happy things.
I look up from the pages. Like the solitary mourner in Munch's "The
Scream", I open my mouth and find I am voiceless. I have no new
language, no mourning vocabulary to ask how I shall bear a lifetime of
not being able to tell my mother I have found her notebook.
So we will be quiet and peaceful, my grandmother writes in both of her
letters. I am trying to be quiet as you would like me to be. Goodbye
for now, dear Shelley. Nana.
My grandmother's closing lines seem to be a message for me as I stand
by the shuttered window in Hixville. I shall try to be quiet and
peaceful, as all of the notebook writers would want me to be. I take my
pencil, and on the inside of the back cover I write, I'm lonesome
without you, but I shall keep looking for you. Good-bye for now, Mama
dear.
SCARS
by Barbara Ann O'Leary
daughterless
motherless
daughter
womb wound
earthworm
daughter scar
unmounded
crescent sliver
mother scar
Miracle of Hope
by Barbara J. Richards
Dedicated to Lorie
When
it seems you're all alone,
Awaiting life's despair-
May it
help for you to know
So many really car,
And with each coming
day, we too
will say a prayer.
As
you go on with each new dawn,
With Angels in your sight,
May
they keep you in their car
from Morning until Night
I
do believe in miracles,
because I've seen a few;
May there be
one, tucked away
Especially for you!
LEAVING TIME
by Richard Fein
We were on the bed, not quite arm in arm.
Her head rested on my shoulder;
This time I didn't stroke her hair,
there had been too many other times.
Fog had placed its cataract on the window.
Thorazine had pulled up her eyes.
Nothing was said.
We heard only mumbling down the corridor
and a distant cry.
It was five o'clock, leaving time.
She rose and walked as if wired
to a drunken puppeteer.
My legs were numb, yet I relished the tingling pain.
One last walk down the ward together; we didn't kiss.
I let the first elevator pass,
every floor number was lit in turn,
all the way down and up again.
The doors opened. I rushed in. We didn't kiss.
The doors would not close. They kept hugging me,
as I stood on the threshold.
Embrace, release, embrace, release, till
at last a fellow passenger touched my shoulder
and whispered it's leaving time.
Through the window, she gave me the slightest wave.
I was motionless, gravity conquered my arms.
My eyes were fixed on the window
until I saw her face ascend out of view.
Pistachio Shells
by Rebecca Page
Sun lizards -
we were lazy those days
as memories, and friendships
eternal were forged.
Dirtied bare feet
and black and white pictures
through winter and spring -
till the seasons called you away.
The Knife
by Betsy Bell
Hs death made my kitchen simple.
I put away the cuisinart, the juicer,
the bread maker, even the garlic press.
and took out my knife, the cleaver
Blunt ended, flat edged, broad bladed.
Turned off the radio, the TV, the telephone
and smashed the garlic. Do it
with the flat side of the knife resting on the clove
Then hitting with your fist. Crush. Sending
strength and weight. The skin falls off, chopping begins.
Onion, mushroom, carrot, celery. A crumple of bay.
Each waiting in the cast iron pan.
Then inspiration for supper comes.
REQUIEM LULLABY
by Jane Candace Bullard
I'll be seeing you
When this dark night is through
When the light shines bright anew
I'll be seeing you.
I'll be hearing you
Your laugher soft upon my ear
Your loving voice singing sweet and clear
I'll be hearing you.
I'll be touching you
Your strong hand gently held in mine
Your kiss an echo of the Divine
I'll be touching you.
THE OPERATION
by Cathryn M. Lai
I walked in the kitchen
Back from school for lunch
A beautiful, warm, sunny day.
My daddy was leaning
over the big butcher block table
Head cradled in his arms
His body silently trembling
I put my hand on his back
I had never seen my daddy cry
He told me it was malignant
They removed her breast
He cried in my arms
I cried because he cried
I didn't know,
Couldn't possibly know
What that day would mean
FRIENDS
by Cesar Gutierrez
Im leaving this place
that much is certain
Im already on my way
How can I go on
when one look at the delicate hands of a child
stirs my emotion
How can I remain
and still believe
there is place where no one suffers
there is a way to stay alive
Havent you known that longing?
Isnt there something you want to say?
Dont you remember
we started out the same
How do we come to be so far apart?
There is only one answer to this pain
Leave this struggle to the hired hands
lay beside the waters edge
and dream
My Father Greets the Day
by Charles Fishman
Each morning he wakens
he praises God
Another day has dawned in him
and he is grateful
He is too old now to make love
but not to remember
My mothers picture waits
near his bed
and he lifts the frame to his mouth
and kisses her
His loneliness is too deep
he cannot think the sentences
but his lips find the glass
and his heart opens
Each day is a miracle
that begins in the region of sorrow
yet the sun finds him: he will live this day
fully
stunned each moment that she
is not with him.
CHALLIARD ROAD
by Clyde Kessler
A boy I know slogged into flooded Challiard Road.
Denny Hale found the body a quarter mile downstream,
wrapped in water willow.
I dream he looks through the fog like an old man,
hearing every minute of spring
as it swallows him with coolness
and the drift of town light merging into the river
and a slow earth music
touring through his family.
His face is waking the leaves of a sycamore.
and maybe his mind is reaching inside
something that dreams me waking.
His folks asked once for a tune,
and I couldnt fiddle a song for him.
My fingers moved like grass blades
caught in sleet.
Mouth
by Esther Altshul Helfgott
originally published in a different form in She Speaks: Seattle Women's Caucus for Art Newsletter, Winter 1997
That's all
I see
of her now.
The wide open
hole
that never
closes. A
tunnel
of
darkness
too dry to
enter.
No one wants
to anymore,
anyway.
Except
me.
I want
to
climb in,
tongue
the periphery,
fill
the hollow.
Moisten
her
until
she glistens
again.
by Wenohna Joy
written 10-15-95
I kneel and drop my heavy,
rusted spade to the ground,
competing with hard soil
Sunbeams vivid
cast shadows stark
on crumpled vines around me
Then, up on high
a single perfect chirp is born
on fertile free breeze
Echoing layers of purity
through maple alleys
beyond mountain valleys
Oh little bird,
please hear my heart
crackling with applause
by Elizabeth Gray
The last time I wore that necklace was summer,
July 27, a night coiled in the dark of my body:
How I stepped into the bdedroom to change
And found you already there, your fingers cool
On my slip, how easily you pushed me down
To the mattress on the floor, leaned over me and kissed me
Gently to urgently: the last time, it seems, that we were happy.
You knowing nothing yet and me hiding my silence,
we interrupted anticipation, went out, and
in the creased-corner blackness of the stuffy theater
watched a play together: four Twilight Zone episodes
back to back, with commercial intermissions.
Later we ate Greek food on Capital Hill, came home and
Made love. That was the day after Id taken the test,
Before I told you, before we knew it together, and did
What we would do. Even now when I look back,
I want to hold us there in the dark, shared fear and
Consequence still undiscovered, as if even too late
I could somehow suspend the moment, the inner pearl
Rolling down its sluiceway inside me, as if
I could stop a meeting taking place.
Months later I found the necklace, dropped into a purse
When the night got too warm. All winter long the bag
Slumped on my dresser, near the flowered hatbox, earrings,
The brown bottle of perfume. And there within it: amber
Like the jellied roe dark in the pouch of a trout, darker gold
Than I had remembered. I went to pull it out but the string
Had broken, cool drops pooled in the bottom
of the bag. Each day now I fish the inner silk,
draw out one bead and set it on a teacup on the sill,
the one my grandmother gave me before she died, the way
you transfer your hopes to the living.
by Elizabeth Gray
At first, only the landmarks change. This is my proof
of another life, the one my mind still reckons with.
I know at least forty different kinds of rain, can tell you
how a March downpour smells dazzlingly
of pear blossoms, how between the glassy falls
moisture rises, carrying the thick lakes, the familiar
fish bait. But here my words are beginners words:
red rock, blue drum, wind. And like the place Ive left,
you come with me too; only our final words stay home.
I dont think of shortcomings, yours or mine,
But how in those early days it was enough
To touch you without knowing, how my foot loved
To find the soft pulse hidden behind your ankle, and your hands
Itched travel my scars, the knobby cholla of my vertebrae.
Wed lie sharing small things in the darkness, before
We tried to name each other, hands and breath,
the way we edge a land with new names:
a cut road, a tin roof, kerosene. It was enough
to enter foreign, it was enough then to feel strange.
From a dry arroyo, a hawk sickles up, tracks across
a pathless sky, and for a moment I turn to the emptiness
beside me, forgetting you are not here to share it.
We are happy together for the first time in months.
by Elizabeth Gray
For Bob
Finally you are dying, and now everything
Is up for question: your breath, my belief,
The way sun pours down
Upon the earth, turning dull fields to emerald fire.
You lie half paralyzed in your sterile bed,
Unable for months to reach the window.
For weeks now, I have searched Rilke,
With his careful construction of the certainty
Of God, as if through his faith
I could find my own.
I read to you from A Book for the Hours of Prayer,
While you turn your face to the wall, offering
Me your back, a useless arm, and a small kiss
On the hand before I leave. Then I drive out to walk
In October countryside, drenched with the light
Of glazed cider, sweet and dark, the final sips
A little murky, and now way to bring it to you
But words.
My words have left me
Certainties I though were mine have proved
That I dont own them; and breath after breath
I watch the muscles of your throat thicken,
Strain, the last force in you that still responds.
Such labor to suspend your bones, lift
The sill of your ribs for air to enter and leave.
I watch the creases of your crepe skin
Begin to dissolve, and think
How slight, how infinitesimally small
This slow ticking down of life:
The peony finishing its outburst of silk begins
To drop away with the metal of its own tarnish;
A greengold apple, unmarked and firm, softens,
Etched from within by its own withering;
The last green rays of sun push through the slats
And cross a room, and on a narrow bed, facing away,
A man breathes the clam breath that will be recalled
As his last.
I thought I knew what the body was: the root place,
The anchoring, the burning wick of life. But I touch
The outer stillness of a man, to find
You have slipped away inside, down
Some inner corridor that perhaps was always there.
Later I will find words for this. Now I listen
To silence with rapt attention, my body bent
Toward this stillness, this calm.
Looking for proof of Gods existence, I
Would still be looking. But the presence of God
Was here, still holds your shape, and your absence.
How small the unimaginable has become,
Closer than heartbeat, than thought:
Your breath, my disbelieftwo small shadows
Lapsing into light.
Doll's Lesson
by JAMES CERVANTES
The doll's impassive face
looks beyond me
with starburst eyes
as I trace its plastic
baby-body. I accept
the lack of breasts,
the cold smoothness,
the slick and shiny
tummy ending abruptly
where eyehooks join
and legs begin, a hard
mystery at the joining
where I jump from play
to bible school, a story
of how God made man
and woman from clay. Soft
and warm from kneading,
a doll keeps its indentations
while I mold it one more time,
imperfect but with answers.
NOTES ON A MARCH DAY
by P. L.
Morningstar
1) the kitchen window /
Gray skies -
a chill in the air. I had hoped /
for a sunny day as garden work
waited for me. /
Weeds threatened to overcome primroses, /
perennials needed dividing and the spent /
camellia blooms
raked from the lawn./
Disheartened I stood at the kitchen window
/
looking out at winters last hold on spring. /
And
while I clung to the warmth of my house, /
the wild things made
my garden their own. //
2) the garden /
Goldfinches,
brilliant yellow against a cloudy sky, /
flew from branch to
branch, ever closer to the birdfeeder. /
A fat robin landed at
the top of the flowering plum tree, /
scattering petals to the
ground below. A flash of red - /
wings blurred. From nowhere a
hummingbird appeared, /
flitting at hummingbird speed through the
tall blooming rosemary. /
I caught my breath at its beauty, the
iridescent red throat /
a sharp contrast to the soft herbal
greens and blues. /
The hummingbird flew to the fish pond and
landed /
delicately on a water hyacinth, bathing within the
shallow /
water it contained. For a moment it sat on a tree
branch, /
drying tiny wings. Then as quickly as it had arrived, /
it disappeared, unaware of the pleasure it had given me /
on
this gray March day. //
MY MOTHER IS DYING...
by Patricia Schlick
My mother is dying,
of cigarettes, and booze,
and eighty years.
My mother is dying,
So instead of voting
I pack my suitcase
Drive to the airport
Take an airplane to Cleveland.
Go to her bedside,
to be near
to stave off illness and death.
I take a taxi to University Hospitals
Mother is sitting up
watching election returns on television.
She says,
" I guess my smoking
has finally caught up with me."
My mother is dying.
My sisters and I are angry, afraid.
Mother is x rayed
to see the nature and quality of the tumor.
An ugly red presence spreading through
her lungs.
The doctor offers respiratory therapy and ibuprofen.
My sisters and I try to prove ourselves
competent to handle death. . .
I make arrangements for a hospice.
Another sister organizes medication schedules.
One makes phone calls
and provides transportation.
One moves furniture.
My mother is dying,
Has come home to die.
Home to her apartment,
The only place she ever lived alone.
She is excited to come home,
But she is not alone now.
We move furniture
From the loft
Her sanctuary
Where she hibernated
to read and write.
We have taken her hermitage
for a caregiver to sleep
A hospital technician demonstrates
respiratory therapy.
The American Cancer Society
moves in
a hospital bed and oxygen tank.
On her first night home Mother
has a glass of cabernet sauvignon,
chicken breasts, salad, and rice.
She eats only a little bit.
I sleep in the apartment the first night...
wake up to the smell of
cigarette smoking!
Despite cancer and oxygen
Mother is smoking!
My mother is dying,
And I am her nurse;
straightening beds
administering medication,
bathing, toileting
Small things need to be taken care of
while death casts a large shadow.
Studying metaphysics and poetry
Didn't prepare me to nurse
a dying woman
But studying metaphysics and poetry
taught me I couldn't avoid the fact of death.
Love makes strange roles possible
Jesus said,
"If it is possible,
let this cup pass from me;
yet not what I want but
what you want."
Now, I understand.
My mother is dying.
Today four generations of women,
Mother, her daughters,
two granddaughters and
a great-granddaughter,
take communion, receive Christ
Who will not take, this cup from us
But will hold ours hands
Through this walk to Golgotha.
My mother is dying,
I am caught up in the details
Of a dying woman's life:
Bowel movements,
respiratory therapy,
medication.
Decisions meaning
A few more days of painful life
Or a quicker death.
My mother is dying,
Is ready to die
I am ashamed
of impatience.
I am homesick
miss my husband,
working at church,
walking my Golden Retriever
This is taking a long time.
My daughters travel from busy lives
to support their mother.
One brings with her the great-grandchild
born on Mother's last birthday.
Another comes with the heartache of
a broken marriage.
The youngest flies from Germany,
leaving behind the corporate world
to scrub bathrooms and help with
medication.
A daughter sits by
my mother's bed
holding her hand,
I am behind her
hands on her shoulders.
Mother sinks and fades
She seldom leaves her bed.
She lies on her right side,
floating in and out of consciousness.
Finally,
she asks for morphine.
My mother is dying;
She smiles and laughs in her sleep.
With whom is she laughing?
Dad, my brother, her parents?
What memories are there for her
As she struggles to breathe?
My mother is dying;
We have our last conversation.
Mother believed that if only everyone
would vote Republican
Have cocktails at 5:00 pm everyday
and never talk of unpleasant things
all would be well.
I
didn't do any of these things.
Mother said to me that morning,
"I always loved you.
I just could never
understand you."
My three sisters and I stay in Mother's room.
We scatter ourselves around the bed.
We hold Mother, tell her
how much we love her.
Tell her Dad is waiting.
A song plays.
It is
"The Very Thought of You",
My parents special song.
How nice!
One of my sisters played the tape.
We all listen and weep.
When a commercial comes on
I realize none of us
have planned this moment.
Mother is gasping, struggling for each breath.
The nurse gives her last cocktail. A shot of morphine
with a honey chaser.
At 4:30 AM, she lets out a rattling gasp,
her chest rises, and falls
then nothing
silence
I sit watching her still body
and wish her well
On a journey neither of us understood.
She hadn't known where she was going,
I didn't know where she was.
I sit beside her body keening,
"Oh, Mother Mother Mother "
I wash her body.
It is the last thing I can do.
On the day after her death
Natalie Cole sings
"The Very Thought of You"
on the CD in Mother's loft.
I wrIte in my journal.....
My mother is dead.
THE PROFESSIONAL CHEF
by Seana Sperling
Ten blunt fingers with nails gnawed to the quick.
Spaced tooth grin and an infectious laugh.
You said you always wanted,
Your name to be Rose,
And we always had crushes on the same men.
You were always in my space,
Even with my distance.
Its hard to believe all the damage,
When I remember how gentle you were.
Now empty hands hold all,
The fragile objects.
In memory of Ellen OBrien--One of the best people Ive ever met.
And We Are All Idiots
by William Benjamin Jenkins
(INSTEAD OF LINKING NAME TO BIO
ON CONTRIBUTORS PAGE, LINK TO SITE AT
http://www.willsworld.com/wmsroom.htm)
ADD PHOTO HERE
This page is dedicated to the memory
of William Benjamin Jenkins,
a sixteen year-old homicide victim.
I know nothing of good or evil or the reason behind the horrors of man
I know little of a god or what scripture or interpretation is truth
One will say that to be a true believer and lover of the lord is to hate your fellow man for the simple pigment of their flesh
Many will say hell waits for those who do not redeem themselves, yet they should beg for redemption themselves
No one race is superior and no one belief is the way to salvation
How are we to judge which god to believe when so many from such "denominations" preach words of hate supposedly derived from "the holy book"
Who are we to judge who will be slaves and who will be kings when the actions of so many reflect so many fools?
William
was shot and killed during a robbery
at the restaurant where he
was on his second day of work.
He was sixteen years-old at the
time.
At the following link you will find
the story of
William's life, and death,
along with many links and resources
for those suffering traumatic and other
losses.
http://www.willsworld.com/