Category: Poetry
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Friday’s phone call
Hi, Grammy! How was your day, sweet girl? Medium. Medium? Tell me about it. Well, I didn’t like being hit in the head with thirty-five balls today. What! All the girls were screaming and crying and huddled against the wall. What was going on? The boys were throwing balls … at our heads. Oh! Ohhhhhh,…
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The worst poem I ever wrote
Thirty-some years ago, finally divorced after months of marital and individual counseling and hours of agony trying to understand it all, I was settling in my hometown with three kids and a regular visitation schedule to their dad. Alone, every other weekend, I had nothing to do, except fret and wonder what was happening while…
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A dog’s life?
Shooting over the deck rail across the lily bed lightning fast straight to the corner where the sage and yarrow bloom, Eliza darts through my space. She’s on the chase! It’s a rabbit! Probably the one that’s been eating my carrots and cutting my flowers. The cunning creature needs no siren. It bounds out of…
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A celebration of the muumuu
The closest I could come to the muumuu of my aging hippie friend was a Chambray dress hidden on the clearance rack at Walmart. Prefaded, loose and long. As I wriggled my arms inside its buttery fabric and let it fall over my head, it granted me instant permission to be free. Free from importance.…
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The Coelacanth Still Scares Me
Suddenly, now that I have time to think, things aren’t the same anymore. Suddenly, things that were factual, aren’t. Or things that were fringe are mainstream. Case in point: Pangea. “No, of course the continents were never all hooked together,” my fifth grade teacher snorted. Even though we looked at a map and could see the…
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Keeping Score
“You can do anything” rang through my ears when I was growing up. It wasn’t true. I knew I’d never be a ballerina. But then… I never wanted to be. “You’re just like your mother and your grandmother,” my dad would exclaim in wonder. “Anything you try, you can do.” Maybe there was some truth …
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Processing
Finally, it’s too much. I can’t even scribble a bullet-pointed list of events. To remember. To grieve. To honor those who emerged from outside my world. My heart is full, but my head is numb, reconciling what was with what is and how I now think I know the truth and its many shades.
