Tess Knew

Tess knew the soul
Could fall away from the body
And fly to a distant star.

But a star is not always needed.
A school lunch line will do.

A menu, a list, a structure.
Grey lima beans.
A place to sit down and consume.

My soul stood in the school
Lunch line once, while my body
Drug itself through dark water

Feeling for a drowned lover.

A star is not always needed.
A school lunch line will do.

Never Happy

Occasionally I find the need to say something, like, I'm not dead. It's just the end of the semester. You know. The good news is that in a week I will be able to write words of my own choosing, read books of my own choosing, sweep the dog hair out of the corner behind the Victola, plant a few things. The bad news is I'll be away from the writers and their voices. What is a girl to do? Complain, I guess. How about you?

Ancestors

In the naked moments
After lovemaking my husband sees
His grandmother
The one he never knew

She leaves the wood-framed
Black and white portrait
Breathes her spirit
Against my skin

I am the woman
Traveling to Marquette
Pleading with the prison warden
Release my man

She is the woman
Making love to my husband
Pressing her breasts hard
Against his skin



I hate having to explain myself; it is a sure sign that the poem hasn’t succeeded. But there you have it. This poem probably is nowhere close to done, but still I wanted to post it in the aftermath of the shooting events of yesterday. Now you’re really confused. What the heck does anything in this poem have to do with shootings? Well, I’m going to tell you. It has to do with our connections with other people. We reach across generations and decades and find the same desires and needs. After 9/11 some of us started focusing on our differences in very negative ways. Some said, circle the wagons. (Am I ever going to get to the shootings/shooter? Yes. Be patient.) I believe that circling the wagons is ridiculous. You’re raising your eyebrows. You know I live inside a small community, I have a tight family. Everyone around me knows all my missteps (otherwise referred to as sins.) I have safety nets surrounding me. (Too many sometimes.) I don’t need to circle any wagons, they’re already there. Yes. Yes. But still, a shooter, disconnected from my circle, could come. How can we stop this? By circling the wagons tighter? No. We can only stop the craziness by connecting the potential shooters to the community, by finding the connections between us, by healing the disconnects. This is something that can’t happen while we remain inside our circles. We have to go outside and rub up against other people and find our connections in larger spheres. No, the poem doesn’t say all that. And really, I don’t want it to. I just want it to point to the connections.

Morning Light

See, dragging out the recycling in the morning isn't so bad after all. If I would have stayed inside I wouldn't have noticed this early tulip in my messy flower bed. I'm constantly surprised by what I find in my yard. I plant things, but my friends and relatives also plant things, often without telling me. Sometimes they will leave a message on my answering machine, "About that row of hollyhocks, that was me. You might want to water them in a couple of days." But just as often no one says a word. I just find things in the spring. As to who planted this tulip, who knows?

Unsuspecting Fruit

I am worried about my two pear trees and my cherry tree. They are trying to bloom. The pic at right is one of the pears, all swollen in anticipation, not suspecting the fickle nature of an Indiana spring. This does not bode well for September and my pear butter dreams, to say nothing whatsoever about cherry pie on the 4th of July.

Just Out of Reach

(There are pictures I'm not quick enough to snap, times I don't want to intrude. I wish I could show you the amazing arc this man made with his arm.)

The woman at the ocean
Sits bundled in blankets
Just out of reach
Of the swishing sea

The fisherman in her vision
Stands alone casting
His line in an arc
Into the foam

A young boy
Treads the sand
Back and forth
Balancing
In between

The North Carolina Zoo

Asheboro has a very nice zoo, as zoos go. It's huge and wooded and fairly nature like. Jojo just read The Scarlet Ibis for her English class, so we snapped some pics of these guys in the aviary. They're gorgeous. It was also very cool to watch the giraffes move. Breath-taking even. But the best part of the zoo trip came as we were leaving. There were so many people at the zoo that we were constantly being brushed up against. As we were approaching the exit, once again, I felt someone extremely close to me. And then, a small, soft hand took my own. I looked down to find that a young boy of about seven had mistaken me for perhaps his mother. I said, "Sweetheart, I think you wanted to hold someone else's hand." Then I felt bad for calling him sweetheart because sometimes boys don't like that sort of thing. But he was fine. He took the mistake in stride, turned back, and found the hand that matched his own.

Birds on the Beach

Waves, North Carolina

Day three and it has gotten a little cooler. No, not like home. I'm sorry. I feel bad. Especially since today Tom is 19 and he is in Kalamazoo. Happy Birthday, T!

Fisher Folk

Of interest to the Finn.