Thanksgiving Prayers

Wayward Daughter

when are you coming home
to family
fresh sheets
some cleaning
(one can hope)
to several boys
that aren't even
biologically related
that I find

to gravy
and all things
you look upon skeptically
home to the
few folks
that you'll spend a lifetime
wondering about,
one who has
her mind

on you

I'm honored, If Only the Billionaire Reformers Cared about THIS Data

I'm truly honored by this post from Anthony Cody. Honored because I'm quoted, but more so because poverty is addressed.
We haven't been "allowed" to talk to poverty in teaching for so long.
Teacher that did so were "making excuses" or "whining."
This year the ugliness of poverty is taking my breath, along with the beauty of my class.
My father grew up in poverty. I cannot look away now.

If Only the Billionaire Reformers Cared about THIS Data

harms way

So I've been wanting to write you a set of poems
The paper for this stacked on books I'm avoiding too
But things for us took a decidedly serious course
What I have to give is inadequate
And ( I know you like those ands) the kind of verse you like escapes me
Right now.



This Is Not About A Guy That Killed Himself

Because, after all, we don't talk about it now
He appeared three times in my life
Charming, affirming, removed from my chaos
(I never thought he held his own)

The first time when we met was a day my family home had an intruder
As the detective sat down to get the details
He came to the house to see if my brother would sell books for him
Yeah, in a Christian kind of pyramidish thing
Staying through the interview
As my mom was taking over
With her theory of a person mind controlling her the FBI needed to investigate.
Meeting me, my dip of a mom, grandmom wandering through with Altzheimers
In my trying to get back to the part where I had to put my arms up
And push this guy out the door.
He just surveyed the scene with a kind of compassion
Never bothered my brother again about any books.

It was interesting he was a close friend of my boyfriend
One I found years later and married,
Who I didn't know then.
He owned things, like a student house,
Unique in my student poverty position to contemplate
Red brick with a porch full of suggestive drinkers
Plastic cups in hand, charming entreaties
I walked by with grocery bags unaided on a five mile haul

Then he appeared bounding over a field, I taught in a migrant town
Smiling polo shirt, happy, "Hello Sarah."
He knew who I was, yes, and my class was there running over
(I was supposedly calling that game)
Greeting him like the arrival of a celebrity.
We had dinner, caught up with our lives.
It meant the world to my new husband, who tells their stories over and over
We'd married after my spouse lost his Dad and Aunt, a nightmare,
In a little room, over a table of magazines.
He came to welcome me to the guys.

The third time we piled our kids in the car
Drove down to Malibu onto the Kersey-Warner estates
Found one house in a compound of them
Meeting his wife and young family,
Several charming kids, one a baby turning
Bright pink in the sun just like his Daddy,
A red head burning- with even a touch of the sun.
Dad was just slavering on the sunscreen, burning toast
Saying, "The heck with it," that big burly laugh.
That strange house by the shore had a twisting, wooden interior staircase that wound
Down to the beach, but it let in such a chill.

Last week or so my husband got an email
With no information to say he died on his 50th birthday.


Two Endings

After we met, again, thirty years later
Well,
He was a guy
He wasn't honest with me then
But he had been there always in my spaces,
He took time with me, but it was strangely unclear
Not physical,
I encouraged him to paint
So he acted.

Invited me one day to go on a visit to his home
In Pennsylvania
In the car I realized he was fixing me up
With a friend
That was uncomfortable and a betrayal
He introduced me to a 19 year old
Fiancee
That in an entire year of our closeness
He'd failed to mention,
As if he was saying "see."
I had to wait through one of the longest nights of my life
To gain my ground and recover.
Years later I realize the trust that broke.
I contacted him recently on-line
Until I saw him
Going on for two or three or five days
Talking on the phone, texting
He was effusive,
And then he saw me.

"See."
So, anyway, not talking again,
I aged badly
Which is okay, actually, because
I didn't want anything
But to remember what happened to me once.
I do.

After that though
I looked up and wrote a man
That had been my painting teacher
At that time
He told me I was "uniquely talented."
Now he has a career, position, art , an oeuvre.
He replied graciously,
He was always that.
He doesn't remember me remotely.
Now he finds my poetry quirky,
Appreciates my thoughts
About those days.


Duty Calls
Now it's come to the day when
I represent in someone's
Mind something I fought to
Change.
Their lack of insight, compassion, education, development, fairness
Plus the defensiveness
Means my role for them
Of their choosing
Will be as a target
This may serve
To allow me to face
I failed others
Similarly through time.
That in my lack of some set of experience or skills I never understood



recess crabpot

you get assigned a week of duty
in the month at the school
you watch the yard with two teachers
a field, an expanse of blacktop
500 or more children who madly take up stations
on spinners, slides, with balls flying
their noise a cacophony of escape
children run up with cards to punch
a leftover trace from a principal they moved
who thought they could
run their laps and get punched, earn rewards
that have slidden away as that unkempt
thought that might never continue
under a new person that doesnt know
she finds herself clutching a walkie-talkie
coming out, to pursue a thirty year teacher
she's spotted talking during her duty
another teacher she never watched turned her in
because she missed her duty, came late
and in her perceptions will blast and castigate another for it
loudly
out comes the new principal
armed with her just gotten authority
onto the prison like yard
clutching her prejudices, processing in full view
to order this teacher "to the dirt"
the teacher stood and stared, lost for awhile in the perspectives and time
wondering if this was worth
the cost to her health
the month passes to the second days of duty, nine in all now
when this principal who cant normally find her yard at all
purposely arrives to chase the teacher and
catch her "being bad"
and once again order her in
an exposed english, "to the dirt"
because
she needs to see her on the dirt, track
no, it's not done
to other instructors
it's personal
they both know it
the start of what will be
a health crisis for someone
that gave a life to allow someone like this girl
into a job,
one she clearly cannot handle


So you tried a different
kind of apology

I know that you offer this
because you want me to
truly disappear without
holding onto a hostility
or coming forward
I appreciate that.
It was not what this needed

But it did remind me
that I have used excuses
at times, in circumstances,
built up cases, hidden my own
faults.
So once again you
did show me something
I stated at the outset
you have a real gift, true
cognitive awareness

The apology I'm owed
will only come when you've
exposed something
that if I reject will
damage you
It's written now into our karma
One of us, both of us,
has to be there for the other now
think of how the other feels
understanding we will part

ive been hurt
you are flailing
we will die

for that matter life is suffering
these things are playing out
and we cannot do much more
than learn
taught real compassion
one for another
until then
my acquaintance
we both bathe in pain

cliches are memes

your opinion of me is none of my business.


clutched to the heart of someone
who wasted the opportunities
sullied the innocence
and abused the trust
I suppose its their new national anthem
but i suspect
until that opinion rises
and finds you in pursuit of understanding
your effects
will just erode the both of us
my opinion matters, and ultimately
is entirely the business

some of us managed to grow, change, suffer
incorporate, sort, and integrate to arrive a perspective

take on your rage.
figure out what happened
reverse positions and step in my shoes
look out

then realize that was just a judgment
in a statement of passive aggression

A set about Monterey

i've thought in the last week about my life
about clues
experiences
about patterns so on



love isnt an intellectual pursuit
nor is it wrong
haggled
it isnt convincing someone

it isnt someones
brothers advise
or caught on a chair leg
dabbling

it stands with you
under the monterey pines
wrapping you in memory
you say softly

I wish you could see this
as you photograph
a pink
stained glass window

look down at how you are
were
love recognizes you
in the morning fog

it is intimate
this internal sense of
an external reality
close

in the next
four years I'm going to choose
follow my heart
settle into the place

of my heart

Poetry for the Save Our School March on Washington (dedicated to those marching and for those who stand with public education)

The Public School Teacher's Alphabet

A is for Affirm, for all students come to us full of self doubt

B is for Bridge to meaning, across the varied waters

C is for Comfort us in our fears and efforts

D is for Demonstrate excellence and understanding

E is for Equate reason, learning with meaningful actions

F is for Facilitate the exchange of our ideas

G is for Generate with creative insight and connection

H is for Hear every silent voice

I is for Interject only to inspire our thought

J is for Justify sparingly

K is for Know that the unknown is bound in all things

L is for Laugh with

M is for Mediate misunderstanding

N is for Notice something new everyday

O is for Offer different perspectives

P is for Practice over preach

Q is for Qualify statements of opinion

R is for Reason with a heart

S is for Suggest with compassion

T is for Teach to our future by seeing this moment as the opportunity

U is for Utilize resources, experts, students, standards, structure, freedom, nature, observation, data, facilities, community, technologies, text, time, history, glitter, music, theory, barnacles, brains, brawn, talents, communication and every thing under sky and moon

V is for Visualize our success

W is for Welcome everyone and their input

X-amine truths

Yesterday just holds the past

Zebras like teachers are animals of a different stripe,
Can we transcend the black and white?
And fashion our alphabet to write the future?





Once We Met at School

the children of the community-
the good, the strong, the believers, the daredevils-
met on the cement commons staring at the flag
and a doorway of possibility
together they faced the first day

in the cacophony in the hallways, wrong answers, rules-
the structures, the standards, the society-
we marked "a", "b", or "c" to none of the above questions
putting our names at the top of the papers
together we learned of a wider world

there was always an older teacher that recounted their war,
we watched a diminutive woman still collecting tin foil
and folded into the noisy business of school life
cafeteria lunches, text book assignments
debate teams, sports competitions, together singing our generation's songs

some days we sat with the doctor's son,
or a welfare mother's daughter
got our pizza with a kid whose dad was a gardener
held one another through the loss of a classmate
found loves, friends, the "other" as a lot like us

sometimes we knew the kid whose family owned the cab company,
maybe he was bad in math but a journalist
who swept out the local market's small wooden floors
to earn his way, or went home
to cold fries served by the mother of our best friend

we'd loan one another pencils
witness each other's oral reports, applaud,
snicker our way through a substitute that
built our memories of "that time when"
that fills reams of virtual year book pages

they say this is all changing
that it failed us, that they failed us-our teachers
our schools in this public commons
where we met to find ourselves
but you cannot be swallowed by this different version

in our schools we were together once as one nation






Your First Day of School

For many years I've been someones first day of public school
Can you imagine?
Sometimes these backpacked, shiny, hesitant children
Could not even understand my language
As they nervously looked around the big room
Eyes alighting on the painting center
Or teared with giant drops, of fears
And there I stood holding back the dam with my finger in a puppet,
A book and a set of crayolas I just purchased on the desks
Telling rules, showing samples, just waving my magic arms
At these tiny beings, at critically important moments in their lives
When the child met the unknown
Needing to see it as all possible.

What I would like from you is a reflection.
What do you remember of that first day in school?
Do you remember? How was the room arranged
Did you go outside to play? What kinds of feelings were you experiencing?
Was the day long, or did it fly by like water through fingers?
What will be the first days for our children's children
If we lose the understanding of a free, fair public education?
What will we tell children, that because they were born in this neighborhood
Their days are to be spent on drill, practice, explicit removal
Of the opportunity to dream of all the things, or nothing to go "to" at all,
Another will now know themselves in the academy.
Can we stop and think of these future first days as something
We want to give to every child, in perpetuity?








The Love Song of the Public School Teacher

It was 786 steps to school when I lived on Maple Avenue,
1241 on Roosevelt Street and several thousand to my high school and junior high
I walked there past Victorian houses set in hills
Of working class folks, professors and plumbers
Townsfolk that sent their kids to the public schools
If we had private school it really escaped me.
I was counting my way to school.





You Never Know

A public school teacher
Doesn't know their long term successes or failures
Except what a newspaper, visit or letter brings

We fail to find out, for all our love of "data"
Not charting our kids into their lives
We don't even ask them to communicate their perceptions school

We don't ask them who among us
Made the difference, or didn't reach out well enough
They'd be glad to tell us, and we'd deal with more truth if we did ask

As it is now, you just never know.




The March

"Children are more than test scores," Jesse penned,
Plucking from history's oxygen
The notion of movement
Steps for change, a march towards
The right to reclaim the American ideal of protest, to say something important
The goal to help shape public education policies
One step at a time.
One drop at a time, coalescing into the river rushing
People along his path heard the footfalls- Anthony, Susan, Stephen, Jonathon, Diane
Actors, journalists, politicians, parents, children, activists, pacifists, educators
In books, blogs, tweets, releases, calls, whispers into the wind
Coming together into a call for action
"Students are more than test scores."
Teachers need the autonomy of a professional standing, to make critical educational decisions,
They stated in so many profound ways, this
Deconstructing, privatizing, selling away a public system
Destabilizes the ground of our commons
where democracy meets to ensure our nation.
For these children, now, today, people are placing one foot in front of another.
In a march,
Assessment must be meaningful, evaluation must be fair,
An end to narrowing the curriculum in areas of poverty
Already so very narrowed by their need, it all calls for a
Better design for school change that grows real leadership
and will not degenerate into petty power,
threats, punitive measures that ultimately punish children
"Children are more than test scores"
As these marchers rise to show that their home grown responding in leadership
Is something that can come to aid us in the ninth hour
Save Our Schools and March in Washington, to wave farewell to July 2011,
Then, please, continue the marches, efforts, for public education,
"Children are not really test scores"
The organizing, befriending, talking, writing, conversations
Allow a public school system to find its way
To survive and prosper, serving these challenges and children
The march can be sustained as a mechanism to support
A dream for America's future.
" Our Children are so much more than test scores."




Once You said,

President Obama said, because I heard him,
Why can't the unemployed build the schools of the future
He posed this as a question
That stills the air even now, unanswered.
I voted "for" that because it echoed within me.
Internally, from my past, I saw those beautiful structures at Cooper's Rock State Park
Where we once as a family cooked up our outdoor breakfasts
Built by the Conservation Corps.
When another President, unafraid and undaunted, said why can't the unemployed build our state and national parks, place art in our governmental spaces, photograph our people
Find their dignity again in building a better community?
The nation pulling together to answer troubled times.
Those were the stories my own father soothed me with
as I grew from a cradle he crafted
Holding a wooden toy boat he carved for my brother.
But cynicism grows, a debt ceiling looms, black humor pokes at possibility
The schools of the future still need to be built, not generously assistedinto the goals and money of our commerce and corporation
No, directed by America's people visioning for their kids
The schools still need to be built, not of mason block and cement alone
The children of today, need these public spaces to create our tomorrows.





Pledging Allegiance To The Brand

I had a dream a week ago
Every student in my room
Dozens and dozens in traditional
Rows, and not my class at all you see,
Had brand symbols tattooed on the foreheads
Symbols of corporations, or corporate sponsorship.
I thought, "It's come to this."
I had traveled to a future day
So I started to teach, but I was using antiquated thinking
So much couldn't be taught without a
Sensitivity to their sponsors.
And I woke up.
Within an hour, completely unconnected
A friend was suggesting I find corporations willing to donate
To make up for the loses of supplies
In a state slashing everything in funding to education.





Whale Watch

When I taught Kindergarten nine years ago,
They gave me a set of these thick test booklets,
Directing us to "test" the children on a fixed schedule.
So I opened up the teacher script, which demanded adherence to the text,
and read aloud.

Three children, new to anything like school, and not speakers of English,
Decided to take their pencils and submerge under the tables
Which suggested to them, and then others, "whales."
After my fussing and fuming off script, they breached
As I started all "over again" saying to the group
To find the "big star"
Several children looked up.
Then other children looked up.
It asked them to put your finger on the star, now fingers wagged at
The north star on our ceiling.

The boy who had remained on the carpet coughed.
I went over to retrieve him. Yes, I had, in my nervousness over
All of this just left him there, forgotten.
Inexcusably true.
One of the whales required the facilities- swimming rapidly through the currents
A pod followed.
After all it was our second or third week in school,
Lots of ocean to explore.
I felt these tears spraying me, frustration and personal failure
Beaded sweat down my back.
Because I had too many books, I'd placed book boxes in the bathroom along the wall,
The whales opened the door going about business, to reveal
An interest in Native American literature and leprechauns.

Question after question
Filling in bubbles, with kids not seeing bubbles, drawing doodles, my children now using
Pencils that broke or were turned around in hands that couldn't grasp them
Having never been taught how, I could not get through it
My rescuing a mermaid took more time, taking an eraser
Swimming to shore.
It all was so long, well over two hours- on two days.
Books flipping, pages turning, children unable to see page numbers or know numbers.

My favorite mentor, because
every teacher no matter how experienced needs a coach
said to me, as I swam over to her at recess,
"Well if they do poorly, and they don't have a clue what's happening,
it'll just allow us to show progress when they makes us do it again."
And she smiled. At her humor.

All I could think was
"Oh my God we have to do this again."
This really was not like the testing we were already doing.
Calling a child to recite colors, numbers, letters, to write their name,
To try to read a small book, to do hundreds of tasks related
to what we were teaching.
This was such a big booklet.
With fill in bubbles, fat number two pencils-
The sea otters chewed them really like beavers
And the one test booklet floated rather nicely in the sink
For fair William.

This was how I first
Came face to face with how
Accountable we now were going to get,
Watching the whales on a test day while
My small ship started sinking.



Dibels

My school is late to this party,
we can thank the literacy coach that "got trained" and into it- well after everyone else is questioning this test for children like we have,
Here we are.
She just got Nationally Certified,
So the one minute races
To beat the clock began
We DORF, sift and measure
In this recipe for success in a failing school
No excuses.

My first graders fixated, with this coach
on reading nonsense words quickly
Very quickly.
These are entirely without long vowels
Many violating the patterns we know such as the lovely "pis"
For the second language learner so early in the introduction of English
This test is a particular disadvantage.
We do know that!
The child may well sound out "get"
But make no connection to that word.
Now they could stay with nonsense, so difficult for those struggling the most.

Daily practice for months took over reading groups
as lup, zat, pif, dut
Became what once was time for SSR,
teacher Read Alouds, story reading practice, journals
We dove headlong
Some students were so entrenched they could not then
accept silent e and long vowels.
When I tried to introduce them.

They then were graduated from "at risk" groups
generated by the test, alone, as if it knew best
That placed students with no letter sounds with a reader at second or third grade level
together as equal
From scores
Going now
To practice reading paragraphs
In one minute.
Stop and summarize even if you did not read yet enough here to understand any meaning
Fast. You must go fast
Fluency.

This they took on as in all things
With serious, sincere, studious first grade effort.
Some growing confident, others perceiving themselves as lesser readers
Developing skilled diversions, aversion, creeping towards shame
Now having lower scores to "prove it"
Felt this as "less" with much now "identified"
"to be addressed"
A coach so pleased that this sorting was so well done.

Where once we were reading the daily news, performing and memorizing pattern books
Like Madeline, reading our Rosemary Wells, Eric Carles, Tomie De Paolas
Summarizing Ramona the Brave.
Ah, this was so specific.

Yes, I did work to help them
Succeed on the Dibel's, I was ordered to give it.
Because no child can stomach this feeling we introduced so starkly
Of their failure.
But I do know how to work through these early days in literacy
Differently.
and well.

Yes, we're late to the party,
But do we ever sit down and talk about
Which invitations we are accepting and why?
Or what we might well expect to see in students that must
Approach reading a little differently
Because it is a second language?

No. Not in a mandated reality, we don't.




Walking Man
Jesse Turner

Walking Man

A momma follows your footsteps
Sitting on your shoulder
Like the proverbial bluebird of happiness
Aware of your courage
To stand, walk, care for how
We educate our children in public schools

Walking man

Your daughter, more precious to you than life,
Looks to see her father
Place a silly hat upon a head,
Reaching out in a Sear's suit
To all the young readers
That look to our public schools for the best that we can be

Walking man

Those that saw your steps, heard your refrains,
Listened
To you offering the wisdom in this gift of sight
Seeing our children-
For that we will walk along side you awhile
Sharing the march with the walking man.









Talking "FOR"

Being united behind an angry woman
With her broom, determined to sweep away the "bad teachers"
Out to the curb- not to say it is acceptable to allow poor methodology or praxis-
It just is the wrong message
Or the wrong agenda

The wrong symbol

We can find teachers
Shining examples of leaders,
Speak to their realities
Learn from them-
It isn't hard
But the change in emphasis means everything.

The symbol

Let us call forward exemplars of those that lead peers, students, demonstrating their abilities not JUST in sets of scores but in their producing projects, plays, poems, papers, books, articles, research, reflection, models, quizzes, portfolios, exams, files, dioramas, scrolls, artworks, choirs, debates, math nights, festivals, murals, teams, mock trials, competitions, missions, read a thons, libraries, and so much more.

Let's look to them-
our public education heroes
Centering on what they teach us
Allowing them to mentor us
With something other
than a stick.




Entitled

Yes. I do believe
Every child is
Actually entitled
To the best possible
Free public education
America can give them.
One that grants them
The opportunity to realize
Their potentials through
Great leadership, teaching,
Technology, literature,
Science, Math, Art, SSR

Yep.
The works.
The full entitlement.

I see it as a
Star shooting across
A western sky at the dawn
Of a new age
Where the challenges
They face, that we have left to them,
Largely in our folly,
Are met by their light

We must give them that.




What Can I say About Tests

Teachers need to know what your students know
Have they got their letter sounds, did you instruct well enough
Can they grasp the concepts, content, what needs re-teaching
Where do they need support? And it is as varied as every child.
You must figure this out,
Use the data to inform next steps, and even see yourself
Your teaching, school, students realistically against another.

Where I fail to understand tests is what I have witnessed
First graders tested every three basal stories- choices of what they read dependent
On easy prefabricated purchased test formats- for three to five hours in tests.
A fifth of the reading instructional time spent in the assessment
Of the reading program. Entire Fridays, mandated, day long testing sessions.
I fail to understand using data to condemn the teacher, one without the ability to select the content/curriculum, who cannot choose their students, done over supporting her efforts with programatic supports. I fail to get a test as a curriculum.

Which is what we have packaged and sold ourselves.






Child

seed
love
mother
father
child
birth
bond
care
love
hold
ouch
change
dress
trust
watch
speak
grow
school
numbers
letters
sounds
words
recess
tests
fears
teacher
report
reassure
label
sort
group
read
write
win
lose
self
memory
survive
thrive
become
test
bubble
please
rebel
debate
play
finish
graduate
dream
adult



America's Got Talent

He washes cars in a tiny West Virginia town
Which is not who he is, but a part of him
Then strolls across a Hollywood stage singing Sinatra
Dreds pulled back, tuxedo on
A foot in the ramps-his roots,
Reaching for his sun.
I happened to see him on America's Got Talent

Public teachers know these children
In hollers and urban dead ends
Dreaming of a day they can
Step from Logan County into a spot light,
We have so much talent
To water, cultivate, support and search out
Because it surely is time for their voices to rise.



Paul

A long long time ago, over fifteen years, my class contained an entrepreneurial
11 year old who liked to question, argue, debate, and generally engage me in
proving to him that I had something worthwhile to offer
When we created our model economy, in the form of a town, Paul pretty soon
bought the bank, because he won a lottery, demanded a stock market, sold and purchased
the entertainment, and even allowed a welfare state. When we needed a criminal justice system in this 6th grade he tried a case as our first District Attorney. "This one," I thought, may well kill me. He brought to court several three inch legal volumes and dressed in a suit.
He actually hated the art we did-my real forte. Balked on making Buckminster Fuller models,
moaned when I assigned contour drawing or taught Pysanky, and really, excelled everyday. Nothing I did then would be "tolerated" now. Nothing. We journaled it all. We also wrote journals as characters from books. I almost lost my job then. He said I used too much "direct instruction." He did lose his job. What I did never fit the District "ideal".
Paul however absorbed every lesson, took it all as play, and went to the edge. I see him in my mind's eye.

He sent me a note a few years ago. Thanking me for being one of two teachers that inspired him. Thanked me for the creative contribution to his life. He'd graduated UCSB and Stanford too, I think-in several areas. He's an artist. And yes, I do tend to make artists. But I had not expected this. I fell into the blue sky we teachers sometimes feel envelope us once in a great while. He is a photographer with these major clients in a global world in LA. His website is so slick I find myself uncomfortable looking at it-is this possible "Do you remember me?" We keep in touch, a bit, as I see him devour his world. Someone that taught me so much, that I taught in our public school- once upon a time.

My Birthday

Bad seeds

On my birthday guilt compels me outside to water my yard
Dying from a blown sprinkler valve, that went unnoticed
Much as it escaped me this year that across a continent a loved one
Was forced to a dry desert.
It feels utterly absurd to celebrate my life
Against this knowledge of what I so blindly missed
Stuck in my own demons, I know what it is to fail someone
That reached out to offer me comfort and belonging
Who needed audience, acknowledgment, answers, a witness
Not a coward collapsed by their own mortality and flaws
As the streams of droplets race down, a beautiful white light
Into the garden, I pace struggling to accept
That she took her very life, eluded destiny, stopped time
Or released herself into the energy of all things
I don't know. My conscious intellect
At war with the fates, religions, emptiness, meaninglessness
I've been battling the depression and hurt, the history, the internal conflicts
This last six months grieving something it was mine to understand.
Insights into her pain, her utter loneliness, the wrenching
Unfathomable moments that ticked away until she stopped functioning
Could not bring her love and comfort, her essence to anyone else.
This fills me with such collapsing inertia.
Seeds were planted long long ago in my family
Ugly, dark, shadowy mean kernels of guilt, shame, conflict and blame
Fueled by isolation, poverty, domination and they took root
Long after, in times when it makes no sense,
In the generations later with the babies, the rushing energy, the progress, growth, change
These dirty tentacles wrapped around an innocent being
Pulling her deep underground, buried, weighted, wormy rotten suffocating despair
She lies in a grave on a hill where nothing can
Talk about what these folks never truly faced
The mist falls across my glasses, cooling my pants, seeping in the tennis shoes
Birthday arrives, rainbow sprays, patches of dead and dying grass
Responding to this gift of a drink
In the desert of a Southern Ca illusion.