On Wonder

Edges of Awareness

It was there all the same
But until the day I lifted
The lenses ground on my 7th grade year at "The Ocular"
It wasn't in my perception.
Walking home, seeing the patterns of tree branches that winter
As delicate and organized as the fractal
Explosion of pattern on my chemistry notebook cover,
The edges of clouds, the way the bubbles rose in the bath,
Every surface, plant, piece of my desiderata
Was woven with intimacy
So elegantly intricate I blushed
For failing to understand that
In my hearts chambers beat the
Tom beat of wonder of this,
It was when I woke to the universe.

Looking around just at her edges she revealed
From aorta to the lacework of the smallest capillary doily
On my reddened adolescent cheek, her immeasurable surprises.


And the wonder of that remains undaunted by anything.




and on my day...a little person interrupted my lunch writing...

help, you in there teacher?

some little hand is trying my door
nob
it is lunch
she would like to get in

and i would like five minutes
myself
this is the age
when their needs are met by others

later we will tell
my little door birdy
she has to be
self serving

and self less
she is still faithfully knocking
saying "teacher" now
telling me she wants to "drink water"

through the door
I heard that thirsting plea
it finally melts my resistance
and i open up

hello

For Luca

happy birthday my sun

my son is 14

you remember 14
the edge of the barb
the soft tee
limits and invincibility
a backward glance

you remember 14


my son

has always had buddies
sports and balls
going in hoops
or up against walls
has always loved his mammas
walked the line with a dad
given his all
or downplayed his falls
he's been quick
with a wit
played licks on guitar
loved to keep rhythm
been my sweet star
my son is a baby
that dreams he's a man
and time is taking
him forward this lamb
he held my hand
gave me soft little pats
took care of a mom

*she got a bit fat
he ate only rarely
guzzled his milk
save him from lonely
his heart is his book



years go bye

14 may you feel the heat of time as nothing but so sweet
13 let it drop away, a time to pass the fears away
12 was all about guitar
11 you became a star
10 was when we moved again
9 the year your baseball was so very dear
8 oh 8 it was a hard year, mom was sick, we had no gear
7 you were in that play, i'll never ever forget that day
6 was happy, acting, ball playing bliss
5 at five i still got the public kiss
4 , now 4 was the time of imagination
3 was lots of running and animation
2 the time we cuddled and had fun
1 at one my life revolved around you son


we've had many days,no poem can funnel this
it's been your life passing like festival daze
but just the same my rock and goal
your life has graced me you tootsie roll

Unfinished Thoughts

Can't Write This

What is so small
so insignificant
It fits these days

Maybe the grapefruit knife
that catches my hand when I need
A real one to carve something
There it is, waiting for the day
I remember to buy a grapefruit


Or the lozenges tupped into that tin
That gets opened anticipating a treasure
Only to be disappointed with Sucrets
My issues are much the same
If you pop the top

Along the wall of the garage are four beach umbrellas
Bought forgetting we have one at sales
You can't get much more forgotten
Than those beach umbrellers
That roll inside out in the winds

A knife to cut
A lozenge to sooth
An umbrella to float away
What was I talking about anyway?
Was it the insouciance of kismet?

There is a tiny speck
In a universe of boulders
With a tummy ache today.




W.

It's a shame to saddle a letter with incompetence
Pride, scorn, fickleness, stupidity
To place on it the tragedy of a farce
Acted in a two act play

Free Enough

Freedom to Write About Your Childhood


Worn Quilt Fading in the Washer


Red polyester on Claudia's special day
As warm a thought as I have of her Mom making
Cilantro chicken soup for us,
A gourmet, that lovely
Lilting Ecuadorian accent, that infectious laugh of Norma's.
Memory places times in your head, indexed about
Like the sewing box. Thread, patches, needles, swirled and hewn,
But it's contained there for future use,
Sits folded, as old out grown clothes stored in boxes in the attic.
Looking at them brought thoughts of Dale so silently stoically calm,
More ornaments on the Colyer holiday tree than ever seen. Ever.
A celebration of their life, travels.
They built a beautiful warm wooden house
Wallace, tinkering could do anything in their computer loft
and may well have.


There are so many pieces of material in my boxes
Memory to access sometimes with a key I find.
The Diane Von Furstenberg blue and white dress
That flounced to town, dresses worn gratefully on air trips to St. Pete summers,
To dance in a pink tissue wrapper meeting the bronzed skin of firsts.
My kitty skirt was patchwork, a warm demin embroidered
That took me to see Peter, and stopped to read
Thurber in the mornings.
The silk green plaid pattern however, that sat still on my senior portrait
Looking actually beautiful and lush.
Never felt as comfortable, it slid upward.

Materials wore these
Memories
I climbed out pulling it over static in my hair today
Inside that woven skin seeing my traipsing life's explorations
My god that one with the cherries on it was
A fascination for the one person
In my life it tried to attract, he said something to me
Of those fruits there on my leg ( know now why but didn't then)
Felt his hand with scalded cheeks fleeing.
Do you recall that now? Your infernal laugh again!
A kid in clothes beyond her means.
We were younger. You knew that.

There was the Farrah phase, the Diane Keaton layers
When the thrift store really got my business, all ten dollars,
Jack's Bargain Center looked after me.
A picture brings forward all the fun fleeting feel of that time,
Memory lit,
My closet, of all things would come into view with that bulb on
Life passes in sizzling fabrics
Dressing to go out into a drama of ones day
On a Long Island cruise the mist with a yellow sweater
Accessorizing with that shirt factory scarf.

Don't look backward as you hold that Voguearian patched quilt?
Memory is kinder sometimes than the photo.
Kinder still than face, hair, fashion gone to nostalgic reenactments.
It has no empty boxes for you to stay folded within,
Demanding no suitcase of you either though many use them anyway,
I had a small bag in that one photo
Loved to travel-lite.
There is this pretty pink tee clipped from the day
My cousin allowed me to taste yogurt for the first time
We were really stranded over in Vero thinking of how hilarious
His drunk mom was coming back to find us?
Driven out and left, she abandoned us to the empty bottles, Marilee dressed to kill.
So we danced on the rim of a highway, Cousin Bob and peach yogurt.
That dark brown dress put on at ten years old, gathered with blue embroidery across the top
Falling with me down into stairwells
Woodburn kids threw punches at smocking.

White Indian gauze breezed into my teens to offers and fairs
Holding onto happy thoughts of romances, concerts, babysitting
To the madrigal and house of rising it floated
Those lovely corduroy jeans that fit my bones
Working the canvases on my knees drawing
Creating images of dark dead flower on cold concrete
Color, Craved in my clothing,
Memorized there
No faded rose, my many colors splashed with the virility of passion fruit
There have been many washings of this cloth
Stains, the threads worn bare
Lining still the interior of stored boxes holding my exteriors.





Freedom to Write About A Nut

Brazil, To Be Exact
Someone brought me a necklace
It had a little painted face
It's nose was just a poking bead
Little legs and arms left hanging off
All around its head.
This chunky little fellow
Was a goofy thing to see.

It was a gift never worn
It stayed inside a box
When taking it out you see
Mom said something else
My Brazil nut she called it
By another name
I never wore it just in case
She said that word again.


Freedom To Write About Buckwheat


The Buckwheat Festival
Eddie said it
Buckwheat,

I un-uproarously can raise the pancake here
That sat upon my dish
My brother in toxic pain
Full blown asthma on his plate
If eating or breathing in
Buckwheat took him down.

Like a clock our fall hit, so the festival
Dad would judge the cows
Watch bluegrass,
Dances held in barns
Judges of quilts and jam
Bags of grains
Buckwheat come to town.


Freedom to Write About Bags of Glass

Bag o Glass

It was a joke
but it became a project
One of the endless solutions to an art assignment

Suspended into a bad idea
The main feature
It shocked

That was required
Of me
Work could not please you visually

It had to bite and cut you
Provoke you,
Punch the eye out


My art in that raw time
was a razor slicing
Into your flesh

Bag o glass
Open the vein of
Martyrdom

Bled out a Christ
In dried glue
Threads twisted, broken glass

Hung on a cross
Of thistles
Gathered in my flower garden


Freedom To write About My Heart

My Heart
Beats
Contracts
Races
Skips and pounds
Too fast

It's broken
Actually
Bad birth
Lanoxinized,
Bathed in Metoprolol Succer

Rheumatic fever
Fell it
Pushing strained
It broke
Fibrous mess.

Who gets
This broken mass
To caress
to heal?
It's been volleyed

Eaten and sacrificed
On alters
To demons
That are gone
Lub-Dub

Heart block
Tachycardia
Dragging machines
A catheter
Still hurts

Ablation
Would it
Stop the feeling
You won't hear
Its rhythms








Freedom To Write About Fudge

Mom's FUDGE

She tells stories when she cooks it
That fall in an order
When measuring the cocoa it's a Frances Coltrane memory
Usually the one about the lightening on that hill
When we went out driving
The bolts were coming in like machine gun fire
Country road sliding to mud up on that ridge going to Jesus
Frances and the fudge disaster all told on Maple Avenue.
So then it's stirred and on the stove to boil
Now as she keeps the wooden spoon spinning
It's time to speak of Tony eating a pan
Of fudge made with cups over tablespoons of that Hershey
Cocoa. Ate through the sludge. She loves him.
It's nearing the mark on her candy thermometer so the stories slow as she watches
Talking of the differences in thermometers
"YOU have to boil water and see where it really falls on the thermometer.
Just because it says 210, doesn't make it so on this poor piece of crap.
So add or subtract the difference."
Simple advise to save your fudge is given out.
(I bought her of course that glass miscreant)
But it hits and she waits that extra second suspended in silence
Fudge requires that little hesitation as the human art form
Which easily can get too hard or soft like melted silly putty
She beats with the kind of arm admired by the posters
Of the 40's woman working in the factory
Now the story told might be about batches lost
Or when glass thermometer broke and Tony ate that too.
She cooked with her friends and her days were not angsty
They were layered jellos and beating air into the mixes,
Bridge and symphony funding, things to help
In a community that cared for buffets and teas
She pours it out into a buttered pan.
Cuts it, inducing you into a sugar coma.

Oh for the record
Mom's Fudge
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cu p Hershey Instant Cocoa Mix, with sugar
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1 cup pecans

Combine ingredients in a saucepan.
Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
Lower heat and boil till reaches 234 degrees
Remove, cool to 110 degrees
Beat for four minutes, then add pecans.
Pour in buttered glass pan, square. Cut when cools.

2nd type

Mom's Fudge
3 cups sugar
4 heaping Tablespoons cocoa
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 cup evaporated milk
6 tablespoons butter ( plus butter dish)
1 cup chopped pecans
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix sugar, cocoa, add in syrup and milk. Cook in a saucepan over medium heatuntil a small drop forms a soft ball in ice water. (234 to 240 candy thermometer)Remove from heat. Add butter, pecans and vanilla.
Beat with mixer or by hand. Pout into a buttered baking dish, cut in pieces. Work fast it thickens quickly.

Mom's Peanut Butter Fudge, the best
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 stick butter
pinch salt
1 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla

Mix sugar, milk , butter salt in saucepan.
Boil, stirring until it forms a soft ball in cold water. Remove from stove, add peanut butter and vanilla.. Beat until creamy, pour in a buttered 9x9 pan. Cool, cut.
If you want choc peanut butter fudge add 1to 2 heaping tsp cocoa to the sugar mix.

Freedom To Write about the Hospital


Freedom to Write About MCain's wife
Freedom to Write About Flying
Freedom To Write About The Coq Au Vin
Freedom to Write About Fleas
Freedom To Write About Peonies
Freedom To Write About My Swiss Watch
Freedom To Write About Dutch Ovens
Freedom to Write About Ferns
Freedom to Write About that guy who was into Saints
Freedom to write about Gay Friends
Freedom to write about CAT SCANS with Contrast
Freedom to Say, F off
Freedom to Ask My Mom to Stop banging
Freedom to call Dad
Freedom to tell about my life
Freedom to Say, Apologize
Freedom To write My Poems
Freedom To write, To Draw, to Express
Freedom From that
Freedom for this

Mountains, Valleys, Cyclones, Suitcases

It began in a valley that was enclosed by verdant mountains
Oaks and maples that hugged tightly to the precious safe low spaces
As an adoring mother might with her brood of precious babes.
In the vale sat this wooden porch, large, ringed with rockers that blocked you a fast paced entrance
Up into a long ranch house, into fireplaces, grub, tables, rooms, it was inviting from the start.
It felt like East Tennessee set into Wyoming because the sky was so big
But it hugged like it would in those eastern ways
The feeling was Appalachian /West.

I sat awhile, with a camera swinging around my neck as the place
Became filled with so many children in their love of exploring and friends mostly 4th graders
Ten years of time to learn to notice the lay of this land, yet they felt as campers.
Excited and alive.
I felt as if playacting now the role of a camp counselor hired on.
Funny the way dreams are so real pulling pieces of our lives, rearranging.

Rocking away out back on this ranch, there was a different kind of porch, a roofless one,
The numbers of children coming to stay awhile grew so large and my sense of responsibility grew.
Oh, yes, I need to take the pictures for the camp albums.
Thinking suddenly to make pictures of their adventures, as part of my job.
They posed laughing, putting arms around each other, bunny fingers on heads, down the most beautiful vale that a dreamer has ever placed into a mind.
Great camp.
Saw happily my student Eunique there. Her friends.

It has faded from my mind this morning, the why,
But there was a realization that my leaving going on a day trip was important errand,
Was needed to drive urgently over to Preston County, or to the Buckwheat Festival.
Saying it sounds utterly absurd in the mouth.
In a way at this point my dream amused me with that.
I wouldn't have minded waking to a trip like that, eating those cakes.
It was so utterly compelling, to get to that place of my Fall days as a child.

Life surging in the valley cabin, got in my black Honda parked in a lot out front.
Driving out to do this errand my scene was changed as land rose up and flattened.
The car was spotlessly clean, new. Reason to go is gone.
But rested with these children.
I was on a plain, this fallen beautiful one, that is somewhat like my homestate.
Preston County is in West Virginia's hidden away beauty.


I thought in the car, wondering how one got there from here.
Tracing lost memory, fussing with the camera.
Perhaps this was what I needed to do, develop my pictures in that place, or deliver them to some safety, or responsibility of teaching that just was assigned irreverently to me.
Me as gopher.
Or maybe, just going to a newspaper for printing, maybe it's an article about this group in the hills, these moving hills that flatten and go wide.

I drove starting on my way, as the car became realized as a bicycle,
Then the trip became effort, and on this bike my feeling became this was a more responsible way to travel.
More righteous, more wondrous, self talking that through as my adult self needed it.
So it was working hard to reach the turn, down to where I needed to go.
Always thinking I might not really remember the way.
Knowing it might be 50 miles or more to that turn.
Long, long, long going where time would be suspended. But there would be things to see.

The distances were in the miles going on past beautiful green rolling flatlands that still felt up,
Open, with water behind, to the side and ahead rimming this wild fecund place.
Almost as pictures of Ireland might be now. A homeland never seen.
At a crossroad, would turn left and "down," the mind kept repeating this.
I'd fall into forests then and the going would be mostly one of applying brakes, that feeling never left me, the path I was going to need to take.
How it "would be then."
Resting coming after that turn.
So, yes, this part required the effort, but returned it with a beauty.

There was a house sitting as if on a knoll,
It was white, shuttered, painted by Hopper.
It sat, the family it held outside in their vast yard, standing working, playing all apart.
Uncommunicative and closed to my interpretations. Just there.
Stopping (yet going), I asked if this was the way to Preston learning I was going intuitively in the right way. Yes.
But I had looked back to talk, if I could undo anything now it would be that glance.
There gathering at the edge of water you saw in the view were dancing, wicked water spouts,
Further out far far away a mighty cyclone was forming as well,

Then I was in and out mysteriously of their home, spaces
Looking out their windows, trying to get them to see with me, look into the sky.
They had a kind of resistance to comprehending the danger involved for them, the future naught a thought for them.
This sky stretching out was so much larger than we can ever know.
The disproportion of it was startling, the enormity.The blacknesses sucking you down.
It was greater in size than ever contained in thought and filled with angry rolling black clouds in a funnel swallowing the sea.
It was making a water spout near them and then the waters were becoming churned.


So I thought about my biking.
It seemed kind of risky to face that out on a bike.
Could I just go on, beat it?
Started out trying, but I warned them to go in their cellar, they were so childlike now.
Just asking if they should, frustratingly inactive, without self protective instincts.
Setting out for me was cooler now, darker, that rick emerald lighting it gets prior to a dangerous storm.
In front of this house the sky was stretching in front with water there now I realized too, another body.
There is nothing like this near Preston my thought.
I saw the way going be reached over by waters rising from two directions as the pathway was swallowed.
My choice to leave was lost there, gone to the demands now taken on and I had failed to see.

I returned to the house, now as island in seas.
In the house were large picture windows, glassed, where you could watch this turmoil, not safe,
But enclosed. We looked out, there were people in the waters. People.
That was a shocking as any of this.
People that need to be pulled safely in to the shore.
People that had to be saved from drowning in this.

Going down to them at the shore on the green slope,
I realized to go in was to die, yet there was a strange change now of rules of this earth.
That came over my perceptions.
Some, when called by name and encouraged, could come to shore to be taken to the cellar.
The safest spot in an unsafe reality.
This family I wanted to stay there.
Their mom, looking in her thirties helped me with leading them up to it by taking them in.
She made a chart of the names of those out that there floating, treading water,
In the waters that seemed almost a bay holding them in the waves.
(As ever in the distance mind's eye this huge cyclone threatened.)
As I thought to hope it would shift and go another direction,
Nothing of that was sure.

She indicated that we lost a few as I napped for seconds,
I went down this steep incline on green grass, as if it had to be me, to callout their names.
Pulling them by name to safety.
The struggle with winds, earth, cold, to push and pull at forces sucking them under required
Using my will to pull them in. It was only will.
Others in the water echoed that effort.
But their voice was only encouragement from freezing waters.
My responsibility was to do it, but I could not swim out to them, or I'd go under.
Pulled by that.
Just to be to my waist in the waters reaching, reaching, pulling them in and knowing
That we would be bound through this forever.
They had to swim to live and I had to compel that effort of impossibility.
A cyclone was coming anyway.
But my mind would be forever held by those that slipped under, to disappear. My lost.

It was riping me to pieces. Ripping pieces away.
Then she said she no longer spotted a Lisa and that there was no way to see out due to darkness to one that those in the water were frantically calling for.
I pulled in another to the warmth of the cellar and blankets with my heart
Saddening over this fearing for Lisa, a heart being eaten.
Yet going back. Going back down, looking up to wonder
At the coming cyclone, looking out to see my job ahead, to try to find those out there.
Knowing my way to Preston, this day that changed and took me instead here to this
Looking out at the responsibility.
My arm went out and my voice became a shout of the names. Of Amy. Of Lisa.