Poems Through the Months
Saturday, February 9, 2013 at 9:50PM February ~ Ash Wednesday
Glad it wasn’t their son
They came with offerings of meat
Fancy ham, racks of lamb, salmon cooked to perfection
No one can do enough.
I put on my sackcloth and beat my breasts
And scream, “Not dead, not dead, please not dead.”
Ashes between my fingers when I reach for life
I live deeply into these days
One day at a time because
Ashes are not the end of the story.
Ashes make a muddy cross, we wear burned up joy
A paste of ashes and tears
Wanting to breathe comfort from our symbols
To bless and nourish our darkness
While shadows of prayers flicker
Softly in the rafters like candlelight playing on an altar.
Beyond sleep the hammer of grief has its way
“Scott forever” the kids murmur in a circle around the
Bread and cheese, their plates scattered with green beans
They soothe us better than chocolate or mugs of tea, their
Presence a parament of comfort in the cathedral of our loss.
A resurrection of hope in forty days I do not understand.
I know ashes aren’t the end of the story
But how does that go again? I’m trying but I can’t
Roll away the stone in my heart.
Entombed, a shroud around the promise
I only remember tears and ashes.
(February 1997 ~ The day after my friend’s son died.
March ~ The Amazing Human Heart
Who cares what doctors think?
They doubt the heart’s domain
Negate deepest knowing
Explain away our pain
Snub anecdotal evidence
Codices of ancient art
With microscopes they search for truth
Ignore the knowing human heart.
Doctors are redundant
They pontificate and rate
Write papers for the AMA
“Do cells have memory?”
…they debate.
Hospital once had us
Reduced us to its ways
Used a cutting robot
Discharged us in two days.
It made emotion second best
Hunches were the worst
It’s really hard to argue that
Where saving lives is first
So give Docs what they long for
Wisdom, courage, calm,
Garlands, wreaths and trophies
Glory gives a balm
For these two realms may never meet
Hard science and the heart
I’m sorry that I brought it up
What made me think to start?
Alas! Compassion conjures kindred cells
Heroes beating out their part
Faithful in five billion breasts
The amazing human heart!
April ~ Canyon Crawling
Your mind and scale the
Summits of your thought and
Meet you in the red rock of
Your heart’s desire.
I could crawl into your
Canyon and braille your heart and
Climb among the tender and the
Hard, the sullied and the pure.
I could crawl the vast canyon
Where raven dwells
The adder and the addict shelter
From temptation’s heat, and the
Ruins of lost love crumble on the
Winds of wilderness.
And in the straw bale house
Where you recycle yourself
I could re-breathe your breath
And you sound my vocal chords
A sacramental offering to the night.
And if the stars line up for us and
The Milky Way consents
A coyote and a doe might find their way
In the canyon lands to a place beyond
Tomorrow where sunlight and sage
Bless the crawling.
(10-15-96)
May ~ The Lavender Shawl
Round and ripe her womanhood lay
Curled at the nape of her neck
Femininity escaping from an up-do that
Glanced across 10 gigs of her lover’s lap.
She exhaled into the cool spring breeze
Admiring the gluten-free chocolate cake
She had baked for their guests.
“I have a shawl that might be just the thing,”
Her mother chirped
Trying too hard again
As if she would never learn.
Tripping on old threads of love
She ran upstairs to pick one out
And with tenderness and a weary fringe of hope
She wrapped her daughter up.
Without a smile or nod
Twenty-two years of shrugging free
Landed in a lavender pile on the kitchen floor
And everyone pretended not to hear the thud.
(May 2011 ~ Ah, the painful, endless letting go and breaking free between a mother and child.)
June ~ Watching the Birdfeeder After the Divorce
Cardinal never came to
Feed our love
To swing and eat
Or help us
Grope our way back
To feeling love enough
To carry on
Like my lonely mother
I hug my cup and watch
Through the kitchen window
Which one
Might feather a new life
Unknotted
A prolonged naked flight
Of winged joy?
(1-13-96)
July ~ Ordinary Days
Longs for lupine and poppies
Peanut butter and
Fried eggs.
A simple girl with
Grass between my toes,
I’m apple pie and
Cheddar cheese.
No freeway traffic
Please.
These home grown
Feet want
Solitude
Pine needles
Hot sun
Give me granite and
Snowmelt
Lines of marching ants
To fill my ordinary days.
( 11-12-05)
September ~ Without Even Trying
Do you know the shape of your greenness?
That the tree branches waving at you all the time
Are really your own arms and
Jungle Veriditas is Essential you
Is the river that never stops
Moving through you as it flows through
Katie, Cindy, Ed, Linda, Fran, Lois, Wally and Susan?
Do you know that dying flows into
The Absolute carried on a lily pad
By music that floats over the
Coffee fields with the great blueness of the Boda Butterfly
Do you know you’ve had an angel all these years
Who whispers in your ear
Clearly, sweetly without words
Since the tumbling womb
Parting her lips and taking a quick breath
She whispers, “Cosmic goodness is yours.”
She is there now by your face
Kissing your sweetness with the silver breeze
And the green blue silver floating flowing
Lilly pad absolute Love is yours
You are the angel the butterfly the tree
The river the breath the womb the kiss.
Without even trying. (After the Somatic IFS retreat at Pura Vida, Costa Rica Feb. 19, 2011)
October ~ Eternal ~ Autumn
Tendrils of my vining passion sought
Places to attach
He looked away, stepped aside
Parried and demurred an
Endless leafy hiding which
Pruned my hunger
Eternal autumn the seasons of
My heart without fruit
Despite my vining legs
My sweet juice
Dripping
Soaked into the barren earth.
(1-13-96)
Copyright © 2013 Gayle Madison
Reader Comments