Here’s another Flash 55. (55 words seems to be my limit these days.) (Tell it to the G-Man.)
An Angle of Sleep
Night spent in a hospital chair is a tired next day.
Though you are amazed as head shifts from hand to forearm, guard rail to startled and alert, that you have slept, and, as staff shifts too, that you don’t feel bad.
Of course, it also depends on how the person in the bed feels.
Here is a poem for Thanksgiving–dVerse Poets Pub prompt on what one is thankful for, and also, since it is 55 words, for the G-man, Friday Flash 55.
The Luck (and thanks) that come with Parenthood
What I am thankful for:
First, this birth.
(Second, their births.)
The resulting constitution–one that
Can accommodate
The sickness of babes, also of
The old; that, when faced with a dog’s
Tick, pulls it out; reaches into a blocked drain;
Cries readily, laughs quicker, allows
Itself to dance. How
Did I get so
Lucky?
Oh for the days when turkeys were not shot up after their miserable overcrowded deaths.
Oh for the days when the cook would rub her sweaty brow through hours of desperate braising,
Oh for the days when everyone sat around reassuring the braised cook that the turkey really wasn’t awfully dry and, um, could they have a little more gravy.
Oh for the days pre-pre-injected juices.
A crazy day during a week in which it seemed that nothing further could go wrong.
But nothing further did go wrong, and much went better.
And here I am–suddenly aware of how lucky I am for the day, the week, for Time itself.
With all those people around me and all of you.
Wow!
Thanks so much.
Ps– I do not, however, have wifi at the moment so posted from magical iPhone.
Have a great Thanksgiving.
Last week, as part of the dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt, I posted a poem on the theme of “change,” which spoke of mothers stroking heads. I was struck by how many commenters mentioned their memories of this experience. This brought me to re-write an earlier poem (posted as a draft some time ago) about the same subject, but with a slightly different take.
Buddha Hands
My mother was a demanding child,
“right now,” her favorite phrase, though
her father egged her on, she says, liking
to see her get a rise
out of her own mother, a tease.
“Terrible,” she says, and I picture
her father, whom I don’t truly remember,
as a man with bits and pieces
of her same face–
determined nose, staunch forehead,
bead eyes.
Yet, when she was tired, my mother goes on,
her mother (to whom she could be so ornery) would let her
put her head upon her lap, and, without mention of
the day’s spat, gently
wipe back her hair.
It felt so good,
my mother sighs, that now, nearly 90,
she sometimes wipes her own hair
back in just that way,
and, as she stands
before me, she palms
the grey strands from the still dark
widow’s peak, again
and again.
And I think, watching the path
of her palm,
how she used to do exactly
the same to me: how, in the back seat of a long drive,
where no tasks could be tended, my pointed
busy mother stroked my head.
I suddenly think too
of Buddha hands,
a temple market in Mandalay,
where they were lined up–spare parts–
the loose stares of single eyes on the
shelf above–
tapered wooden fingers
flaked with gilt–
And I know, standing before that far counter,
and lying in the seat of that ghost car, that if ever
there were such a thing on this
Earth as freedom from suffering, freedom
from desire,
it could be found (for me at least), in that space
upon my forehead where my mother, her mother too,
ran their hands–
without grasping,
without clinging, without even
holding on.
Here are photos from this morning in Zuccotti Park. The crowd is sparse now.Cat guy is still there, however.
BLOOMBERG==Forget about Occupy Wall Street. What are you going to do about the rats?
And if you do nothing, how are we going to (a) walk around looking at Christmas lights, (b) doing midnight shopping?
Here’s my offering (fresh off the press) for Magpie Tales 92, a very cool writing/photo blog hosted by Tess Kincaid. I’ve modified Tess’s wonderful photo, and I’m afraid my offering may show my age. (If you don’t know the references, check them out!)
Like a Cello (or Two)
He loved Fellini;
She tended towards George Cukor:
Mastroianni led the forward skip of
his self-style–hers Audrey, champagne
lightness in black flats, though she also
kept Marcello in the loop. (And how!)
Like a cello, each body curved–
a cello clothed in case for protective
carry through black/white streets till
he carried her to sheets too soft
for his tweed jacket, her bare arms
making up the smoothness gap.
Like a bow was the straight line of their connection–but
how can two cellos be played upon at once?
They managed it.
(P.S. – edited this very slightly since sending out–taking out “a” before case. And I really feel like something about reverberation should be added. Any ideas.)
DVerse Poets Pub has a “Poetics” challenge to write about change today which set me to thinking of both the new and old. Here’s the resulting poem:
Making it Better
I think today, the anniversary of my daughter’s birth,
of my mother’s grace–
how she came to my hospital bed at 8 a.m.,
two hours after leaving her sister’s,
her favorite red blouse catching
the robin’s egg fluorescents, the curled tips
of her brown hair carefully
slipped back as she
bent over over the bassinet,
exuding unshadowed wonder.
My mother, who never made any
decision without vocal re-thinks,
not asking me
at that time
how she should dress
her sister–whether the funeral home’s gown
would not be too frilly–she worked after all,
had a career—
carrying only in the back of her dark eyes
the echos of that laboring pant
that strains so to keep on–
My mother, cupping
my daughter’s still-damp head,
in the same cool hands that had
stroked my forehead as a child, as her mother
had stroked hers, and that now,
when she’s been sisterless
and motherless for many years,
stroke her own forehead, wiping
the thinned hair back.
Like this, like this, she shows me,
running her palms over the
join of face and crown–
her particular self and her
universal self–I just find
that it makes me feel better.
Sorry to those who are not interested, but I walk by Zuccotti Park frequently, and find the changing dynamic kind of fascinating (though my iPhone pix don’t really convey it.)
Yesterday (Friday, November 18), was a much calmer day–a whole lot of chatting going on: Protesters or bystanders with the police (some of the younger protestors were kind of taunting, but most people seemed just to talk)==the police gabbing with each other–the Brooksfield people (I think they are the security guards in neon green vests) moaning with each other–the protestors chanting, and in the evening, singing soft songs.
The Daily Show had a piece by Samantha Bee talking about the divisions in the park before the break-up. I had not specifically focused on these before, but I think Bee’s piece was really accurate–the library, the speak and repeat crowd, the bicycle generators (all put together by the more “intellectual” types) were on the East Side by Broadway–the drum circle, the Sufi-garbed and yogic breathing, cat guy, tended to be at the West End (by Church.)
Protesters still seem to congregate at the tips of the Park , but it’s all a lot more sparse and mixed up. (Cat guy, for example, has moved East.)
One of the dark pictures at the bottom has what looks like someone’s head leaning against a police barricade. This is the head of the bronze sculpture (“Double Check”) of a man with a brief case; the lights are red white and blue glow sticks.
Cat Guy
Trying A Banner Run Up Broadway
"Double Checker"
ManicDDaily 
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