ManicDDaily

The last time I saw my father

He was so serene, I marveled how the undertaker
had gotten him
exactly right; his face back to a dignity it had always had
in illness, and also not;
his features so sweetly defined, not blurred
as they could be
by pain or anxiety—

He had never been fearful (not for himself), but he had worried deeply
about those he loved—why were they so determined
to take chances?
Or, much more insistently:
what would happen to her (my mother) when
he was gone?

But the last time I saw him, his face
no longer fretted—I had seen it before they fixed him too
and I know—
I know—
he no longer worried, and it wasn’t because
of any lessening of love,—

So that when I weep now,
it is for myself only, not for his loss of life,
but for my loss
of him—

I do not worry about what
has happened to him, where
he has gone—
With both hands, with his own face,
he gave me some measure of freedom
from that— 

There is simply a kind of love you cannot bear
not to have any more,
even when
you still have it. 

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Draftish poem for Father’s Day. Have a good one!

ps – as always, all right to text and image reserved.

The Sky Seems

The sky seems to have studied
the history of art all night
and has settled on
Picasso’s Blue Period. 

The mountains find the green darknesses of Courbet;
the slate patio, though colorblind, contemplates
Mondrian.

I look for the far hillsides
of the Renaissance—mists that couple
with the horizon—but the line of the mountains
is defined, and there’s no Madonna
on the Rocks, no Mona Lisa filling
the frame, no soldiers
on large-hammed horses
whose lances cunningly
re-direct my gaze—

But already, the sky’s flipped the page—this one a double-face of,
I don’t know, Cezanne and Remington—that is, pearl finding blue,
and now the clouds, the soft straight kind that seem to still stretch
across their beds, pull clean sheets
over their heads,
and the field shows up
in a zillion strokes of brush, dabbed
by daffodil— 

and I think of all those museums I have so missed
during this plague, that communion with squares on walls
that made me feel a part
of human history, of how one sees
the world, of how people people
the world, trees too,
and think that maybe I should
just try looking around more,
right here, right there.

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Good morning!  Not a poem for Mother’s Day (although I snuck a little of that theme in my pic!)  Do have a happy one!  All rights reserved. 

Young Female Back in the 70’s

As she checked for my results,
the woman on the other end of the phone line said slowly,
‘’m positive….”,
perhaps purposely slurring the “I” (which was me),

“you’re negative,”
and I wept
in the dull glass closet
of the phone booth,
hiding my face
in the side against
a wall.

Many of you reading this now
are lucky enough not to even know
what I am writing about.

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Poem for leaking of draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. 

The drawing is a little bit too much on the despairing side (one that I had) –I am sad, but also, honestly, very very angry.

Dream Horse 

You wake to tell me of a dream
in which the horse we are currently taking care of
is the horse you had as a child. 

In your dream, he was over sixty years old
(far beyond the age of horses), but remembered you,
whickering at your hip pocket for the apple
you sometimes stuffed there,
as a child. 

You did not have an apple, so bent down to pull up grass,
proffering the spring green strands
in a flattened hand as if they were something
he could not himself pull from of the ground
and his horse lips rumpled softly, gratefully
in your palm.

I listen in the pre-dawn gloom, wondering
whether, if I dreamt at all, I could summon people
from my childhood, and if I could meet them
in some bright field, only it would be
my childhood kitchen, and it would be
my father, and he would be feeding me—what?
Breakfast cereal—Special K—
which he would pour out with a grin, saying,
“say when.”

I too would smile then
over the white bowl,
only I’m not sure I could say “when”
in a dream like that.  

I think to tell you about it,
you, the man actually
beside me, but you seem to be sleeping again.
Though later, as I tiptoe about the room,
you whisper, “hello Sweetie,”
here, now,
another gift.

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Another draft poem!  This one for May 1. The pic above doesn’t really fit, but is an illustration (with the text omitted) from my children’s alphabet book, ABC MOBILE, this one for the letter H. 

Have a good day! 

Dream Igloo Poem

I dream of a couple who live
in a igloo. 

One keeps trying to write poetry
about it.

The first lines are:
“when you asked me
to marry you,
you failed to mention
the igloo.”

Igloo doesn’t really scan, still
the poem goes on, describing how
the igloo owner promises
to keep the other always warm
with the fire that he carries
in his arms. 

They sleep, this couple, under
a throw of caribou, and depending upon
whether the dream poem is written in the first or third person,
a further cover of “me and you,” or a “tangle of
each one’s
sinews.” 

See what I mean about scanning.
Though I know when I wake, that I could make the couplets work,
in the same way that the couple
makes the cold work.
Words can certainly be made to fit together
as well as blocks of ice, or arms
of warmth. 

Except that the meanings
might get skewed.

For in the dream the frozen house
does not symbolize distance between the couple,
or an attempt to freeze out
the world.

Mainly the igloo is just where
the couple ends up, and though they do feel the cold more
as they age, they still love the blue that radiates from
the ice bricks, like bits
of preserved sky.

They stay warm enough too,
as long as together.

In fact, the dream poem tries to end
on that note—hoping to God that they “go out
as two,
beneath that throw
of caribou,”
when, of course, the way they really hope to go
is as one.

But it’s hard to rhyme lines about dying
with words like “fun” and the various other
choices. 

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Another slightly weird poem for April!  Have a great weekend.