Winter writing from the Laurels
Winter seems to lend itself to musing over loved ones lost. These past couple of years have been challenging for all of us in The Laurels, my writing group. Sometimes you just need to put that pain to paper for solace and realize we all experience loss at some point in our lives. May these poems give you comfort in knowing you are not alone.
Visiting my Husband with Dementia-D
There is an empty room
you no longer allow the world to enter.
Today, I join you there, our eyes
meeting in joy at the music you hear.
“Great Blues they’re playing, isn’t it?”
Then, “Ooh,
there’s a hot body.”
“She is hot”, I say.
“Who are you?” You ask
as I sit on your hospital bed.
I just smile,
part of the scene.
“It’s a riot.” you tell me.
“It is.” I agree, and we laugh loudly together.
“You are gorgeous.” you announce.
And I know I have truly entered your private quarters.
Any opening is a threshold to the old
world, a space
like an empty quarter inside a sand dune
created by the wind god, Aeolus.
And I intend to enter, cross over
and walk alongside you.
There is a boat on the river
and a band playing, friends whooping it up.
“I Can’t Quit You Baby”.
You can shake a tail with me anytime.
The boat is riding rough over the water.
I’m gonna call it “Stormy Monday”.
You can call it “Crossroad Blues”
or “Got My Mojo Working”.
But I tell you, “The Sky is Crying”
and “I’m Stone Crazy” for you.
You got “a black cat bone”
and it just “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I do”.
Light: A haiku-J
Shadows on the wall.
Memories of my mother
Always come with light.
by-S
Sailing free
Across a sky with no tears
Untethered
Boundless
Bound to nothing
No one
And no memories
Flying free
You could be
A feather
Floating Weightless
No
And no again
I choose this here
This now
This pain
That washes like an ocean
At my feet
You
I choose
Your love
Your sweet and searing love
The fire of it burns me still
And yes
A thousand
Voices in me
Singing
Yes
After They Died-by A
It feels like a rain-soaked cardboard box,
the sides sagging in on themselves,
until they collapse from the weight of water,
and then it tastes like a copper penny
that your best friend dared you
to suck like a lifesaver candy.
Then it burns like frozen chicken
grabbed with bare hands,
until it burns like a grill flame,
or the sun’s rays scorching my irises.
Then it’s sweet and sticky
like a bourbon shot drunk in a dive bar,
or it constricts like tight jeans
hot from the dryer--
taking my breath,
until I stand sobbing
in the grocery store aisle
because they dared play
Madonna’s “like a prayer.”
Little Liza Jane-R
Grief contains an ocean
Of elements.
The losses of loved ones
Are like nesting dolls,
All held within
The most recent.
Do we grow larger,
Deeper
For them?
So the sages say.
The loss of a dog
Has its own shape.
Cats too.
Every creature, I suppose,
That we take into our hearts.
I am just beginning
To reach the place of gratitude
For her long life
Woven into mine,
A place platitudes
Could not take me,
A place where time waits
To lay its soothing hand
On my brow
And whisper,
I know honey
I know.
