These Days

Monday Morning Musings:

“Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
–Walt Whitman. “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass

Early Morning, Light through the Clouds. Delaware River at Red Bank Battlefield.©️Merril D. Smith, 2021

These are liminal days,
when twilight lingers
as death drifts, in a falling russet leaf,
and bee-buzzed blooms, purple and gold,
wave farewell to cloud-nestled moon
then reach for waking sun–
who timidly, then finds her voice
to sing away the grey.

These days of soft cat-paw-tread
transform, eagle-sharp talons tear away
the foggy gray, leaving crystal blue—

^{Sunrise over the Delaware River. ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021}

and there, white flowers grow, clinging to life
on dead wood–

Early morning Reflections. ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021

and we? Here, in this in-between–
embracing ghosts and color–
looking toward the stars,
remembering they are part of us,
and we of them, all–

^{Geese at Sunrise ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021}

see where the light shines through,
then know, this is where the song begins and ends–
re-formed, reprised, again and again.

October is such a transitional time of year here. One day grey, the next so bright. One day cool, then next summer-sticky. The leaves are turning, but we still have flowers. There are still too people getting sick and dying of COVID, and people who still refuse to get vaccinations or wear masks. I know WAY too many people who have pets who have died recently or are dying. My husband’s uncle died on Friday. It was not COVID, and he’s been sick for a long time and also suffering from dementia, so in the case, though still very sad, there’s a sense of relief that he and his family are no longer suffering.

Today began with a before dawn rejection e-mail. I hope that’s not the way the week’s going to go. It put me in a bad mood, but my morning walk raised my spirits, as it usually does.
This week we watched Midnight Mass (Netflix). It’s horror, but not the super-gory type. There’s more talk than action, which doesn’t bother me, and it actually ends on a very Merril-like note. I liked it. We also watched a Danish mystery called The Chestnut Man (Netflix), another “Scandi-noir” show. We both liked it and got caught up in it. I guess kids making chestnut men is a thing in Denmark? It made me look up American chestnut trees. There are streets named Chestnut in almost every town around here, but it seems the millions of American chestnut trees were killed by a blight. One interesting fact I learned is that the blight does not kill the roots, so they still exist below ground, and there are chestnut trees that continue to sprout up and then die.

It was a good week for cooking comfort food.

Poem Up in Anti-Heroin Chic

My poem, “Small Bites,” is up in the most recent issue of Anti-Heroin Chic. My thanks to EIC James Diaz for accepting this poem, and for his consistently beautiful journal. The first anniversary of my mom’s death is in a little over a week. She died from Covid. Please get vaccinated when you can and continue to wear a mask.

You can read my poem here.

My Mom’s Last Birthday Party Remember when blowing out candles on a cake was something we did?

I’m linking this to dVerse, Open Link Night.

Day 2: January Ekphrastic Challenge

This is Day 2 of Paul Brooke’s Special January Ekphrastic Challenge. If you click the link, you can see all the art and responses.

Responding to Der Tod ist ein Dandy auf einem Pferd Marcel Herms

And CO 8 by Christine O’Connor

Death Blooms

Death wanders and hovers–
in plagues, pounces; with demagogues
and flag-waving fools, dives. He prances
through porticos, and capers in life’s collage—
see there, the dark spaces among the blooms?

Some toss fireworks,
others lay flowers–
the dead stay dead.

I’m linking this to the dVerse Open Link night, too.

Mickey: NaPoWriMo2020, Day 14

The morning after–my work is done.

Who controls the remote?

Everyone gets a present.

 

Yesterday did not dawn. It oozed grey with an oppressive silence, punctuated by thunder. There was a tornado warning in effect for the afternoon. Then, the storm clouds cleared, and the sun shimmered on the trees as we drove to the animal hospital to say goodbye to our cat Mickey. From the window of the little exam room we could hear birds singing. Maybe Mickey heard them, too, but I know he heard our voices and felt us petting him. He purred before he went to sleep, never to wake.

Today, dawn came. I walked, watching the sun rise and listening to the birds–and the world seemed a little less broken.

 

white cat paw clouds drift

slumbering in the sunshine—

trees drop pink teardrops

 

Mickey’s quirkiness matched his one blue eye and one yellow eye and his long legs. He loved chasing his orange ball. He hid from strangers and growled at some people, but he loved to sit with us at night and get neck rubs. We miss him.

 

 

The Clouds Come Drifting, NaPoWriMo2020, Day 5

JMW Turner, “Norham Castle Sunrise

 

“A few stars glimmered through the morn,

And down the thorn the dews were streaming.”

–Francis Ledwidge, “The Dead Kings”

 

Always the clouds come, drifting

colored in the hazy shades of after

though stars glimmer through, sifting

light diffused from ancient gas and matter,

 

colored in the hazy shades of after

time moves on, translucent or opaque—

light diffused from ancient gas and matter,

and so, we ache.

 

Time moves on. Translucent or opaque,

our thoughts grow dim and dark

and so, we ache—

forgetting glory, gone the spark,

 

our thoughts grow dim and dark

with spite, thinking of past wrongs,

forgetting glory. Gone the spark

of dead kings and their songs.

 

With spite, thinking of past wrongs,

we dream in owl-feathered night

of dead kings and their songs,

and wait for lark-trilled light.

 

We dream in owl-feathered night,

though stars glimmer through, sifting–

and wait for lark-trilled light,

but always the clouds come, drifting.

 

The prompt for Day 5 of NaPoWriMo was way too busy and complicated for me, as it involved “twenty different projects” to include in one poem. Instead, I went to the Oracle again for a start, then wrote a pantoum for Jane Dougherty’s Pictures and Poetry challenge based on the lines from Francis Ledwidge’s “The Dead Kings” and the Turner painting above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Content with My Delusions,” I Wait

Content With My Delusions, Jacqueline Hurlbert, 

Only I could see him,

my dark friend, slim

with rabbit ears

and glowing eyes—

so kind, so wise.

 

He comforted me

I spoke to him alone–see

no one else believed in him,

but friends we were and are–

and from me he never strayed far.

 

I gave him a gift, a striped shirt,

and he said, sorry, don’t be hurt–

but I’ve got to go away for now.

somehow, remember us, don’t fuss–

this is only a phase, it’s ever thus.

 

(Count the days. Discuss.)

 

Today is my ninetieth birthday,

and I think I feel his glowing gaze

from somewhere in the night.

He’s come for me, my old dark friend—

Hello, good-bye, this is my end.

 

(We begin again.)

 

Today on dVerse, Linda has asked us to write poems based on the work of artist Jackie Hurlbert.  Her Web site can be found here.

 

 

 

 

Bodies and Souls

When we were both younger.

Monday Morning Musings:

“Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:

I heard it in the air of one night when I listened

To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.”

–Carl Sandburg, from “Poems done on a Late Night Car”

 

“And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

From, Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night”

 

Beneath the beauty–

pink, red, yellow-petaled–

nectar flows,

pollen-dusted bees

hover, their buzz

a soothing lullaby–

the sound of if, is, was,

and will be

Enter a caption

What will be?

From my mother’s body,

I came,

my earliest memory, her

(she was beautiful)

shushing me,

telling me not to wake my sister

 

My sister and I played,

sang the songs of Broadway

and our lives,

nonsense words became family slang

over the dinner table—

the sound of family dinners,

and playing the dictionary game.

 

From my body,

my daughters came.

Sisters, they played,

sang songs of Broadway

and their lives

nonsense words became family slang

over the dinner table—

the sound of family dinners,

and playing Scattergories.

 

They look alike,

(but they don’t)

anyone can tell they’re sisters,

the way they talk and gesture–

we look alike

(but we don’t)

anyone can tell I’m their mother,

it’s in the blood,

our souls

from bodies, the blood of

grey and green-eyed ancestors

generations stretching far back

to first hearts beating

and blood flowing

women, men,

loving, hating,

beautiful and ugly bodies

crawling, walking–

in the cold May rain

we go to see my mom

no longer young

with body failing

and mind not as sharp

(not as it was, not as she was)

but heart beating

and blood flowing,

we make her laugh

We are goofy, even here.

But serious, too.

she’s in the hospital

(first docile, now demanding)

it’s the anniversary of my dad’s death

hearts beating

and hearts not beating

once my father raged,

against the dying of the light

till he raged, no more,

 

body and soul both gone.

I don’t believe in ghosts

and spirits

(But I do.)

There are things in the air

we can’t see, can’t hear

the songs of stars and bees,

the humming of the moon.

 

Can two people share the same dream?

The woman asks in the movie—

because it happens to her and a man,

It happened to me, once long ago,

to my daughter and me

a dream forgotten now– except

“someone played a flute,”

we both say, when I mention it—

years later.

 

Things unexplainable,

things I hear in the air,

that I wish we had more of,

I remember singing to my babies

My mom’s cousin says,

“people remember

the songs they heard

when they were children.”

Perhaps there are things

in the air–

If we stop and listen,

the sound of stars and bees,

the humming of the moon.

 

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, here in the U.S. My mom has been in the hospital for the past several days. My father died on May 11, 1998. I remember going to the hospital on Mother’s Day, for what would be his last night.

My husband and I watched a Hungarian movie, On Bodies and Souls on Netflix. In it, a man and a woman share the same dream every night. (Warning: there are scenes at the beginning in a meat-packing plant, but keep watching past that.) It also features a beautiful Laura Marling song.

 

 

Harbinger

 

The rose once technicolor bright

now sepia-toned, left, an oversight

to blend into the background.

 

And she, nearly devoid of color

doesn’t see it, everything now duller,

except when in her dreams.

 

Her frail body, a slight bump beneath

the blankets, but her mind unleashed

flits between sleep and waking–

 

she sees a vision of their summer home

the cottage colored sand and sea foam

and brightened by its rose garden,

 

and always scented by the sea.

But here and now, she

hears the ocean, waves lapping,

 

slapping the rhythm of the tide,

calling her—to slide

into her memories–

 

or no, a harbinger it seems

of what is next, not dreams.

Her sun is setting,

 

and now the room glows

a well-loved voice she knew and knows

says, “Come, Love. I’ve been waiting.

 

Sarah at dVerse has been pondering the word “harbinger,” and asks us to do the same in a poem. Lately my poems want to be stories, and my stories want to be poems. Perhaps this is a harbinger of something yet unknown (to me).  🙂

 

 

 

Forest Dream: Magnetic Poetry

From the forest

languid language soars.

You watch the rain beating

on rocks,

say my skin smells of dreams

and water runs fast beneath my feet.

A ship screams at the lake,

“who is driving death?”

And I cry,

aching if and why.

 

Henri Rousseau, “Le Rêve,” (The Dream), [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I haven’t consulted The Oracle in a couple of weeks. She gave me this bit of surrealism. It fits my mood.

 

Unfinished

“I took a nap and wept for no reason”

~ Jim Harrison from Songs of Unreason

 

My sisters and I

sat at my father’s deathbed

he, though unconscious, raged–

we held a vigil through the night,

waiting for the dawn,

and light

to see him released,

the raging ceased.

I napped then

for days it seemed

dreaming

I heard his voice,

crying when

I realized

it wasn’t real,

but love

disguised.

 

This poem is for Day 13 of Jilly’s 28 Days of Unreason, using Jim Harrison’s poetry for inspiration. I guess this is an early Father’s Day poem.