for Janie Wilkie

Tableau From Another Time

I walked home from school

in the days when a child could still do that

in the days before 

the wall-mounted telephone

fell into disrepute

I carried my books in a plastic satchel

It was plaid with a red handle

and a metal clasp that looked like brass

but wasn’t

All the houses I passed on my 4 block trek 

were either white or gray

except one

tiny pink shotgun 

with a tumble-down porch

and screens full of holes

The lady there didn’t like kids 

to cut across her yard

with its patches of brown grass

sprinkled between the weeds

She glared

from the kitchen window

and sometimes

knocked on the glass

so I  would cross over to the other side of the road and quicken my steps till I was past that house

I crossed the street

without a crossing guard,

I walked home from school sometimes alone

or else I rode my bike

barefoot and without a helmet

with no fear at all

but for an old woman in a sad pink house

on a corner lot

of an old shell road

in a little town

where danger was a stranger

Remembering Helm

When I first posted this…….over a year ago…I had lost a dear friend to cancer…not the first. And one of the few people who read it and immediately understood what I was saying was Helm. He commented that it reminded him of a friend who faced her crisis with humor. Now that we have lost Helm, I am often reminded of his wiry humor and brilliant talent. I miss him.


Making War

Gremlins play hockey here at night
on knife blade skates sharp and bright
Pucks crisscross the cold tile floor,
crash against the closet door

Charging on from room to room,
they fire off lightning shots of doom,
gambol closer to the goal 
and spit out laughter coarse and bold

Beware- 

a hoarse and threatening voice
demands (as if I had a choice)

Beware yourself-

I answer back
(with courage that they know I lack)

I’ve bubbles here, robust and thick
enough to break a hockey stick
I puff them out with my short breath
These quivering rainbow balls of death

I hear a snort, a chortling yelp 
then realize that it’s myself
Sitting upright in the bed,
a warrior’s scarf around my head 

They still play hockey in the dark
Still cavort and shout and bark
I chase them back with bubbles fat
Sometimes I wield a nerf foam bat

The score gapes wider than before
But I’ll not be frightened anymore

Moon and Sea on a Distant Planet

Sunflowers

Terrell Park Arborium

Archway art piece

water lily

Blue Buggy

Hill Country: Cactus Flower

Hill Country: old house

Hill Country : Purple Nettle

Hill Country

Just back from a week trip wandering through the Hill Country. ……mostly just enjoying scenery and spending time together, healing.
Took lots of pictures this is the first in a series of drawings from my shots.

Saturday shots

cypress

What i saw in my yard today

Therapy

Yes, I am drowning myself in this art. It is good therapy. I don't feel like I can write yet. It will come back.

Bluebonnets

green glass bottles

twilight tree

poppies

sunset tree

landscape

pears

blue barn

What Can't Be Written

Finally I had to close the book,
take a furlough. The language
though rare, raw-boned,
was only words,
squiggles cavorting
across a page.

My eyes grew red
but not with tears. I wanted
to circumnavigate those lines,
sail straight into that searing sea
the poet swam, but instead
I shut the book.

                I sat on my park bench, book in lap,
                and real poetry leapt to life before my eyes.

A brunette child on tiptoe
lifted a fistful of her mother's hair
to her nose as if
it were a buttercup.
She closed her eyes, lashes
thick as sable brushes against her her cheeks,

and when she opened them again,
alliteration laughed aloud.
My heart seized
as my hand rose
to my face, invisible curl captured
in childish fingers

I breathed the fragrance of my mother's hair,
her neck, her ear.
I thought I might drop right there
in a puddle of tears, even if strangers
thought me a lunatic

Contained in one instant,
forgiving time delivered  lifetimes,
a verse so fully drawn, and when you stood
behind me and asked what was wrong,
I couldn't explain. The moment
had passed beyond words.

             

Avalanches

Living at sea level
ice is foreign,
Avalanches don't come
from hulking mountains
that dissolve in a blur of whiteness,
blankness, blindness,
empty cold.
Tears don't freeze,
become snowflakes on lashes.
Shoulders don't sink
into endless, powdery pillows,
too tired to move, roped
to oblivion. Lost

But avalanches come,
even in the swelter of summer.
Warm waves
crash down as suddenly as snow,
swallow up breath in salty gasps,
thrashing rasps. clenched teeth,
flailing in space. Papery lids fold
over dead iris eyes,
a shutter, Click.

Jed

My heart is broken and may never heal. Years back I wrote a poem for my son detailing his growth from infancy to manhood . In the last verse I expressed an idea that has proven to be untrue…….for I have outlived my child and did indeed see "the finished work". Still I want to share this poem in his honor..

Clay

You were clay,
all red and bumpy,
seven pounds
of unformed clay.
I looked at the lump of you,
imagined the shape
you would become, puzzled
at the slice of someone else
wrinkling your forehead,
your hair the color of rose quartz.
What to call you,
how to spell it, little efforts
to bend the still soft edge of you,
to cast a mold to hold
your undecided face
For everyday
I watched your profile move.
Your chin, your cheek,
the bridge of your nose altered.
Your voice deepened.
Your legs lengthened.
My star-eyed sculpture
twisted under unseen hands,
a project I might only watch.
Still I celebrated each change.
each chip of the chisel
each smoothing out,
the way your contours chose to shift
like fresh art everyday.

And still I know
I'll not see the finished work.
Life is not through
modeling your clay.

Iris watercolor

Fern

new work

Caddo Lake

Did this one from a shot I took at Caddo Lake last summer.

More Franklin Lake

Franklin Lake

Had fun today taking photos and recreating them as art pieces.

another found poem

signs in a yard in december

keep out
private drive
no trespassing
i have a gun and will use it

Merry Christmas

Found poetry project/ the Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/aug/09/poster-poems-found-poetry-cutup-collage

Wife 350

What are numbers? Just numbers.

Hamilton was a poet

And Simone re-imagined poets as poems.

There were many types:

Formal poems, odd poems, happy poems.

Run loose poems,

Seriously rich poems.

She saw his work as a fancy game:

Scrambling words into breaks,

making prose more like music,

considering his own idea a breakthrough

but really just making Scottish of a Latin text.

Still Simone understood the basic rules.

Poetry was supposed to remake the ordinary.

His poems were just strange.

For his part,

Hamilton found her kind in the start,

entertaining 

but literally third best at scrambled eggs.

They never discussed the controversial recipe,

unearthed from a book of original slave documents.

It involved taking a collage of ingredients from the fridge,

mixing in concrete,

adding tasty bits only with the lefthand

and pouring over cereal.

He wolfed it down

then had to call the doctor.

And she cut up his newspaper.

In the fourth month.

after a bad night of writing,

he saw a boat,

went fishing, 

left a note (often written for a break-up)

What are numbers?

Perhaps he might do better

with wife 350

One 

Need to post this before it slips away.

Making War

Gremlins play hockey here at night
on knife blade skates sharp and bright
Pucks crisscross the cold tile floor,
crash against the closet door

Charging on from room to room,
they fire off lightning shots of doom,
gambol closer to the goal 
and spit out laughter coarse and bold

Beware- 

a hoarse and threatening voice
demands (as if I had a choice)

Beware yourself-

I answer back
(with courage that they know I lack)

I’ve bubbles here, robust and thick
enough to break a hockey stick
I puff them out with my short breath
These quivering rainbow balls of death

I hear a snort, a chortling yelp 
then realize that it’s myself
Sitting upright in the bed,
a warrior’s scarf around my head 

They still play hockey in the dark
Still cavort and shout and bark
I chase them back with bubbles fat
Sometimes I wield a nerf foam bat

The score gapes wider than before
But I’ll not be frightened anymore