A new published poem plus

 I’m pleased that the Story Circle Journal has published my new poem, “Writing My Truths” in response to their submission topic Silence. I certainly recommend my women writer friends to look into joining the Story Circle Network: for women with stories to tell. This group has been very supportive of my work.

Here’s a little description from its website:

The Story Circle Network is an international not-for-profit membership organization made up of women who want to document their lives and explore their personal stories through journaling, memoir, autobiography, personal essays, poetry, drama, and mixed-media.

Writing My Truths

I have a new room.

I write in there alone.

I sit at my draftsman table,

looking out the bay window

to the garden.

I see the trunks

of the three palm trees,

the small cement pond,

and the ferns swinging

their leaves behind it.

Sometimes a bird comes

by for a drink,

surfing along the top

of the pool.

Yet, I don’t open the window

to hear its song.

I want to hear

the songs my son

once played before he died.

They are my muse.

His memory

lets my soul

listen to the words

in my head. It allows me

to put my fingers

on the keyboard

and write my truths

in silence.

And since this is a poetry post, here’s one I wrote when my husband was three weeks post hip replacement surgery. He’s now going on nine weeks and continually improving.

Hip Hip Hooray

Just over

three weeks ago

my husband’s hip was

replaced by titanium and plastic.

But you’d never know

anything that violent –

sawing and hammering

a long rod

into his femur

to replace the old

with the new –

ever happened.

He goes for walks

without a walker or cane,

the home health nurse

has bid him adieu,

and now back to work,

he drives himself.

The trainer at the gym

puts him through his paces

twice a week,

and he only needs Advil

in small doses

to quell occasional pain.

A wide streak of black and blue

from his butt to his foot

is all that’s left.

Jane Shore's poem about a tree

This is definitely another opinion about how to care and feed and trim a tree. I love this poem. Wish I had written it. Counter-point to my tree-trimming rant.

Willow
by Jane Shore


It didn't weep the way a willow should.
Planted all alone in the middle of the field
by the bachelor who sold our house to us,
shoulder height when our daughter was born,
it grew eight feet a year until it blocked
the view through the first-, then the second-
story windows, its straggly canopy obstructing
our sunrise and moonrise over Max Gray Road.
I gave it the evil eye, hoping lightning
would strike it, the way a bolt had split
the butternut by the barn. And if leaf blight
or crown gall or cankers didn’t kill it, then
I'd gladly pay someone to chop it down.
My daughter said no, she loved that tree,
and my husband agreed. One wet Sunday—
husband napping, daughter at a matinee
in town—a wind shear barreled up the hill


so loud I glanced up from my mystery
the moment the willow leaned, bowed,
and fell over flat on its back, roots and all,
splayed on the ground like Gulliver.
The house shook, just once.
Later, when the sun came out, neighbors
came to gawk; they chain-sawed thicker
branches, wrapped chains around the trunk,
their backhoe ripped out pieces of stump
and root as if extracting a rotten tooth.
I'm not sorry that tree is gone. No one
ever sat under it for shade or contemplation.
Yet spring after spring it reliably leafed out.
It was always the last to lose its leaves
in fall. It should have died a decade ago
for all the grief I gave it, my dirty looks
apparently the fuel on which it thrived.
It must have done its weeping in private.
But now I can see the slope of the hill.
Did my wishful thinking cast a spell?
I was the only one on earth who saw it fall.

A spring poem

I love Robert Lee Brewer's poetry prompts. He gives one out once a week except during poem a day challenges in April and November. I don't always do them on time or in order, but I eventually get through them. I guess he prompted us to write a spring poem at first bud. I'm a little late, but here it is.

I lay on the Pilates reformer

and push on the foot bar,

in and out, in and out.

My feet, first in the second position

at the corners of the footbar

then in first position at the center

with my heels locked tightly together,

I keep pushing and pulling.

Two red and one green springs

determine the weight

for these exercises.

And as my legs move back and forth

the springs squeak,

they yearn to stop,

they want to do no more work.

But I keep going.

I don’t listen to their moans

never giving those springs

a rest.

Tree trimming rant - a new poem

Butcher

The tree trimming was yesterday.

And with his long-handled ax

he hacked the trees

stripping off leaves and

giant birds of paradise

until only bare branches and trunks

were left.

His onslaught hit the ground

leaving broken and bent petals,

the red succulents flattened

and spent.

Of course it got its intended result –

Light pouring through.

I can’t wait for the shade

to come back.

Coral Tree Before

 Coral Tree Today 

(2 weeks after the hack job)

 Poor Eucalyptus and Palms

Paul and his brother, Ben

Although our boys were very different from one another – Paul was a brainy musician and computer nerd and Ben is a brainy athlete and actor – they always loved each other very much. They respected each other’s differences and talents.

I’ve gathered some photos of them together. How could I not celebrate the brothers during this month of celebrating Paul’s life?

 A Poem That Wants To Be for Ben*

They are always about Paul, my dead son

the one who died of his own free will

so many years ago.

My hordes of poems go on like a mantra:

his mania, depression, his delusions, escapades,

his suicide. They never fail to mention

his piercing blue eyes, the little half smile

that never showed his teeth, the smoky smell

and the way he slumped over the piano like the thinker

as he played.

Paul and his death have been my muse.

Ben’s living eyes brim over with love

as he looks down and folds me in his arms.

He is the son who says

I love you

every time we speak.

His smiles are wide

even when he faces disappointment

in his own life.

This son is the reason I choose to live.

Why isn't he the reason I choose to write?

*From my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On (Lucky Press LLC, 2011).