Critter Haiku

Two tentative big-eared deer tiptoe in the pasture,

a newborn brown baby calf, tall as my knee:

Spring sprinkles my world with love.

Hear Me Roar

[image from google]

Those were the days,

my friend,

when we burst out of 

our polyester pants

and domestic straitjackets,

grew our hair long,

sang "Hit the Road, Jack"

at the top of our lungs,

and realized:

We are People too,

this is not fair.

(He said,

kicking over 

the stack of Ms. magazines 

disdainfully,

"We were all right 

till you started thinking 

you were a Person.")

Those were the years

when

the words of Desiderata,

"You are a child of the universe.

...you have a right to be here"

made me cry,

because I had never

realized that truth

before.

Those were the years

when the women raged

and the men grew silent,

when the status quo buckled,

and the 50's were

 Most Definitely Over.

We felt the "click"

of the Problem That Had No Name,

when The Feminine Mystique

hit our parched throats

like a cool drink in the desert,

like a map made in Braille

for the unsighted.

Those were the years

when the hobbled

burst free and flew,

exhilarating swoops

through a new landscape

  of women,

when

Ms. magazine

liberated me

from my prison,

and I was never

the same again.

Those were the days.

Hear me roar.

Last night I caught Oprah's interview with Gloria Steinem, still so beautiful. It so took me back to the 70's, those years of flinging off the shackles.

Your Gift to the World

photo by the very talented Susie Clevenger

At Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads, Susie Clevenger's wonderful photos are offered to inspire our Muse......this one will go very nicely with my morning thoughts today. Please check out the site, as many very gifted poets will be writing to this prompt. 

Do you have a secret dream,

a talent, a passion, and

a voice within that longs to follow it?

Do you harbor a gift,

but think everyone else's needs

are more important than yours,

so you set it aside,

day after day

until there is Time,

but there never is?

There comes a day

when our fear of unworthiness

to follow our passion

is exceeded 

by the pain

of not doing so.

When that day comes:

give yourself permission

to dive in,

Lift Off

and Experience

the Joy

of giving that gift

to the world.

There is a well known quote I am  remembering:  I believe Jesus said it, and the Gospel of Thomas recorded it: "If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." At the end of our life, we wont regret not doing more chores or not being busy enough - we would regret all the poems we should have written and didnt, or all the paintings we should have painted. They will be our legacy. 

I thank all of you for stopping by to read my words and leave comments. I was writing in utter isolation before I found this wonderful online community, and my poems had slowed to a trickle. You applied the water of your words and gave new wings to my pen. I am so very grateful.

Woe Is I

Woe is I, when I take a few photos and notice 
my dog is better looking than I am.
But that's okay. When I was her age, 
I was, too! Hee hee.

Good Morning, Starshine in the Phillipines

Kids, this morning this song was in my head and when I looked on youtube, there was this one by the original London cast of Hair singing to the film clip of the Phillipines, where Jon's wife,  my wonderful daughter, Zenny,  is from.  Zenny, this one's for you!

Neck Socks

[google image]

Wild Woman

has Thyroid Neck,

everything sort of

melting down,

like a fat candle

set out too long

in the sun.

Like the Spanx lady,

she figures she could

make a million

if she invented

Neck Socks.

If You Are Reading This Poem

Adrienne Rich wrote the first poem with a similar first line, (I Know You Are Reading This Poem), which can be found here. And over at Real Toads Ruth, of Turtle Memoir, recently blew us away with her tribute to Adrienne, a poem patterned after Ms. Rich's poem. Both poems really spoke to me. (Do check them out, they are both astounding works of art). But the title took me somewhere else. I imagined my kids reading my poems after I am gone, and wanted to see what I could produce in another direction, with the borrowing of this title.


If you are reading this poem,
some distant day 
in the years ahead,
then I am gone,
passed into the corridors of time
and memory,
my voice and cackle silenced,
but still to be found
through all these words
I've left behind.


Will you read them?
Will you finally begin
to understand
this wayfarer,
plodding pilgrim,
who slogged through swamps
but also soared, at times,
through the bluest of skies,
always looking up
to count the clouds,
to nod my kinship to trees
with their dancing branches,
a pilgrim whose feet
stayed on the ground
but whose heart so often
tried to fly free
of its moorings.


Take this book.
Go sit beside the riverbank
and turn each page,
where I have recorded
the moments of joy
and heartbreak,
of love for this suffering planet
and its confused humanity.
Listen to the song of the river
that companioned me 
through my last years,
whose voice was surrogate 
for my beloved too-far-from-me sea,
my heart always keening
for the cry of the gull,
the smell of  sea-salt and fog,
the sight of that long sandy beach
stretching ahead of me to Forever.


You may notice
the twinned themes
of gratitude and grief,
reflect upon the rocky road
and all the losses-
so many starting overs
with scarcity of resources,
but no shortage 
of indomitable will.


In later years
my shoulders became 
less able to bear the weight
of all that had been lost
at such great cost.
Grief finally caught me 
by the throat and
made me pay 
for all the times
I stayed too strong
to grieve and, finally,
I shed a century 
of accumulated tears
that could no longer
be denied.
I grieved it all:
my childhood,
my youth that fell into brutal hands,
my store by the sea, my livelihood,
my trust, all gone, and years more
to recover.
Once more starting over from scratch,
as I would several times again.


Mid-life, one glorious leap
to the wild west coast
and ten ecstatic years of joy
in the fulfillment of my dream.


Know that those ten years are golden
in my memory and that,
in those years,
I experienced all that life could be.


I grieved my leaving of the sea,
the decade of making do with so much less
and, finally, and hardest of all,
my wolf-dog.
With his passing, 
the last link to 
those glorious times
was gone,
along with the one creature 
on this earth
who had loved me
completely.


One year of tears, and more,
filling my rowboat 
to the point of capsizing,
faster than I could bail,
as old griefs hopped aboard
the new and finally 
found release.


Yes, there have been many losses,
and many making do's.
But always, too, 
there has been
thankfulness,
for all that is,
for all that there has been.
Remember, if you will,
that I had a valiant heart,
an insistence on hope.
Quote my oft-repeated refrain that,
as long as there were blue skies
and God's green earth,
I had everything I most needed
and considered myself
wealthy beyond compare.


Remember my unceasing gratitude
for life's beauty,
for eyes with which to see it,
for feet to walk me across the forest floor
and for my great love, the song of the sea,
which showed my soul a vastness of vision
it never could have encompassed
on its own.


If you are reading this poem,
you may wish that we had talked more
about the real stuff,
didn't leave so much unsaid.
But never worry.
In the heart and in one's spirit,
as we increase in wisdom,
one knows what is intended,
one understands everything
and lets go of the small wounds 
and disappointments
and the big,
under the over-arching canopy 
of comprehending
that every soul mine touched
while I was here
was meant to find me.
Each child who came to 
life through me
was meant to be my child
and, through each one of you, 
I grew in different ways
that were possible only through
having been your mom.


Some souls have 
a more difficult passage;
such has been ours
on this planet.
But in one lifetime,
I feel like 
I have lived
at least ten lives,
each life one decade long.
In each, I grew and changed
and, always, I was moving forward.


Finally, if you are reading this poem,
know "there is peace
that surpasses understanding". 
Towards the end, one forgets
all the pain,
and remembers mostly the good:
the laughter, the sunsets,
the glorious adventure,
the pilgrimage,
the growth and the glory.
One remembers the love
and those one has loved
and forgets all the might-have-beens,
in the compassion of understanding
that nothing could possibly 
have happened
any differently,
given my beginnings,
and there came a time
when I would not have had it
any other way.


If you are reading this poem,
put this book down now,
and do me one final favor:
Look around you. Just look.
What do you see?
Are you sitting by the shore at sunset?
Are you on a forest trail, leaning against 
the comforting trunk of an ancient cedar?
Are you by the river,
listening to the roar of the rapids,
waiting for the salmon to arrive?
Turn your eyes around you 
in a complete circle.
Love all that you see.


Look at it all
with brand new eyes.
Look at it, for me.