that's mrs. mediocrity to you

Comfort zones. They get tighter as we get older, much like that favorite pair of jeans. We get set in our ways, and we like that, mostly, we find comfort in routine and pattern and the familiar.

But life is too complicated to allow us to stay in any one place for very long. Just when we settle in and start feeling all warm and fuzzy, something happens, something changes, and we have to learn how to move through life all over again. And I’m okay with that. It keeps things interesting at the very least.

We go through phases. And they’re called phases because they are slices of time that have a beginning and an end.

The leaves on the oakleaf hydrangea just outside my studio window are just about to open. Dozens of buds waiting for just the right moment. Each one unique, if you look closely, yet all part of the same mother plant. Yes, that’s a metaphor. A nice reminder to myself this morning, a sunny moment in a week that’s been filled with clouds both literal and figurative.

I am learning new things. It is making my brain hurt, which happens as you get older. My body is holding me hostage with hormones, and I keep reminding myself that I am becoming. Moving on. Getting ready to open to a new season of life.

Pfft. That makes it sound pretty, and quite honestly, it’s not. But it’s going to happen just the same, and I’m going to embrace all of it, even the rage. (Yes, there is rage.)

Maybe you lose something as the years go by, bits of innocence and wonder, but you don’t forget they exist.

I think.

Maybe I’ll find my way back, or perhaps I’ll end up in a different place altogether. Yes. I’m pretty sure that’s the answer.

But I’m still asking questions. And I’m still going to open, even when it is painful.

Because there is sun to feel on my face, and a garden to plant, again, and all these people to love with the heart of a crone.

Reasons enough to spread my arms wide.

Reasons enough.

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buy me an election and i will sing a song
or crow at least
about
wide avenues and what we all deserve

as if deserving
was a right handed down
by a king in midas disguise
and you think that’s a joke

but i saw him once
touch a baby and just after that
a dark weapon
and neither one has the nerve
now to tarnish

and no one’s listening

no

one’s listening

there is music in every
hallway
but the lights are out

and we are all pretending
not to hear

we are all too busy
being busy
fighting
for the corner office
in a building
shaped by vaults
and steal

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month: Day 28
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is PAD’s write an important _________ poem.

the way it’s always been, you rolled in knots
on the couch of digression and me
caught in some web created
by midnight

we think
this is not the way it’s all supposed to be
but there are no rules

you see

empty

and i mark increment
knitting versions of safety net
and woolen boot

protection from frost and sudden
burn but
there’s always the forest

ripped out and rooted
redone and repaired
ribald and raucous

when the wind grows wings
to beat hard against cages
built to surround us

or keep us

or display
the truth we see
in windows

late at night

she threads
a third
needle

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month: Day 23
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is PAD’s write a poem that mentions footwear.
Hey, there’s a boot in there, somewhere.

you never said and i
never knew
and together
we question
the honesty of memory

i’m old enough now
to remember
how much
i’ve forgotten

and you are
young enough
to believe
in omniscience

you resent
and i smile
and we both get
to the same place
eating dinner at this table
set
with borrowed china

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month: Day 20
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is PAD’s write a poem of what goes unsaid.

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outrage is the new black
and offended is breathing
down freedom’s neck

swimming in a sea of authentic
epic
mindfulness

and the people that rule us
are confident in anarchy
or ambivalent on war
or curiously human

and the sun keeps shining
insecure and self-conscious
thinking we expect
something more like moon’s mystery
or standing still
or tenderness

when all we really want
is (r)evolution

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month: Day 10
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is PAD’s pick an emotion.

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Alice holds a doll in tired hands. I want
to smile each time I walk past,
say hello,
but tears always well and my mouth
turns down with the pain
of perpetual forecast.

“This feels like prison,”
someone whispers, and I
don’t think it was me but
old Joe’s eyes dart straight up to mine
and hold me with watery challenge,
though neither one of us knows
who spoke.

I don’t want to walk this gauntlet
disguised as hallway or write
these words
pretending to be poetry,
but here I am
scooting by with my purple sharpie
concealed in one hand.

Hope sits in my purse
next to car keys and kleenex and
crumpled receipts,
though I’ve paid for nothing
and everyone here
will be sure to testify.

Proof.

Of life and legs
moving,
always moving,

away

away

away

to places already been
and never seen.

Away.

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Lately, I think about listening. How bad we are at it, how everything keeps getting louder, how we talk over each other, and even, ourselves.

We’ve forgotten how to be alone with silence.

We have so many things to do, so many places to be, so many lives to fit into life.

I spend time with my 89-year-old friend and everything slows down. She doesn’t hear so well, and our communication becomes a pantomime of gesture and shouting. I spend time with my 8-month-old granddaughter and see the world with fresh eyes. Everything is new and exciting and wondrous. Everything slows down further, because we have to take time to relish each new moment and every fresh discovery.

In both cases, I find myself listening in new ways.

At night I read, turn the ever-present television off, and fall into stories. My house whispers its own secrets and my mind takes off in new directions.

I try to think of the last time I did nothing, and can’t remember. I’m always looking for something: entertainment or enrichment or connection or experience.

I crave silence, but when I find it, I fill the air with sound.

I want to remember something, the feel of roots or earth or security. And promises.

I build fires to conquer the cold and my need for something primal.

Even the darkest of months offers sympathy.

A heartbeat is the sound of existence. A symphony of seduction. A sonata of solace.

I find myself straining to hear.

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Listen.

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on the quiet colors
of a cold grey sad day morning
.
the scent of winter
crisp and silent
creeping up behind me

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even the stars
were off kilter
last night
orion laying low
on the horizon
the southern cross
trying to kiss
cassiopeia
.
my feet were on the ground
but my heart kept floating
.
ursa major
poised to capture
every tear
.

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I stand on these acres of history, long fallow fields of tears forgotten and brittle reminders of years blown by, remembering how once we grew green shoots of conflict and the next spring plowed them under, making food for the forest of memory we drive through with broken blade, always turning earth, always searching for what we’ve buried. But the worm always works alone, adding air and rich casting to this hard-baked, clay-caked soil, choked with rock and seed and ancient bone. This is my home,  this place where dinner is served at noon and the sky is always hungry. I pose on one foot in the shade of a tree that neither of us ever mentions, a scarecrow of deliverance for the red cardinal who lands on my shoulder and feeds me the coldest hour. Our nests have become identical, and you laugh as you toss broken frame and bent missive in a fit of tidy redemption. There are no berries here, no reward for existing. There is only wind and the silence of everything, whistle warning us through each night.

my skin crackles with
growth and tick tocking question
unanswered roots entwine

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Joining in over at dVersePoets for Haibun Monday.

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