that's mrs. mediocrity to you

yesterday my cat
dropped a grackle at my feet
alive, but injured

and i tried to save it
(to no avail)

i lifted it gently and
placed it beneath the yellow
lilies, offering shelter and
food and water and also
a projection of hope

and the bird looked up at me
frightened and resigned,
and then together, we waited

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later, i carried the body
away and noticed, in the way
humans do,
that it was heavier in death
than in life

as if its spirit had somehow
managed to counteract gravity,
at least a little

and i realized
we have it all wrong,
this thing called grief
our underlying fear
of being forgotten

because the world
always remembers

it’s just that we
finally

 forget ourselves

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I took this photo a few weeks ago, and it made me laugh, Mr. Grackle looking all fierce.

I’d like to think that’s the look he’s giving NaughtyKitten™ just now.

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The crows and I have tea every morning, rain or shine, smile or sadness, awake or still mired in dreams. I am drawn to the world outside my tiny window, a world of birds painted bright on a backdrop of trees. The shape-shift of shadows as we pass through the seasons offers up a daily dose of impermanent art in one corner, the place where no one ever sits.

Soon, I will be out of doors as much as I am in, and these walls will talk to each other. I wonder, often, what they say behind my back. Sometimes I catch a whisper when I walk around the corner, or crash through the door with my arms full of groceries, and hush! becomes an echo of everything I’ve missed.

A house is always telling stories, but you never know which are fact and which are fiction, so you label them all tall tales and let them bob around up high, near the ceiling, and watch the spiders eat them for breakfast.

Late at night, sometimes, those same stories will drip down the walls like tears, and I’ll remember a day long past. I’ve lived in this house almost 30 years, more than half my life. There are words shoved deep into every crack and crevice, and all the dust is made of promises. It’s a tiny house, and someday I think it will burst with the memory of all the lives that have marched on through, in life and in books and in my imagination.

I never thought I’d spend all these years in one place. Never thought I’d still be staring out these same windows with the eyes of an almost-old woman.

We’ve grown up together, this house and these birds and this creaky laughing body of mine.

Beneath this sky that holds the sun that draws these ever-changing shadows.

It’s my job to sit here, to watch and to listen.

The crows and I have tea every morning.

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This is what I search for, again and again and again, the beauty in the ugliness, the pinwheel starburst of falling dead blooms, the light from a window reflecting nothing but snow, the pain in my neck and the crick in my back that reminds me how much I am alive.

The persistence of water, always finding a way. The cracks and wrinkles and fissures that speak of life. No surface remains unmarred, unless it’s perpetually hidden.

Today’s new coat of snow hides the old dirty version. Another layer of time added to the heap, a temporary stratum calendar.

Later, we’ll watch it melt and forget that it ever existed.

The river at our feet proving nothing more than motion.

Snow crystal transformed into sun glint.

Always rising.

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the tangled webs

we weave

form the beauty

of life

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all the memories
become a jumble
of forgotten chances

paint peels
and the sky
blinks

clouding birds
with gun flint
steel

a southern hurricane
whispers blindly
through the poplars
i planted

one day long ago
when i could not
say your name

now those same trees
shade our bedroom
telling secrets to a
clear clown canvas

and i paint circles
on your chest
with knobby-edged
fingers

wondering
if the rings
at the heart of those
tall twin trunks
are made of time
or gold

or if it matters

shadows dance
as leaves shimmy shake
across the surface of a lake
we never managed
to explore

and we watch the sun
set down color
like a promise

or a platter
filled with food
from a picnic
never taken

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some days
my heart breaks four thousand times
and that’s all before
i open my eyes

heartache is the farmer of contentment
planting seeds he knows have little chance
of bearing fruit

if you want 40 plants you sow 68 seeds
and if you’re lucky you’ll end up with 50

think too much and you’ll always have just enough

but no one ever said happiness
was a permanent state
and no one ever said
survival was a given

we stand in a field of black soil
and cry when our feet get muddy

the rain will wash you clean
as long as you don’t run
and sometimes the sky has to cry
just the same way a mother
has to worry

have you ever tallied the scars
on the tree that shades
your bedroom?

missing limbs
broken branches, gashes
peeling bark

sap runs slowly through the veins
of existence

but every spring
green
new growth
insists on piercing the cloud
blocking your view
of the sun

and four thousand leaves
never seem
overwhelming

until tomorrow
when they’ll fuel the flame
you find impossible
to douse

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Open Link Night.
Join us!

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you would be my after nest
and every song would contain the name
of forgiveness

the sky would be my blanket
and my window
stars would glitter on my skin
clouds would whisper white lies

hope would never
crack open
sing for supper
fall from grace

and each breeze
would brush my skin
with the promise
of wings

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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there is only the life of it

waking

stretching

holding court with monsters and jesters

jokers and cards

lightdark yinyang goodevil

all run together in the dye
you wash your clothes with

and you serve muddy grey soup
for supper

because it sustains you

but dawn always faces uphill
until you step to the left and

free

fall

into another subliminal sunset

tumbling down

down

down

into a play that shows you the dreams

you’ve already

forgotten

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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they dressed her in an avalanche of neutral
andrew wyeth beige and winslow homer grey
winter sunrise and stormy mountain

forced her arms into deep black holes
wrapped her in yards of starless night sky
tied neatly with ribbons of pavement

her crown of thorns was a veil of apathy
covering over emerald eyes and hiding ruby lips
and her tall boots were caked
with cement

as if the sky could ever be tethered
as if a heart could be covered in silence
as if the hem of her crazy quilt skirt
wouldn’t always find a way to show through

no matter how they tried
her name was color

azure lavender
blue chartreuse
forest crimson

her mind was a hurricane of freedom
born again every third sunrise
with a litany of o’keeffe orange
and pollock purple

bleeding out from the tear
in her side

a permanent fountain
of dye

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My window to the world.

Yesterday, Pepe the quiet kitty sat on my bed all day and
watched icicles melt.

My dog, who usually spends the day next to Pepe,
spent the day in my studio instead, on the floor next to me.
He’s a scaredy-cat (dog?) and thought the sky was falling.

Truth is, it’s been falling all winter,
but it’s hard to explain the difference to a dog.

Just now, the sun is shining, though later,
it’s supposed to start raining, with a chance of flood.

I’m talking about the weather again.

I see my reflection
echo
stretch behind me into eternity.

February’s mirror.

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