POETRY
© 2021
The Map of ‘HERE TO THERE’
— lay tattered in her hands, taped and stapled together with advice and footnotes, bulky directions scribbled into margins, a hodge-podge collage of the jumbled routes of HERE TO THERE Instructions: (crossed-out and half-erased, re-written over so many times as to nearly be illegible) “of precisely which way is the best to travel, or in which season, or type of weather.” Many had ideas of how best to traverse the terrain. Many pretended they knew what they were doing. Sometimes she would pretend too. At times she would begin to cry, “But only out of frustration,” she told herself and others. For after she had arrived at the place she had thought she should go/ “had been advised to go to”, she often no longer remembered the route back home, or what she had wanted to do there in the first place. And so, with nothing more than a trail of wadded-up handkerchiefs and smudgy, ink-stained fingerprints to show for her efforts, she would re-examine her map, passing over “missed-directions”, making roundabouts into the Valleys of Regret and Despair, before eventually making her way back through the criss-crossed roads through Mounts Hope and Promise. And each time she would finish her latest journey, she would add-in her “own notes” into the margins, crossing over and out the ones that came before her with New Instructions: (which she believed and claimed to others were) “better than the ones” left for her. A Midpoint Existence
We are three, my sister, my sister, and me, united to two, my mother, her mother, and we are the daughters, and grandmothers, and descendents and ancestors of a family that stretches out into time -- long plains of earthy clay continuum, like the hands of a six o’clock clock -- our bodies and souls hinged at its midpoint, after the past and before the future intertwined in the arms of our mothers and daughters, in braids, in threes, that come together in one tangled knot of earth and sky water and fire, united by the tears of our mothers, and the blood of our grandmothers brought into existence one by one into a bubble where we live in fear of the day when it will one day burst, leaving behind everything but our souls our souls that seem to have memories of their own implanted in the hearts of our children where they metamorphosize into beautiful long-rooted trees of life. The Reader
“Tell me something romantic”, you say, grin widening mischievously across that dimpled face, daring me to play the game, to offer a response that befits the softness of your finely manicured hands the breathless sound of your raspy laugh that lures me in as surely as any Piper’s hypnotic flute. “Your eyes are like teacups,” I say without hesitation. “I look into them and I can read the future before me. What? A look of apprehension across your doubtful face. A non-believer, I see, that scoffs at my tasseographic divinations. But I have fortune’s divine map set before me: The whites of your eyes, like small saucers. The brown specks among that ever-so-green are but tea leaves proclaiming your fate. And the reflection in your eye of my happy presence before you as sure as a reading can be, your future, my love, I hope, with me.” Thought I Knew
I thought I knew who you were, young man. Thought I could look deep within, and know everything you could offer. Thought I could read you like that exquisite map to Parma, perfectly hand-made for me. How I remember the curved-back little nonna who when I asked exclaimed, “Certo” explaining that she had “transversed” there every month for 42 years. 42 years I imagined her travelling those blustery green highways, that crinkly laugh of hers. Caressing his young, then middle-aged, then old hand with her own. Hand-in-hand, She told me, writing with curly blue Ps and and tall L’s, that the way was easy to find. Oh, how I envy her. Joyful young man of my heart I thought I knew who you were, the smell behind the pointed ridges of your ears, the feel of your always warm hand around my waist your hair slicked back, as we sit at the opera. I reach for your hand, (your touches are a cliché—electrifying, my chest getting flushed the moment I touch you) and receive a palm filled with crinkled leaves-- a crinkled misreading of your intentions. And now your uneven, mischievous smile—how it makes me singe, My mother never liked your smile. A foreshadowing of that uneven heart, she proclaims now. Trumpets blaring through my ears, the orchestra is almost too loud. “O Ridi, Pagliaccio”. My not so tall, medium-brown, and oh yes, handsome man, I thought I knew who you were. I thought you’d be different somehow. I can’t quite make you out. Are those burrs in your hair? I try to reach out for you, but it is too late. The wind blows uncertainty as the crinkly leaves fall from your hands covering the banisters below. Song for an August Moon
He told me he could see the moon out his window. It was the same moon I was seeing, but his was peering over the early evening sky atop a lake so wide it could be mistaken for a sea, watching peacefully over waves that pulled in and out across sandy, uneven beaches, kissing cliffs of jagged black rock. He asked about my moon. Where was it in the sky tonight? Mine hung over a neighbor’s two-story house, next to trees and cloudless sky. Mine heard the sound of children riding bicycles in the street and the hum of cicadas in the air. And we marveled how it could be the same moon we were both gazing at. They say the moon has her secrets. She holds the universe in her gaze. Surely she knows ours as well. She, our secret confidant, guarding our love with a solemnity reserved only for monks and people of God. Treasure Chest
I opened up my heart, and an army of marauders came aboard to pillage it. But the worst, the worst was the one who said he loved me, for he stole not only my heart, but the breath and peace within my chest, those most valuable treasures I once possessed. |