Poems

through a stultifying daze of cloned hours
I drag my crippled sense of wonder
pull myself forward on one or another
task to be done, the day's highlights
breakfast
facebooking
a quick graphics job
dropping off the recycling
routine becomes distraction
until distraction is routine
and the original purposes
are lost in the shuffle
of feet and
diced by
the blinking
of eyes

If there was a defining moment in my childhood,
It was the day I found my mother's typewriter
And the stack of onionskin paper next to it
Words in that elegant font that now seems so
Affected but back then it was all we had.
The clatter ding zip of line after line.

Short poems of one or two stanzas
Clever and sad, a mirror of her life of poverty
and laughter. Poems about her children,
Her mother, her fights with the church
Essays about her father, her return to college
As a mother of eight, as a housewife in the sixties.

She was my Erma Bombeck, she was my Dorothy Parker
She was Lucille Ball and Imogene Coca
A stone faced comic, a hapless romantic
Her singing style comparable to Jimmy Durante
Though in her mind, Pearl Bailey was her sister.
If you are going to fantasize, go all the way.

I wanted to be as good as she was
That's all I ever really wanted
Out of my literate efforts
To be compared favorably to an unpublished housewife
Who wrote in her basement after
Dinner while her children did the dishes.

A paisley black butterfly
Visits a sun shaded porch
Provides fluttered greetings
Before resting in pale lime eaves
Accompanied by a bright green gecko
I wonder what they thought
Of our discussion of love and politics
Late bloomers come to love
Appreciative of every instant
Of shared hours and days
Incredulous at our good fortune
Politics on the other hand
More comedic than serious
In this silly candidacy season
Unhinged from sense or morals
In the meantime butterfly and gecko
Bide their time in afternoon shadow

A riding mower buzzes on the sun filled lawn
Carefully watched by curved egrets
With graceful necks and long legs poised
To take advantage of grass cuttings insect chaos
A bladed pied piper for feathered strutters
In their white finery soon joined by doves
Come to enjoy the festival of seeds spread
By the gardeners bustling machine

faces mean everything to us
the faces of our parents
turned toward us

or away from us
the faces of our children
wet with tears, laughing
or frightened, turning
to offer a cheek to be kissed

when a prayer goes up
it is like that offering:
an open-hearted hope
for benediction

which is that sun
shining on our faces
that reminder
that we matter
that we live