You need a chill pill
is the pronouncement from my children
when the list in my head
Unravels,
when the sound of my nagging voice
irritates even me.
I picture this make-believe pill
blue and icy–
Swallowed, it would cool down
all the heat inside you
and possibly tint your lips
a calm lavender
so every time you looked in the mirror
your brain would remind you, Chill.
A poem written in response to the latest writing prompt on one of my favorite sites, Poets Online http://poetsonline.org/ Unfortunately, I neglected to notice the expiration date for prompt, which always happens with the contents of my refrigerator too, so I should be used to this by now—
Frost, out walking in his woods
choosing his words and ways
tells us all a poem should
but more than the poet ever could
caught up in his rhyming daze.
Was it, as one teacher said,
a monumental choice?
Or, as another one read,
does it mean we’ll all end up dead
and all paths are the same in the poet’s voice?
Or, as I suspect,
all the difference was the phrase
that caught the poet round the neck,
led him to shuffle the words in his deck
leaving us on this tangled trek, wondering where the truth lays.
I’ve traveled with them for years. I started as a high-wire act. Back then, it was nothing to fly. All I needed was the applause, the appreciative Gasps from tiny faces, far below.
One misstep and that was done. No comparisons to getting back on horses or bicycles could bring me back to that easy dance with risk.
I’ve been the juggler, too. So many balls in the air I could only keep going if I never set one down or counted how many were in the air and always, always kept up a mad caffeine hum.
I’ve been the girl in sequins, holding perfectly still as a man spun me around on a wheel and threw knives and missed by inches, most days.
But now? Jobs are limited for a woman my age. They need a ticket-taker, a fortune-teller, and someone to dip the apples in that red, red candy and wrap them in nuts and plastic to sell with the cotton candy. In another decade or two I’ll only be fit to sweep the peanut shells off the dirt floor.
These are the ringmaster’s offers. Danger free ways to pass the rest of your time here.
Or—
The ringmaster’s eyes flick to the side, to the tent door flapping in a high wind.
Whenever I think of moving away, choosing a different life, another thing happens inside this small town. At halftime, the men and boys head back to the kitchen for more chicken wing dip and stromboli and chocolate truffles shaped like tiny footballs. Only the women stay with Beyonce, our mouths hanging open, all of us reminiscing about the year it was Springsteen.
Outside, snow keeps falling hard. And despite the many mistakes I’ve made, this is where I raised my children. So even now, in the middle of the storm, none of us is far from home.
There are stacks of paper—
agendas, plans, scores, data
to show we were here.
We sit all day in meetings
mouths moving, hearts failing,
minds spinning frantically, spirits on lockdown
as we carefully step
around each of the thousand truths
clothed as teenagers
who wander the halls
outside our closed door.
Again, this morning ritual
the alarm, the awkward scramble for the snooze button
so I can hurry after the tail of that last dream
before it slips out the window.
But now the door between worlds is drifting open
and I wonder if we need milk or what day it is or remember
an early morning meeting requiring coffee and donuts and what flavor
donuts and the real world
has wound itself around me again, like a cat
rubbing against your ankles.
I try to wake just enough to shoo it away
but it’s too late, that other world is gone again
Except for the certainty that it included elephants
and lace.
I intended to read your poems
certain they were full of
Delights and shadows.
However—
Yesterday, my friend snatched your book from the table
Not, sadly, because she is a lover of forthright poetry
but because your book was the perfect shape
to hold the yarn she unspooled
in a determined attempt
to teach me to make a ribbon scarf.
Ted, my enthusiasm for the project was minimal at first
but now this odd-looking yarn full of webbed bits of glitter
holds you firmly closed
and the only way to get to the heart-or even the surface
of your words is to
knit
my
way
there.
The good news is
when I arrive
I’ll have a scarf to keep me warm.
And maybe this is how poetry should be taught from now on:
Anticipation will hone the senses
and we’ll have made something useful of our journey.
What we can bring to the poem is lovely now—
Time, woven and warmed by our own hands.
Some daughters drift away. Like fog, there then
lifting then gone. Others need a sharper break.
Something swift and cold and painful.
Every girl has her way of learning to leave.
Fits and starts. Till they can walk
away and back again,
grow confident that after every turn
towards home or away
they can turn around again. This takes so much practice.
We spent last weekend, mother and daughter,
doing nothing much. In sweaters and soft socks.
Ice cream for dinner. Cafe breakfasts with friends.
Popcorn and old TV shows. Mostly, music playing.
All night we heard crashes outside the windows.
Icicles, built over long winter weeks,
melted and fell from the roof.
January thaw. In the morning, for one day,
we could see the grass again,
so green and welcome I wanted to cheer, to bend down
and kiss all growing things in thanks,
for the reminder that this frozen world will pass, in time.
January and everyone I know
who regrets
all they ever ate and drank–
which includes everyone I know–
is on a cleanse diet. Like the one person
who never gets the flu, I though I was immune
since each magazine’s Earnest Diet
begins with a No-Coffee rule,
the whim of a madman.
But all those photos next to the recipes
finally captured me too—
dark purple radicchio, orange squash, lemon yellow,
bright green leaves I can’t pronounce the names of–
It’s marketing genius on their part,
all these fruits and vegetables,
to look the way they do
when our eyes are starved
hungry for red, craving green,
yearning to be filled
in this winter world cleansed of color.
Red sky at night
may be sailor’s delight,
but that old poem
fell apart this morning.
The sky is streaked hot pink
Its only warning to sailors is:
Look Out–
This is a day designed
for nine-year-old girls
who giggle.
there's a poem in every day
aka: The Happy Bookers
Artist
I came to where you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.--John Ashberry, "The New Higher"
custom poems on vintage typewriters
Poems by Mary Kendall
A Ronka Poetry Practice Since 2014
Living in the moment
