Gnawin' On It - Happy 41st Anniversary!

"They say it's hard to keep it going

When you're together for so long

They say combustion's for the youngsters

We should be glad we get along

But they don't know nothin' 'bout it

The way you love me it's a shame

'Cause there ain't nobody better

Blowin' embers to a flame."

Let's just keep gnawin' on it, Honey, ain't nobody better!

Harvest

Here in this land

where harvests really happen,

a long way from home,

this land where I now stand

and watch the gathering of grapes,

the press of olives just picked,

the harvest of gourds

that wear withering leaves like capes.

Strange that something so foreign

to my coordinates throws me back 

to where I began,

from harvest years to dawn.

A city child steeped

in one country's history

with hair and skin of another,

people in search of a land to dream deep.

And how those city ways

shaped me, formed the curve of my spine,

gave me the resolve needed for what I faced,

left me with enough for all my days.

Keep it Slow and Savor

In love, start, then keep it slow and savor.
Just kiss at first stretched out full side by side,
focus on each sensation and flavor,
keep it slow and savor.

Speak quiet words to your belov'd, confide
how love is a cherished gift, a laver,
bathed and refreshed in the ebb flow of tide

this season and next, each act a paver
building the whole for days and years 'till wide
and high is love's monument and favor.
Keep it slow and savor.


A too late Roundel for Margaret's Play it Again over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads writing for Ella's (second) Chakra prompt, so posted for Fireblossom's Open Link Monday at The Garden and (also too late) for the dVerse Poet's Pub.

Where I'm From

I'm from paved over cow paths 

leading to a central common

where modern stands side by side with

historic and holds the pride of hub to the rest.

My people came here from elsewhere

and left the map of those lands on my face

so I never quite fit, didn't look like most others.

My wandering ancestors

came from other places searching

for what they thought more important

than home, willing to make a new home

rather than live without, or who were driven

out by those who wanted what they had.

It all left its mark, so I call one place home

but search ancestral homelands to find

those left pieces of me to make me whole.

Meanwhile, my displaced people displaced others

to claim what they had, as if one could have

what another had by the wish or the taking.

My heritage is immigrant and for how long homeless?

For Poets United with the theme of Heritage Day. I took the photo in Boston during a visit in August.

This Morning

                                                                                 image by Brooke Shaden

I watched you

pulled from sleep

into the shadowland

between wake and sleep

you murmered

something indistinct

eyes still closed

against the dawn

half remembered dreams

played on your face

before today's task

list takeover

you stretched your limbs

back arched just so

when you opened your eyes

I'm the one you saw

gathering you in.


Inspired by the photography of Brooke Shaden as presented by Grace (aka Heaven) over at dVerse Poets Pub. Brooke talked about finding what you're passionate about and, after 41 years with my Honey, it was an easy answer for me.

Heavy Arms

The babe was sick when he left

but only slightly as babies do.

He was their first, a strapping boy,

thier farm was large and far from town.

He needed to fish with his neighbors 

to salt the cod and lay in stores for winter,

their open dory powered by rowing in turn

while the rest fished open seas far from shore.

When it was the young father's turn to row

his arms felt far too heavy for this task.

He knew it was a sign to direct him

and told the others to take him back.

He knew something was wrong, his wife 

had need of him. He returned to find 

his small son dead in his wife's arms.

Let me take him, May, he's gone.

He built the casket  

from the wood of his land and lay the babe inside

then carried him down the aisle 

of their church to ask final blessings. 

As he sat next to his young wife

he told her that the heft of the casket in his arms

was the same he felt in the boat,

the sign sent to bring him home.

There were no shortage of such stories in our Irish/Scottish family growing up. This is a true story of my grandparents in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia when they lost their first baby in 1914. My mother was born the following year. The photo is of my grandmother with my mother and uncle. 

For Kerry at The Garden who asked us to write about Superstition or Science. This story, like many, falls somewhere in between.

To Travel Well

If you want to travel well

you must be prepared to lose things

to lose the certitude of best ways to do things

or right ways or that anyone can know such treachery

to lose the sense of one place as the center 

holding answers for all the world

or that one language can best capture thought

so all others should wrap their tongues around right words

to lose the belief that one religion outranks others

that other beliefs are strange, misguided, unenlightened

or that one culture reigns supreme, the final answer

with keys to unlock all mysteries

if you want to travel well 

you must be prepared to gain things

to gain certitude of best as cumulative

that right energy can be forged collaboratively

to gain ardor that our world is vast and central

and needs protection so answers can be discovered in alliance

that each language builds in a unique world view

not to be neglected even if we choose a common language

to gain the belief that religion's role is to point toward the holy

and that we're all holy within a holy world superceding dogma

that each culture takes its place in the scheme of things as one piece

of the whole which together can shed light on all mysteries

to travel well one must be prepared to be ambushed

by the beauty that awaits day after day

to grow tender toward the children of each place

as they play and meet strangers and live in sometimes unimaginable 

circumstances and call it home yet stay open to travelers

ready to lose separateness and gain oneness and be our teachers in this 

it takes a fearlessness, this traveling, an open heartedness

that stands ready to call sister, to call brother, to say yes.


In response to Poetics: Travel Poetry prompt by Gabriella at dVerse Poets Pub although I missed the deadline and for Grapeling's Get Listed- September with words from "The Art of War" over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads. I used capture, neglected, ardor, energy, alliance, treachery and scheme.

Light from Darkness

I thought of something funny today and went to call you.

Since you're so newly gone, abruptly gone, I forgot

for one gift of a minute, the way I can't in night's long hours.

It's new to me since you're the first of us to go. Dad, at 98, says 

you learn to handle it after more and more deaths of loved ones, but 

I haven't mastered that detachment that doesn't succumb to

grief, doesn't get squeezed by grief's tight band,

doesn't wish for one more chance to say what I worry 

you didn't know: that I love you and miss you. Just that. Instead, 
I must trust you have peace, that you've gone from the formless dark

of death to the light described by poets and saints.


For Open Link Monday at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads.