Who I Am

I'm red hair 

but not its quick temper,

except sometimes.

I'm freckles

that trace a map

of other lands on my face.

I'm muscular legs

that run me where I want

and take me to unfrequented places.

I'm fingers curled over

a keyboard capturing words

black on white.

I'm hungry mind seeking words,

filled by reading them,

yearning to learn new ones, 

playing games of them.

I'm celtic mix that savors

family, gathers it, celebrates it,

cheers it on, helps fix it.

I'm broken one

at home with other broken ones,

on their side, arms around their shoulders.

I'm woman in love

with other women, 

with bone feel for our 

persistent plight.

I'm woman in forty- year love 

with a man, a singular

bright light man who

shows me clear blue sky.

I'm mother, brave

enough to bear a girl child

and raise her to be brave.

I'm grandmother to two dear ones who

bring me dragons and build new worlds.

I'm threshold ready to expand. 

I'm wise elder to my tribe

and beyond.

Posted for Brian, who's hosting at Poetry Jam and asked us to write about who we are.

Fair Bones

The good thing about bones

is there can be no comparisons,

who's thinner, who's better looking or better dressed.

We can tell males from females, of course,

the angles of bones and width of spaces,

but expectations don't hinge on that

or judgements formed.

The problem with bones

is the lack  

of skin to hold us in, 

the vulnerability to breaks,

the hunger

that can never be stilled 

and the question we debate endlessly

of contact with the living.

We know things 

and want to pass them on,

especially to those 

who share our marrow

but the how 

eludes us.

That's what bones seek:
to be wrapped in skin again, to talk, to be heard.


Gay Reiser Cannon has us writing about "fair" over at the dVerse Pots Pub, Meeting the Bar. She gave various definitions but since I'm on a bone kick, I chose fair as "having a disposition free of favoritism or bias" for this and found bones to meet that standard in an exceptional way.

Bone Dreams

I dreamt last night.

It answered my question

about whether the dead dream.

Must mean dreams come from bones

not brains, bones as scaffolding 

for psych and soul with the DNA of generations 

carried deep within 

bones' marrow.

But about that dream,

some ancestral reverberation 

straight from the marrow,

grandfathers galloping through,

priests stealing things from children,

a girl rising up to accuse the priest,

she took things back too, wanted to reclaim

her grandfather's treasures, 

hand-carved.

That's what you can do with bones:

stand, yell, take, hold, dream.

Inspired by Grace at dVerse Poets Pub who wrote about The Book of the Dead Man by Marvin Bell and asked us for a poem written by one dead. The link has expired but here it is posted for Mama Zen with Words Count in the Garden who wrote of the circus and requested 90 words or less about which performer you are. This is skeleton man, or dead man walking.