The End is Always the Beginning

 

Written for Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Autumn

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Thank you Shay for another wonderful inspiring list!

Looking back, I realize, it all began in Autumn.

The goodbye that stung hard and cruel like a wasp in summer.  That is when I learned to smoke like a man;

not pipes nor slims, but sadness.

It is a long harsh cigar, sadness.

It can leave a rasp on the throat and the heart.

Now I am certain, if my soul could sing, it would probably sound like grackles,

loud and pestering

 lacking in the enchanting grace of doves and poppies that once filled those same lungs.

Silence has a scream that can never be quiet, and years of that sound have a way of fraying the edges and making yellow what once was white.

There is an empty chair inside me. It is mixed tweed and always perfect with a scent of roses from another time. You only sit there when I write poetry.

For regret has a way of holding on to the pain. It always remembers, like the IRS, children, and my heart.

Stepchild's Heart

 

The stepchild in me learned so much I never asked to know.

Misery has a way of sharing its cookies.

The ones that taste like circus clowns’ shoes instead of the sweet vanilla circus animal ones.

Some secrets are well known.

Others are hidden deep,

 like pennies and bauble charms at the bottom of a well.

Carelessness and wishful thinking don’t always get you too far in the right direction.

No matter who you are!

You learn that one after the fall from the trapeze, not just sitting to watch the show.

Silence was my virtue; my circus act that I knew many a man could not have done.

For I was never a spokesperson for anyone until poetry spoke to me.

Giving me gauze, tape, and scissors for a wound that should have been healed.

A hurt that should have never been.

Eventually I moved, I was gone like an Oldsmobile and a teenager at the wheel.

Singing the lyrics to Birdland by Patti Smith I loaded up my car.

Little did I know as I backed out of the drive,

I brought everything I had meant to leave behind.

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List.  This week she is featuring Cathy Day and her Book The Circus in Winter.  

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Also linking with the Muse.

Ink Has Been My Anthem

“Sometimes you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” ~ Dr. Seuss

Ink has been my anthem

And paper is the hands that hold the dead flowers I long to save.

The years have moved on as fast as a child at play,

but my heart looks back in slow motion the way a teenager heads to chores.

Yesterday held something priceless; a treasure that cannot be replaced like coins in a purse.

Each soul that spoke to my heart comes with me poised and lovely into tomorrow.

We speak of older times; the memory of birth and dying.

The conversations long since closed are re-opened like boxes after the big move.

I pull them out one by one and re-hear your voice within my heart.

Soft like a silk sheet I wrap myself in the thought of you,

and sorrow both comforts and hurts at the same time.

When I was a child, I sang to ease those pains.

Belting the same tunes like a mockingbird in October.

Voices carry and music lifts us to places our feet can no longer take us.

That is why I write poetry and that is why I sing.

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List where this week the featured writer is my lovely friend Susie! Thank you Shay for another wonderful word list!!

Also linking with the Muse.

 

The Deep End

 

Students at the H Sophie Newcomb College, New Orleans, 1929

Photograph: Edwin L Wisherd

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. ~Havelock Ellis

Always make sure you know where the deep end is when you choose to dive into life!

It can be dangerous trying to live.

So many ways to break your neck,

and even more ways lead to broken hearts.

I learned long ago that complacency is cruel!

It makes us blind to the potholes,

and forget about reasons for holding to the side.

All the dangers of the shallow end seem so far away.

The reasons we fell in love can evaporate to clouds.

So, always make sure you know where the deep end is when you choose to dive into life.

It can be dangerous trying to live,

but whatever you do, don’t stop searching!

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #225

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Lost Is a Place with Broken Wings,

 

When I was a little girl, I lost my silly star-studded sunglasses in the booth of a Big Boy restaurant in Dallas.  I still remember the feeling that hit me when I realized they were not still on my head as we got back in the car.  In tears, I begged my daddy to go back in to retrieve them, and even though he did, I still remember that distant memory vividly.  Some things no matter how small they are, stick with you like a silken slip on a July day.  The feeling of loss can have a mighty punch; one that we can never forget.

Lost is a place with broken wings

Like an injured bird where it does not belong

And once you have lingered there long enough

You forget you could fly all along

I searched for you in reflections

Not just mirrors but the eyes of the old

In their grief and brilliant memories

I heard your voice in each story told

Lost is a place with no directions

Yet signs around every bend

When you are staring hard into yesterday

Today gets blown away in the wind

I lost you one summer morning

Before winter was due to unfold

Now I only remember August

As a summer that was way too cold

For lost is a place with broken wings

Like an injured bird where it does not belong

And once you have lingered there long enough

You forget you could fly all along.

Photography by Rodney Smith

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 219

This week we are remembering a dear Muse friend Beverly who has recently passed.  Rest in peace dear Bev. 💖

Lily of the Valley

 

Photo of Julie Newmar

“The earth is sliced into furrows that seeds may burst with life; even thus with our wounds.”

 ~Henry Stanley Haskins

 

She waves her petals like a scarf

with a graceful strength.

Enduring the heat,

she rides the wind and storm.

She will make it through the seasons.

Grow despite the desert she faces.

For strength is not always the might of steel.

Sometimes it is soft like a flower

or quiet like a bird in flight.

My grandmother was a hardy flower,

and the fragrance of her legacy can still be found.

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #216

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An Argument with the Moon

 

 Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List #7 (Langston Hughes)

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 I had a dream

 I was a rose

 that had an argument

 with the moon.

You think you own me, I scowled

as his light followed my sway on a windy night

my blood red petals fall

but not for you, I cried

I waited for the moon to answer

To speak of more than time and his stories

That all the faces of countless clocks could never tell

Maybe I wanted him to just listen, I whispered

I was weary of his one moon parade

Like every heart should swoon at his very presence

No one is my landlord, I hollered

Holding my heart like a bride holds a bouquet

Finally he answered soft and low

Don’t take it personal little flower

Gravity is bigger than you and me

I woke up before he could say another word

 made myself a ham sandwich

listening to the jazz beat of raining

upon the roof

glad to be sitting in the dark

 inside a house that has always been mine!

Photo by luizclas from Pexels

What Moves Us

 

Linking with the Sunday Muse for muse # 188

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Sometimes, perhaps, we are allowed to get lost that we may find the right person to ask directions of. ~Robert Brault

We are always headed somewhere even in the stillness of waiting

like the beating of a heart or turning of an engine underneath the hood

some forces cannot be seen

the impact of movement stirs the leaves and mothers' skirts

it leaves father's home

and leads to our son's birth place

sometimes it amazes me how I got here

not in this seat before you

but how I got to know this beauty

I came from a broken place

where throats lost their voice

and walkways crumbled beyond repair

so I learned to run from hurt

like a dog loose off the chain

I didn't care where I landed when I jumped

cause it had to be better than where I was

sometimes our pain is fuel

but it can either move us faster forward

or cripple us where we stand

decisions become keys 

that either move the train

or stop the bus

I did not always know that

but now I do

loneliness drives us far away

but it is love that truly moves us

to where we were meant to be.

A Second Edition Memory of a First Edition Love,

 

Linking with Word Garden Word List

It is prompt #1

so come be one of the first ones to join in the fun!

Thank you Shay for creating such a much needed prompt!!

Your memory is a dark-haired trespasser

Inviting yourself every time

There is champagne and cigarettes

and my withering heart

You light mine with yours

And those same feverish eyes

So the room fills with smoke

And I can no longer see 

To walk away steadily

So I wrap my arms around yesterday

As precariously as a feather on a boa

Vienna was 20 hotels ago

Yet your kiss as close as a pocket

and the mournful nearness of morning 

when you had to say goodbye.

Memory is an Old Door that Sticks but Always Opens,

 Photo Credit

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #187

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“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”   ~Maya Angelou

 

I have forgotten many things

The name of my teacher in third grade

How many cracks were on the ceiling above my childhood bed

All the algebra formulas that I never needed

How I got to my friend’s house in North Texas in 1993

Why I wrote scribbles on the wall in lipstick when I was 3

The exact time I decided I wanted my first divorce

When my left knee started aching

Why my mother slammed the door for the hundredth time

Where I left my key that you wanted back

What my aunt was wearing the day she said goodbye

Where I set my glasses five minutes ago

But I will always remember

what my heart cannot forget.