Elegy

 

My youth was a loud, rambunctious play
With a boisterous cast of parents, teachers, pals
Who stood across the footlights of my stage
Or sometimes simply waited in the wings
of my growing up –


Skip Halfpenny, the scamp whom teachers loved
To scold, And Martha Johnson, whose parents
Didn’t seem to like her very much.
My mother said it was because they were afraid -
They’d had four children, only two remained.


Mr, Stewart led the orchestra and band,
and we were good!
He called on us to do more than we could
He taught us the mathematical reality that
The whole, in orchestra, and perhaps in life,
Is often greater than its parts.
We learned it playing Rimsky-Korsakov.


I see my parents’ friends who smoked and drank
Played poker: nickel ante, dealers’ choice –
I see our houses, stages where we’ve acted
I wouldn’t know them now, they’ve been redone


The lights upon stage on which my childhood
         was played
Have flared, then flickered, finally gone out,
All the actors too are gone,
One at a time, they left.

Prayer Shawls

At our church we have a group of women who meet regularly to knit shawls, which we then give to people – church members, relatives of members, friends or neighbors who might be wanting or needing comfort and prayer. The knitting group varies from a few to many. The knitting is done at bi-weekly meetings and in between. The yarn is purchased or donated, and the knitting patterns are as varied as the members of the group.

In addition to the shawls, the knitting group makes “prayer pockets”, small squares made into pockets into which are placed a talisman of some sort representing to the recipient the presence of God or their guardian angel or their “higher power”. If you are going into a scary situations, whether it’s a dentist’s office, a principal’s office, or an oncologist’s office, it is like taking your guardian angel with you when you carry a prayer pocket in your pocket. It reminds us that we are never alone.

The knitting group consists of experienced knitters, (even one who has taught knitting and spins her own yarn) – and people just learning to knit. Some of the members don’t knit at all. They crochet.

While the shawl is being made, or the prayer pocket, we don’t know who will get them. That means that while we make them, we pray for everyone, whether they think they need those prayers or warm wishes or not. We pray for each other. We pray for people we’ve encountered that day, including the checker at the grocery store, or the waitress at Denny’s, the kid we passed lugging his backpack to school, or the person we’re having a hard time liking. We pray for the guy who cut us off on the road, and we pray for the doctors and dentists who will be treating the people we love.

On Sundays the completed shawls and prayer pockets are blessed during the service before they are given away to wrap someone in our love and our prayers. The good part is that the recipient does not know exactly who knit their shawl, so they can assume that we all did.

AN ODE TO LAUNDRY

I love to do the laundry
Cause its satisfying, neat
When folded, put in drawers, on shelves -
Cause when its done, its done
I know that I’ve done one small thing
Domestic folks would deem
Worthwhile!

My washer does its noisy work -
It swishes, pops and spins
I disappear, don’t interfere, I let it toil in peace
Until it beeps to tell me “ Time
To move this soggy load.”

The dryer smells of freshener
I take the last load’s lint –
(It’s colored from the load of wash
I’d done some days before) -
I set the dials, wipe my brow, pretend I’m all worn out
Then once again I leave the scene,
My day’s work halfway done!

The folded loads of laundry tell
Of where we’ve worn the clothes
Of what we’ll wear next week
Of what we’ll keep or give away
Or save as rags, or toss.
And now its time to celebrate
That this week’s laundry’s
Done

Sestina to Lake Michigan

I walked away from life to seek some peace

Beside the great lake’s constant, rhythmic motion.
I left behind the city with its sounds -
The cacophony of its urban dance.
My ears expected soothing, whispering waves.
My shoes removed, my toes curled in the sand


But as I walked I felt the life in sand
Felt tiny creatures searching out their peace
Felt living beings even in the waves
That beat the shore in slow and even motion
It seemed that all about me was a dance
With wind and lake and sand the only sound.


The grasses swayed and beckoned, quiet sounds
Those grasses, long, their feet held fast in sand
They seemed to call me, join our mystic dance -
Just feel, they said, and you will sense a peace
That doesn’t come in stillness but in motion
Listen to the woodwind songs of waves.


And then the wind came up and beat the waves
The woodwind tones took on a brassy sound
Instead of quiet there came more frantic motion
As frothy fountains beat upon the sand
I felt myself swept up – this was not peace
But vital music forcing me to dance.


It felt to be a wild exuberant dance
We swayed and bent and spread our arms and waved
I was, in that strange world, a little piece
A quiet voice in a sea of sound
I was a part of wind, and grass and sand
And joined with them in an eternal motion.


The beach transformed, for everything was motion
I felt that all of life was in our dance
The wind blew up the tiny grains of sand
Which fell again to rest upon the waves
No human noise disturbed the throbbing sound
Of life upon that beach where I sought peace.


I found my peace within unceasing motion -
I danced to sounds no orchestra could make
I was at one with waves and sand and grasses.

The painting for this poem is courtesy of Lisa Stark-Berryman, Santa Cruz, CA

A sestina is a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet, for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time; if we number the first stanza's lines 123456, then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243

TOM

I’d flown across the country to see my cousin Tom. Seated in the small one person bungalow he’d bought the year before, we knew this was the last we’d see each other. His hairless head and missing brows and lashes told of painful treatments, ended now.

The palm pilot in his hand contained the phone numbers, schedules for the folks who came to see him, connections with the life outside his room. “I’m not gone yet,” he said, “I still have things to do. My men’s group comes tonight. You can come, too.”

A clergyman, he saw himself a mentor now. He asked me, would I like to hear what happened to his marriage? How he left his parish priesthood, almost got defrocked? How he’d lived before the cancer claimed him barely sixty days before?

And then he told me what I had not known of him, and shared with me his life, his pain, his story. It is a tale I’ll recount someday, and put together with the boy he was, red haired and funny, chasing through the woods and dunes and beaches of Lake Michigan.

THE CONDOMINIUM

There is a digger pine down by the lake
It leans, the branches sag, its trunk is two feet thick
The tree is old, it has a tired stance –
Yet in the upper limbs the place is jumping
Blue herons, egrets and some cormorants
Have made the pine their home –
Despite its insubstantial look.
We call this tree the condominium.

The herons and the egrets when they come
Must circle, sometimes several times
Before they make their landing on the fragile
Twigs of branches. They clap their wings
To gain precarious balance and
To let the other tenants know they’re home.
Sometimes they misgauge their space.
Great cries erupt when this occurs.
The branches shake as these long legged birds
Assert their ownership
Of each exclusive limb.

We worry when rain heavy storms with screaming winds
Descend upon the neighborhood -
The lake becomes a tiny sea with waves.
At times it overflows its banks.

We think the digger pine just isn’t safe,
Its branches loaded with the nests of birds.
We wonder – is its lean a little more acute?
Has seepage undermined the roots?
Should not the birds find better, stronger trees
In which to raise their young?
Or will their instincts tell them
When the tree begins to
Tip too much
And fall uprooted.

BLOOD AND DONUTS

Yesterday was my day to donate to the Blood Source. http://www.bloodsource.org/ This might be considered a generous act, and perhaps it is, but I have to admit to ulterior motives!

First, when you are my age, there isn’t much of you that people want any more – I’m too old to be even tested for bone marrow, my eyes are dim, my donatable organs have been pretty much used, although I proudly carry my donor card. The blood bank loves my blood – and they love my platelets even more. They call me up when its time for me to donate, they thank me profusely even before I have made the appointment.

Yesterday, as I walked in to be interviewed, I was handed a certificate for a “pint for a pint” of Baskin Robbins ice cream. (http://www.baskinrobbins.com/) I now have almost enough to have my own ice cream social. All I need are the strawberries, bananas, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, pineapple, nuts and cherries. I have a stunning variety of tee shirts from the blood bank! Then, since I am a platelet donor, I get weighed. That is, perhaps, for me, the hardest part of donating platelets. They never weighed me when I gave whole blood. They took my word for my weight, which remained unchanged year after year, despite all visible evidence to the contrary. So I take off my shoes, glasses, watch, etc. and close my eyes while they do this.

Giving platelets takes longer, from one to two hours depending on how many they are taking. They settled me in and gave me a choice of movies – a huge choice of movies. Yesterday they were doing one unit of platelets and one of packed red blood cells, so I didn’t think 67 minutes was time enough for a movie. Retired people are particularly valuable platelet donors – because we have the time. With platelets we can give more often. There it is – another senior advantage. It is not every day I get the chance to lie back and read a good book for 67 minutes.

Blood bank people are amazing. The phlebotomists (great word!) have never missed with me. The 67 minutes pass quickly.

Then comes the really good part – the donuts. Only when I give blood can I justify eating a wonderful, sinful, donut! As I sit savoring each bite, I pick up a heart shaped sticker that says “Be nice to me today, I gave blood”. I attach it to my forehead for the ride home.

I have now given 79 units of blood. (You get extra credit – two for one – for donating platelets or packed red cells.)(Women are no longer allowed to give plasma at our blood bank). One more pint of blood and I will have given ten gallons – and will be eligible for the Blood Source’s annual dinner. Fred has offered to take me out to dinner for no blood, and I must say I’ve taken him up on that lots of times – but this dinner will be special. I will wear a blood source tee shirt!