The Poetry Marathon

The birds woke me up this morning with some new sounds.

I can never memorize which is which, all of it is musical.  It’s as though

the sun switched on the light and surprised them all.

And so it is every sunrise.  I could invent a name for every birdcall,

a different name for each day.  They wouldn’t care.  The songs would

stay the same, perhaps with a mutant variation from year to year.

I am the one who would change.  My voice would be deeper, my text

would vary in cadence.  My feathers would turn grey, my wings shorter.

If she could see me now, my mother would find me changed beyond

recognition.

©  Ella Wagemakers, 01.56 Dutch time (= 19.56 EST in the US)

No, no, not the children, who’ve long been found,

nursed and fed, clothed and bundled off to the treadmill.

No, not them.  It’s the mothers who are missing.

They’re wandering somewhere out there, thinking

they’ve found a new life, not at all like the old one

but not new, either.  Still in hiding, still searching faces,

looking for their children to bring back their innocence.

The children still care but that was such a time ago,

and real names are hard to come by.  It’s all too much

to try.  The lost mothers have found themselves

new men, they’ve made new children, new hiding places.

They never look back.  They refuse to be found.

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 00.59 Dutch time  (= 18.59 EST in the US)

June evenings

I mourn your death

with warm tears

daisies and grass

on your back as you leave

your rendezvous

summer wine

last year tasted

so much better

beach sand

no dog worries about

his sandals

summer solstice

waiting for the sunset

yawn after yawn

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 23.48 Dutch time (= 17.48 EST in the US)

What I really want to write about is bonfires.

The kind you build on the beach, water a stone’s throw away.

I’ll pretend it has a life of its own.  Perhaps it does, who knows.

It’ll remind me, gently, of what I don’t know.  By looking

deeply drunk into its flames, I might come to the conclusion

that the moths were right – the fire is all there is, that life

is all about warmth and only about warmth, that the flight to

the light is the only way to go.  Maybe that is why we

light candles for our dead.  We like to think they have gone

but a little way down the road and will surely return.

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 22.45 Dutch time (= 16.45 EST in the US)

Gathering firewood is one of them.  I don’t wish

I knew how to do it.  It shouldn’t be hard to do

but one should shape things just so that there

would be something to gather – firewood, fireflies,

or fame, salt-and-pepper sets, sewing thimbles,

something for an evening of tea with invented friends.

What does the phrase ‘gathering gloom’ mean?

Do the clouds get together and decide to darken?

Does this mean it’s time for humans and other

creatures to huddle in a circle and chant?

Is it then time to kick off one’s shoes and beat the

ground with feet?  I don’t know how to do that either.

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 21.13 Dutch time (= 15.13 EST in the US)

It never loses its spots, the saying goes.

But does it lose its debts?

Come here, I call to my youngest son.

What did you lie about today?

On the table, a grain of rice lies wasted.

But, no!  The table will eat it.

Watching the crow, I wish I had wings.

Already, my mouth is beak-shaped.

After dinner, time to do the dishes;

the cracks of the evening are showing.

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 20.49 Dutch time (= 14.49 EST in the US)

What would happen if you died and I did not hear of it?

Nothing.

I did not even hear if you had gone on living.

Outside, the poppies are nodding their heads in agreement.

They are docile creatures.

That is easy – they know the seeds they came from.

Inside, we will have rice on the table.  Always rice.

Even when we go out, I do my best

to order rice.  It was rice that fed our togetherness.

Now, we are joined by nothing, not even our names.

In the beginning, it was hard

to live without a name.  Now, my name is of my own making.

Today, I have been thinking of you.  Not in an unkind way

but almost as a total stranger

would shake the hand of another at the end of a war.

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 19.30 Dutch time (= 13.33 EST in the US)

I still recall how loud the wind

blew as it slew the wire

screens around the terrace,

how everything screamed

and howled into my eyes wide

open, unafraid

while they told me that the

banging of the door, the same sound

when the old ones were raving,

was the dark bad man from behind

the sacred tree, angry at our

non-belief, our loud music,

our short skirts, our lack of fear.

It was easy to wonder why, even then,

the words carried on the wind,

which only I could hear, spoke in

a language warmer than fire,

heavier than eyes full of sleep.

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 18.18 Dutch time (= 12.20 EST in the US)

Today will be about losing words.  It

will be about verses falling apart, without

music or fanfare.

Nothing will rhyme.  Nothing will be

described as it really is, because all

we have is speculation.

Outside, from a great height, far

higher than the gulf stream, all that was

ever written will fall apart.

Even the names of those we know will

be taken up in the wind of anonymity,

becoming soundless

as verse by verse, their bones become

one with the earth.

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 17.34 Dutch time (= 11.34 EST in the US)

he beat the child

thinking that tomorrow it would

return to its old self, brand-new,

a shiny scratch-free Teflon pan ready

for the fire;

that the child’s smile

would reappear like the daily sunrise,

or a tape rewound constantly,

gurgling out goose after Mother Goose

of happy songs

high-pitched on the swing,

merry-go-round after merry-go-round

of daddythis and daddythat,

its cries coming from a talking doll

on a string,

but most of all that

the bruises would rub off with soap

and rough towels, that the skin would

rid itself of its scars, that there are no

memories in darkness.

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 16.00 Dutch time (= 10.00 a.m. EST in the US)