The Poetry Marathon

O Captain! My Captain! Our journey will end with screaming storm and flood.
Prevailing winds will blow and turn this ship about, prizewinning and celebratory as it may seem.
Soon our ship will weigh anchor to the sound of klaxon bells, and with high kicking girls in attendance,
but we will gaze in horror, we two, as our journey leads to unhappiness and sharply honed fighting.

But O my love! My love! My love!
O, heart’s blood will flow, and stop,
our journey will end, oh my Captain, with the eternal rest
of sickness and death.

P.S. Walt Whitman said this far better than me. 🙂

Two young boys were lifted high,
twirled and swirled about in dizzying circles in the air,
stripped bare of all clothing,
one later gently settled, unscathed, to the ground,
the other never seen again.

A single straw was driven
straight through the heartwood
of a centuries old tree, unbent and unbroken.

A brick home stood proud and untouched
beside another razed down to a hole
in the ground, a bare ten feet between them.

A school of fish was scooped whole
from the ocean, flown through the air to rain down,
gasping and alive, upon a town, inland and far from their home.

The soil in this land’s richness sustains life all over the globe,
but in a moment entangling air currents
can swirl and twirl in a vortex, snatch, and indiscriminately kill.

I awaken to electrically charged air particles
standing the hairs of my arms up at attention,
the bed a warm cocoon holding at bay
a world awash in rain.

The crackling energy is both felt and heard
in thunderous crashes and booms,
reverberating through sternum and heart.

I step out beneath the overhanging roof past the door,
daring to enter the domain between my safe interior
and a world no longer my own, warmth at my back,
and wildness in my face.

The storm subsides to a murmur as I step further out,
the soaked hem of my long dress slapping my ankles
as I bury my face in the humid, red scent
of newly opened roses, droplets trickling down face and arms.

I turn, renewed wild creature,
and turn and turn again,
falling to the wetness beneath my feet,
breathing the earth through my skin.

Finally I am chilled and soaked, abashed and ready to return
to my civilized home, stripping bare and sharing the warmth beneath
feathered down comforters with my waiting love,
through delicate touches and wondering kisses blending
the wild without and the warm within.

El Paso’s rolling brownouts
have nothing to do with a dearth
of energy, but rather its excess.
This town nestled in the triangle
between desert, mountains,
and lush Rio Grande is plagued
by roiling winds in early Spring
after months of drought.

Choking ocher colored clouds
sweep across the loosened desert sand,
grinding it smooth and lifting it high
in finely woven, smothering sheets.
They are driven through tiny
crevices, every minuscule crack
an opening for these fine grains
coating all within our former home
in an orange, faintly greasy sheen.

Each spring, while family
in Indiana enjoyed lush green
and the near endless
falling sweetness of rain,
we would instead receive
the persistent dust,
a constant grit in every crease and fold.
Tiny piles of desert soil
throughout our home
reminded me of a century before,
the dust bowls that chased
generations back to verdant homelands.

The billowing waves crested
mountain peaks and settled, stilled, between them,
suspended in the quieted air and momentarily fired
by evening’s setting light,
creating momentary beauty
from a distance
from what in its midst
would kill.

Dearest Sue,

Our lives had known so little loss before your death
we hardly knew how to take it.
You left a void near impossible to fill,
though I have tried.
From one former single mother to another,
thank you for the son you raised,
and for showing him what a true life partner could be
when you found your own.

Some called you a witch
when you found water’s flow beneath the earth
with your willow rods.
Others named you horse whisperer,
healing broken bodies and minds
with nothing but your gentle touch
and whispered strengthening words.
Perceptive beyond the norm,
sensing both good and danger within,
you guided and protected all you met.
Your many talents approached
the occult, yet I never knew
a woman both spiritual
and earthbound, before you.

I love you,
mother-in-law.
You are still here.

There is no anticipation for whatever I await.
There is no toe tapping for time wasted,
nor anxiety for things not accomplished.
Now, on the cusp of my fifties,
I am not central to the lives of my children,
nor pursuing classes, nor checking off many items on many lists.

I have discovered the joy of waiting.

As a young mother, wait time was wasted time.
I could be cleaning, cooking, crafting, sewing, driving, fundraising,
checking off responsibilities and feeling
virtuous for their volume.
As my children grew, waiting meant study time for classes,
jamming learning into every available second.
Unwanted waiting in previous years morphed into exerting my mind,
firing neurons that hadn’t flamed in decades.

I have discovered the joy of waiting.

Now, as I wait, I’m cocooned in my silent, small world,
napping, reading, drawing, writing,
free floating down the rivers of memory and imagination.
Time waiting for others is a gift to myself, filling the well of inner energy,
suspended between the past’s rush and tomorrow’s anticipation.
As time ticks down from the middle of my life, in that space I am free from its restraints.

I have discovered the joy of waiting.

Recipe for a Happy Parent

1) Patience

2) Wonder

3) Friends

4) Bugs, birds, and butterflies

5) More yes than no

With a lot of help
I raised three humans to adulthood,
and emerged with my sanity intact.

Patience was required throughout,
the main ingredient for weathering
each whine and fidget,
all tantrums and tears,
every bit of angst
and sticky embraces.

Outside was our salvation,
a blue outdoors our refuge,
a grey one our charged entertainment.

Friends would come and go,
imparting life lessons
on their own paths to elsewhere.
Birds, bugs, butterflies, and books
awaited curious minds
and grubby hands,
far more lasting
an impression to make.

A “yes,” and a “yes”
for most “mama, may I . . .?”s
eased them on their way,
more honey than vinegar
the potion to cure
so many childhood ills.

I ached for those days
when they ended,
far more than those now
grown babes,
until the day
a red, squalling grandson
was placed in my arms.

A new chance was given
to practice patience
through whines and fidgets,
tantrums and tears,
angst and sticky embraces,
as I and my fuzzy headed partner
read, ramble,
wonder, and roam.

Tracy Plath

Not That Plath

A lesser poet of married name
and borrowed fame,
her glorious, polished words
are filtered through the sieve
of my own leaky mind.
I scratch and claw them forth,
no elegant method here,
seeping from the paper
like the speckling
of tiny red wounds
scraped from itching skin
too hard and fast
by splintered nails,
nervously gnawed ragged.

She, the cold goddess,
encased in the untouchable,
martyred, marble layering
of an early and tragic death,
sealed her children away
from the deadly slumber
with paper and an evening meal,
away from the gaping maw
in which she placed her head.

I, far past an age she never reached,
trudge my stumbling feet,
rub blurred and aging eyes,
shiver through the beginning chill
of each waking day,
and shuffle toward a warmth she could not find,
not even within an open oven’s door.

I’m Tracy Plath, poet and grandma, and more than happy to be in a good head space to write once more. During the marathon last year I and my family were in the midst of a move across the States from Texas to Indiana. Previously, I was able to complete three full marathons, an experience that brought me new friends, better writing, and the opportunity to publish several books and edit several more for my new community of writer friends. The experience has enriched my life on so many levels I can’t imagine what my life would have been without the marathon. I posted all twelve poems of last year’s half marathon from a hotel room in El Paso overnight after a day of intense packing. The torture was only compounded by slow and spotty hotel wifi, but I managed to finish after producing better poetry than I had anticipated being able to do. Something about the time crunch of the marathon and the unseen but ever present support of hundreds of other poets helps me to create in ways I was unable to imagine before my first marathon in 2015. Our family made a week long, tortuously slow trip across country with our four generations of seven people a day and a half after that marathon ended. We made it with surprisingly little damage, and then spent nearly a year shuttling the family from one room to another in our little Indiana home as renovations were completed to make it a larger and more handicapped accessible space. We just finished on May 1 of this year, in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, and were grateful to just be able to curl into our new shell and settle into a somewhat unnerving peace and quiet after such ongoing chaos. Suffice it to say, I’m very much looking forward to writing once more, and meeting many more lovely poets from around the world!

Cliques, athletes, and loners
brains, jocks, and losers,
when graduation came
we were all the same.

After years of segregating
splitting and separating,
at the very end
we all blended again.

Yet the day finally came
and away we all went,
despite our graduation theme
our time was spent.

Paul joined the Army,
I went to university,
he sustained unknown injury,
I endured first marriage misery.

Decades later
Facebook brought us together
our love came
full circle again.

Never Say Goodbye, Jon Bon Jovi