The Poetry Marathon

I was a wild child,
twigs in my hair
and the wind under my feet.

I could not be contained
within four walls,
aching to run and be free.

Animals, birds, and bugs
were my companions
and my friends.

People could not be trusted,
but trees never hurt me,
sheltered within their branches.

I disappeared for entire days,
curled like a deer in a hollow,
silent and dappled in shade.

It took some years to tame me,
an elemental contained
by words, the alchemical spell of books.

Vines now cover the once shining city,
walls of greenery over concrete.
Owls nest in parking garages,
hawks on skyscrapers,
bald eagles on the shores of park ponds.
Deer graze in door gardens,
run to seed and melding into one.
What happened to the graceful lines
of award winning architecture, none
now are left who can say.
Stone lions in front of the libraries
are overshadowed by zoo prides escaped.
The people are gone, but life will go on,
nature trumps nurture after all.

Would that I could become my own totem,
a fantastical blend of all traits I admire
in one creature, new to the earth.

I would have the stoicism and steadfast strength
of the bear, shuffling through my days safe
in the certainty that none would challenge me.

The sleek speed in water of the otter
would also be mine, perpetually laughing
in delight at life itself, babes nestled close on my belly.

A golden retriever’s gentleness and loyalty
would belong to me, smiling with liquid brown eyes
in sweet puzzlement, devoted to my people.

Instead, what is left to me is to embody
all of these creatures and more, to be
the person I am meant to be, and love.

In my youth, there was sometimes beauty,
a grace of form unmarred by lines,
skin tight to the flesh and muscle well defined,
hair curling and furled down to a waist
a mere eighteen inches, spanned easily
by the hands of the man who became my love.

I grow old… I grow old…

In the years in between youth and age
there is the transitioning time, a form blurred
by swelling ankles, a thickened waist,
and sagging breasts, time’s no longer subtle
cruelties carving lines through my face and hands,
admired differently, desired differently.

I grow old… I grow old…

In extreme age there is another kind of beauty,
transcending the tightness of flesh
and instead defined by wisdom’s light,
glowing from within, a lamp beneath a silk thin scarf,
a lap and arms curved to shelter grandchildren
and a waist for their arms to embrace.

Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

I hover behind the bodies
of traveling friends, at peace
and waiting within.

I am here,
I reassure myself,
buoyed by their blind support.

None turn back,
but their love is pervasive
just the same.

Their attention is focused
on the next stop,
to a place washed clean
and bright, its promise
enshrined in glowing color,
an animate stained glass window
bejeweled with muted headlights
approaching as though
drawn to our gravity,
centered.

Dear Jane,

How I wish you were here
to have an afternoon tea,
make sly commentary
on the women surrounding us,
their transparent wiles
and winning ways:
such a penetrating gaze
you leveled at our small world.
None were safe from your
pithy review.

Minutiae always held meaning
for you, the smallest detail
painted pictures of a world
since faded, lessened
by your absence.

The mortification of foolishness,
passion and practicality,
the misjudgments of hastiness,
the complexity of appearances,
and the persuasiveness of forgiveness,
in these you were very well versed.

You were taken too soon,
dearest of friends,
but your legacy for me
only becomes richer.

Fare thee well.

I peer over the shoulders
of strangers, a tourist
in my own body.

Am I here?
I ask myself,
nonexistent until noticed.

No one turns back,
meets my gaze,
and sheepishly glances away.

Their attention is focused
forward, to a future
misted and glazed
into indistinctness,
a mesmerizing smear of colors,
pierced at times
by muted headlights
swimming toward me
and veering away,
repelled.

As though the cells of my body
have transitioned to another place,
translated into a future me
I do not yet recognize,
my mind stumbles clumsily behind,
aching to be reunited.

I float within this space,

gathering wool round the edges
of my tiny universe,
knitting a reality I can comprehend,
yearning to transform desert dust
into rich brown earth,
twisted saplings to towering trees.

In the beginning,
there was only you,
wrapped entirely round
each other, melding
flesh in sweat soaked
bliss, burning fire
twisting through
crystalline ice,
warm and one.

The end evolved,
no drama nor violence,
just a cooling through
time of what had burned,
a tepid and stagnant
shallow pool, fading,
fading away.

Parched and twisted,
my mind reflected the desert
surrounding me this last year,
emptied and lost.

The sun there scorches
and thins all it touches,
a child’s plastic rattle
half buried in the ocher dust
shattered in my hand
when pulled, brittle shards,
and I bled.

I have been concentrated
down to essential elements,
all extraneous softness
near completely drawn away,
dispersed into the driving winds.

Bone and blood yearns
for that which I once knew:
verdant grasses rippling
in a softer, soughing breeze,
trees like sentinels on the horizon
guarding entrance to Eden,
and my tissues expanding to store
the humid green that hovers
within the very air,
the path appearing
before me, pulled home.

“The land knows you, even when you are lost.” Robin Wall-Kimmerer