The Poetry Marathon

Once upon a time, my dear,
People didn’t have TVs or video games
(pause for gasps).
What did they do of an evening?
Read? Talk?
Yes, a little of both but after 1935
People who had a radio listened to Fibber Mcgee.

What is listening, mother?
Radio is like TV – but with no screen.
How did you know the story?
When people listened to Fibber Mcgee and Molly
The only clues to the story was
The voices of the actors and
Sound effects. So when Fibber Mcgee
Opened the door to his very stuffed hall closet
Everything fell out with a cacophony of sounds,
Bells, whistles, falling tin cans and bangs.
(This is interesting, dear),
Everyone pictured a unique closet
With different things falling
On distinctive floors.

While we listened in common
Each of us had our own Fibber Mcgee’s closet.

Old and brown.
Only your imagination can remember the deep red
Of this maple leaf on her tree in autumn,
Exuberant with her sisters in the fall wind,

Pirouetting on the tree.
You picked it for me,
Holding it by the stem,
Pointing to its lobs, declaring the five ways

You loved me,
You could not live without me,
And five reasons to immediately marry.
Our red maple tree made the best leaves for jumping,

Our children laughed. And the best shade in summer,
Your mother declared.
I stroke the old leaf as I gaze at the tree,
Sprays answering every breeze.

She is my secret poetry tree –
Where my eyes wander when the words are congested,
A promise of movement in stifled time,
Treasure of our tribe.

Answers the wizard – a spell fulfilled.
For the spider, a web holding strong in the wind,
Gracious strands beckoning.
Privacy, whispers the octopus, deep in her den.
Yes, privacy, agrees the high schooler.
No, it’s chaos unbounded, no rules, all is possible
Cries the revolutionary.
Women filled with blood, dreams the werewolf.

No, says the widow.
Only after the death of my beloved
Did I understand the depth of our love
And the silken threads that unite us still.

I’m here –
In my beat-up beet-red leather jacket,
The one with the elk-hide patch on the elbow.
I sit in my skiff sensing the tremor of the bayou.
I have a bucket for crawdads, and
Flashlight with its just replaced light bulb.
Will you come with me?
I wait for a sign.
I stare at the light in your carport.

It is so narrow here.
Chairs embedded in ice.
Noise only underlines the loneliness.
Routines dull uniqueness.
Minds return to primal sameness.
No past, no future –
Only deadening now.
Remind me –
Why am I in prison?

Life is a series of deaths.
The death of your love –
Sadness, regrets, tears.
Black chasm of bitterness.

The faded dandelion wilts on its stalk.
Life is a series of deaths.
But from the greyed fronds
Seed parachutes snatch breezes of newness.

The baby squirms in its mother’s womb,
Comfort of warmth – why leave? But then
Life is a series of deaths,
And birth is the bursting of life.

What do you do after you die?
What did Lazarus do?
Grab new life with your teeth; celebrate truth –
Life is a series of deaths.

In my young days, my new days
All is simple and clear.
Sunrise is proclaimed by the sun moving up in the sky.
Moving so carefully to just touch my pillow.
My toy bear falls to the floor because that is the way.
When things fall, they go down.

Sometimes in the morning I see
The moon, worn down to a sliver,
Creeping to go down under the earth.
I know the moon is the brightest,
For when the sun is out
I can sometimes see the moon.
But when the moon is out,
the sun is nowhere.

I think the meadow behind my house
Is on a flat conveyer belt, like the one in Safeway.
When I walk down the path, trees that were distant
are clearer and closer.

I’m so glad with my life.
And I cherish the thought that
Mommy and Daddy will be with me
Forever.

Sarah was so angry it hurt my heart.
Yes, her Pierre was flagrant, hyperbolic, gregarious,
But he’d never before brought home a model to paint.

Here in her home.
This special place.
Thank God the children are away.

Slim, blond, vivacious, the intruder’s energy mirrored Pierre’s.
Now they were hiking, now repairing the fence.
When walking, her pace mirrored his.

I crept to the garden, purple with flowers, to see the painting –
Tender and passionate, that one bloomed on the canvas
As a goddess come to light.

Pierre dead? Such magnificence gone?
Now Sarah is arrested –
The poison bottle, her fingerprints on it.

But wait – the poison is different.
It’s the foxglove, found in the garden
Gathered by that one, added to his tea.

She could not tolerate Pierre’s love for Sarah,
devotion to their family.
If she couldn’t have him, then no one else could.

Our friendship started in a sticky way,
A polite yet firm debate on who could buy the last fudge in the shop.
To win here is to lose, so common curtesy said he should buy
And we should share.
Fudge led to children, led to differentiated paths,
“become myself” the imperative for both.
Yet to grow unique, to grow apart only brought us closer.
In celebration, we went to buy a cemetery plot.

Strong stemmed, they balance multitudes on their heads.
In their roots, the ley lines of all the world adhere.
Magenta, rouge, and rusted-iron petals, velvet to the touch,
Can add their glory and slightly bitter taste to brighten ice cream,
Yet from all this glory – no fragrance and no sound.
They breathe the sun, reminding me of Aunt Jinny
In her Salisbury garden who sang summer with them.
Long stemmed, short lived, they are fully “woke”.
It is told that if these annuals come back another year
Your fortunes will expand.
Yellow petals of its head, used in a tisane, will sooth an aching heart.
Ablaze, they exhale joy.