CAMP FIRE WOMEN
My friend Julie is a Fire Keeper.
Sometimes all night she watches,
holds the flame at the center
of the world. It is her sacred way.
And mine? To search the forest,
to gather the wood: This for kindling,
this for tinder, this for cleansing,
this for a long and steady burn.
APRIL FANTASY
The sun used to shine early every morning.
At least, that’s how I remember it.
And the breezes were very gentle from the south.
I would stand on the front step and breathe
the air scented with white daffodils.
A bluebird would light on my shoulder
and whistle in my ear. I’d go inside
and make breakfast for the family
and we’d sit around the table
enjoying wild raspberries and cream
before we went out into the world.
I’d have another cup of fresh-brewed coffee
in the garden, and then the bluebird and I
would clean house with the other birds,
all of us singing all the while.
This is the result of a writing exercise I’m doing with a couple of friends. Each of us offers a word, and then each of us makes a piece of writing using those words.
WORDS:
latitude embroidery coil
EXILE
How, you ask me, do I live?
I have come so far, so very far
from the earths that shaped my bones,
the people who gave me blood and breath.
I make my choices, hold my connections.
I wash my long gray hair in rainwater
I catch in a bowl in my garden.
I dry my hair in the sunshine,
brushing it in the warmth
and light, the way Matka taught,
the way my sisters do
in my home place, in my latitude
of memory. I plait a four-strand braid,
coil it around my head. One by one,
in ritual, I lift the bone hairpins
from the linen pouch Babcia gave me
as she gave to each granddaughter.
I think of her, remember her
working the red embroidery,
the five-petaled flowers,the long-tailed birds.
PRESENTATION
They killed the little doves
and poured their blood on the altar.
She’d taken the ritual bath
after her bleeding stopped,
but she was still sore.
Her breasts leaked
when the baby cried.
The strange old man
came out of the shadows
and put the seal on what
she already knew,
what every mother knows:
This was only the beginning.
POET IN GARRET, NOVEMBER
~attributed to Jan Vermeer, 1703
You see at once that she’s cold,
the way she hunches
over the table in the fireless
room. Light from one small
window slants across her page.
She is half-turned toward you,
her lips are parted, her eyes
focused on a word appearing
just above your right shoulder.
LABYRINTH
Red boards, white halls.
Posters and paint.
The inside of a piano.
A washer full of light.
Two stairways
to one long corridor.
You do not have a clue.
You do not need one.
If you are lost, cry out,
no doubt someone
will hear you.
You will always be found.
What you do
is up to you.
At the center—
no minotaur—
a glass door. Behind it,
earnest, commanding
fairies are waiting.
What did you expect?
Their Queen,
at first glance seems
innocent, unwinged.
Little do you know.
Her throne a desk.
Her wand a pen.
Enter at your peril.
Are you ready
to love the edges?
To practice not-doing?
Are you ready
to change your life?
I wrote this years ago for my friend Maggie, who at age 80 started modeling for art students, because, she said, “They need to know what old people look like.” She liked the poem, and recorded herself reading it back to me. She died a couple of years ago, in her 90s. I miss her.
DRAWING LESSON
—in memory of Maggie Miller
Here you are, most with a world ahead,
some with half a world behind,
come to draw the human form.
And here I am naked before you
so comfortable, easy
in my eighty year old skin.
I love my folds,
metamorphosed mountains.
You think you can draw
an old woman, dear babies?
Lean in, look hard.
It will cost you all your life.
I have been down deep,
through muscle, sinew, bone.
Loved long a man long dead,
borne a son and let him go.
I am learning how to pray
and I laugh when you ask me to tell.
In my time I have come
to the heart’s solid core–
heat of life and more–
Now over you I pour
my fire like water.
From where I lie I see
the place the stars will rise.
COMMUNION
All morning we cleaned the shed beside the church—
one of those places all over America
where the hungry poor come to stand in line
for day-old bread and canned beans,
for commodity tubes of hamburger,
bags of shredded orange cheese,
MRE-style pouches of beef stew.
We hauled out the cardboard and the plastic
from the cases of cans of corn
and mac-and-cheese and fruit cocktail.
We scrubbed down the rusty metal shelves;
we vacuumed up the dust, tidied the refrigerators.
We made room in the freezers
for the dated meats and donuts and pies
another crew pickes up from the market.
We didn’t talk much.
We know each other well enough
to work in silence—
four women, the Tuesday volunteers,
each of us old enough to have a few scars.
At noon, Phyllis handed out some
blueberry muffins she’d baked.
We took a break, ate
standing outside in the parking lot
in the late September sunshine.
Then we got back to work.
THE FEAST OF ST. WALPURGA
I have just returned
but before I sleep
I must record.
The moon was dark,
the sky was clouded.
Earthscent was rising
up from the valley
into the cold air
along the ridge.
We came in our silence,
lit the fire in silence.
When they arrived,
we sang the words
to set them free.
While we waited then
for the flames to die,
while we waited
in our silence
with the long darkness
around us, a pair
of owls called
from the forest
down in the trees.
A good omen
for the season to come.
The flight home
was uneventful.
MORNING AFTER
(tempera, glitter, found objects on cardboard)
~after Linda Shere
Those splashes of color—
pink, green, yellow—
represent, I believe,
pajamas. Or
sleeping bags.
There’s a plate of—
cookies—on
the table.
Chocolate chip.
Or—possibly—
blueberry muffins?
No. Cookies.
Art supplies everywhere–
paint, brushes, glue, clay.
Art everywhere.
There’s glitter on everything.
Well, almost everything.
Not on the muffins.
Cookies, I mean.
Feathers.
Coffee filters.
Small plastic animals.
3 hair ties
or whatever
they’re called.
Those elastic things.
I’ve never had a daughter,
so I really don’t know.
