Day 28 Skeltonic
I feel the urge
this need to purge
winter piles
paper for miles
over stuffed files
no call for smiles
the day has come
order undone
not one bit fun
I wish someone
Could rescue me
Come work for free
It might take three
I’ll have to see
I’m buried here
Unpleasant sneer
my fault, I fear
each project dear
help me let go
or at least stow
each random scrap
recycled wrap
broken mouse trap
these tons of crap
out of sight
tucked somewhere tight
I have to say
I’d rather play
But not today
Best not delay.
Day 29 Tritina Stone-eye-Sister
We noticed early you were blessed with one blue eye
The other brown as river stone
We wondered how this marked you dear sister
When we were young, you were my favorite sister
Not afraid to tell me what to do or look me in the eye
We got on well except for one accident on slippery stone
We walked the banks of many colored stone
You fell or I pushed but could not catch you, sister
You wore the patch with valor, over your blue eye
Fixed your other eye, upon me, sister, cold as stone
Day 30
Here Again
They marched through the gates of each season,
determined, disciplined, marking days
in their weather journals, weights and measures,
money spent. They listened well to the land
they broke then built. But I’ve seen
again, in letting go, there’s no way to hold back
a place’s ultimate reclamation of itself.
Cycles of ripening, of death. The toil of
flow and ebb. I know the perpetual sadness
passed through generations hardwired
to impermanence; the likelihood
one of these days the buildings will fall, the man
in the field will vanish, the woman on
the porch will not come out again. On the family
farm that was only ever what it was in my
mother’s memory, the chickweed takes
hold, her garden sleeps, her memory
recedes. Follow the seasons long enough,
you begin to carry a fullness of loss. Its beauty,
its terror, the strange familiar comfort of it.
This story I keep telling. Again and Again.
Early Morning Poems 