Earl Grey Morning
Even the name of it soothes.
the violet soft of it,
purled, curling stir of it,
rising through cold
like a promise.
From dark there is dawn --
first fog, then a song.
And even the sense of it soothes.
The cupped balmy breath of it,
pressed against palm of it,
steeping the dark
like an oath.
From warmth will come glow –
soft first and soft-slow.
Easy, the taste of it soothes.
The deep woodsy heft of it,
rich malted zest of it,
breaking the black
like a vow.
From dark will come light,
cool bergamot bright.
So, for now, just feel
for the sunrise,
the wayfinding blessings
are always unwinding and
binding themselves
like a pact.
Find fragrance in the dark.
Seize promise.
Feel the spark.
What’s the best course of action? Inaction.
Feet in fuzzy socks, a throw across my lap,
a no across my lips. Hunkering down
in the softness of my hearth and home
with piano on the playlist and a good book
in my hand. While the crazy plays out, I’m
sipping on jazz and juice.
her rosy-nosed crispness, her cold velvet touch,
her lace on the windshield, her flakes on my cuffs,
her jolly-hued sweaters with seasonal quips,
her Santas and snowmen and icicle drips,
her snuggly soft slippers and warm cozy throws,
her cinnamon coffees; her ribbons and bows,
her gingerbread cookies, her oh holy nights,
her crusty-white windshields, her frosty-toothed bites,
her poinsettia flowers, amaryllis shoots
her cranberries, citrus, and other tart fruits,
But mostly I love her for gifting me you
that icy midwinter from out of the blue,
the city-born guy to the small-town dark horse —
Hallmark Christmas worthy — my happiest verse.
The house, cozy at dawn, and me in my bathrobe and soft Santa socks, Christmas lights glowing, playlist carols going… sipping my coffee and sorting my thoughts,
How lucky am I, I think — no, I know. How blessed to be snuggled beneath a warm velvet throw in the crook of a sectional with my laptop and nowhere to go while watching the sky shift to silver at dawn.
How simple, how sumptuous — an extravagance, bar none –that not everyone has. To have a sanguine soul in a world that exsanguinates souls. My gratitude is great. My cup overflows.
My sons are nestled all snug in their beds and my girls grown and glowing in orbits they threaded and hung on their own, weaving constellations that tell their tales, cast shimmering trails of goodness and grace.
While the boys, on the cusp of their own greatness, silver their way toward their own dawns, stars blooming bright on their baby cheeks and burgeoning lives, and the sky’s (no the universe) is their limit too, destinies unspooling just like their sisters’,, but entirely their own.
I celebrate all their stories, all their tangled strands of light unwound from my body, ever unwinding and widening, bright and brighter still, stringing their gifts like drops of Jupiter, like sun-wrangled, star-spangled miracle-bringers of goodwill and good trouble in this dark world.
There is no greater joy, no greater comfort for a mother’s heart than to see the babies she brought into this world out there in it, slaying and making spirits bright — hers most especially.
They collect at the crossroads at dusk –or is it
dawn? – all the colors of their skin and clothes
(mocha and mist, morning and midnight), mingling
with all the colors of the day drizzling away – or is
it swizzling awake? — the sun behind them, bedding
down — or blinking open — orange like a cat’s eye,
like a red samurai in a providence sky, and these three
sisters stand before this sibylline sun, or under this
mantic moon, while tears stream like moire ribbons
from its surface, like tear-off to-do lists, like hotlines to
call if you have seen me, have met me, have known me,
They’re gathering numbers. They’ve
got yours already, and mine, clutched and bunched in their
skirts, their taffeta pleated pockets, silk threads to weave
windfalls or is it pitfalls? lunar – no solar – eclipses, feasts,
make that famines, all endlessly unleashed at the pull of
an umbilical, umbrellical handle in the sky,. The hands of fate — they make it rain.
1
On either side, the forest stood, pallor gray in winter wood–
timber guards of maidenhood, keystone for the common good,
in times soon best forgot.
And where the mist wove and crept, where the light drowned and wept,
where the moonbeams never slept, the women bore their lot.
In four gray walls, in high-flung towers, hermetically sealed like hothouse flowers,
protection from themselves and others, resided Eve’s ancestral daughters,
in times soon best forgot.
And in those walls the women lay, so privileged their livelong day,
no work, no fear, no joy, had they; childbearing was their lot.
2
As in the tower’s hidden might, they wove and knit, as only right,
inside their wombs, so round and tight, the future of the kingdom bright,
in times soon best forgot.
Wordlessly, they wove away, fearfully trusting, and obeyed;
a curse was on them if they stayed; submission was their lot.
But moonbeams have a certain slant that conjures up subversive chant,
and daughter, mother, matron aunt grew alchemized, recalcitrant
in the land time best forgot.
Inside the marble masonry the daughters knit most seamlessly,
plots they hatched most shamelessly. Wallflowers, they are not.
3
Each petal, thorn, each bud and fruit, each piston and each new-sprung shoot,
hemlock, wolfsbane, jessamine root with burning ache construct their soup,
a deadly broth to give the boot
to times now best forgot.
Bubble double toil and trouble, hurly-burly, then redouble,
bring it down to stub and rubble,
this lot that men begot.
Eye of newt and adder’s sting baboon’s hair like orange string
in the charm, then watch it bring all the good trouble, they sing
in a land that’s now beset
with ache inside the tower base that rises up, begins to rage,
to caterwaul and loose the cage and crack each parapet.
4
‘til brick by brick, women dismantle the mandible and tooth enamel,
the clenching jaw, the instrument panel
hissing and fizzing and snuffing the candle,
watching it all fall away
until…
Grim harvest resting at the base
head in basket, sore disgraced,
lies —
some claim –
a devil’s orange face.
But we’re too busy planning more. Instead, we say,
5
What next?
This week was a rough ride. The kids are amped up on holiday vibes and election results. They’re practically vibrating. I’ve been shushing and redirecting and encouraging and fussing and trying my utmost to keep them focused and remember every day that I love them. I really do love them. But they are exhausting right this minute.
And I get it. Nobody is excited to be sitting in English class writing a perspective poem or a Great Gatsby essay.
This rowdy, raucous week was full of glad tidings for some and dark omens for others — the conversations running the gamut from Christmas carols and Thanksgiving-food-favorites to trending red and blue TikToks and tweets. From elation at the prospect of gas prices coming down to the horror at the slavery texts going ‘round.
Deportation headlines were tossed around like confetti by some, striking like anvils some others. There were book banning and family planning conversations. I even heard about the “her body, my choice” tweet that garnered thousands of likes.
And then there were the students who never even talked about the election at all. It hadn’t even been a blip on their Instagram algorithms.
And while I’m glad those students are innocent to the dark drama of politics, I’m sad too because I know they aren’t immune to the repercussions. My students are 17, 18, and 19-year-olds. So soon, they’ll be out in the very real world and learn what’s most important and essential to each-and-every one of their lives.
Through it all, I did my best to steer them back toward our task at hand: their education, their growth and understanding.
I teach literature. I teach other people’s perspectives. I teach how to walk two miles in somebody else’s shoes. I teach incredibly important lessons. But most importantly, I teach young adults. Young adults who will soon be grown adults who will soon, I hope, be intelligent rational, caretakers of our country. Because I really do love them all. And I really do believe in them all.
And Lord knows, we need intelligent, rational caretakers who can heal our nation and ensure all of us have the fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All of us.
I carry all their hearts in my heart. I’ve been doing it since they first turned lines on a stick pink, blew celebration bubbles in my blood test with their energy and light. So much energy. So much light. All four of them. They pop and sizzle like neon in my life. Beautiful and bold. They keep my heart beating with joy and pride.
And so when they suffer, I suffer. When they fizzle, things go dark in my core. In the root of the root and the bud of the bud. And so, when one of them was diagnosed with cancer, it took my breath away, I couldn’t speak, could barely function. Just clutched her tight inside my chest and searched for ways to navigate this new dark. Just fumbling through it all with no words.
I wanted to write about it. It’s how I process and find ways to proceed. But I couldn’t. There in my heart in the darkness, the letters I needed to construct words to make sense of it all were too slippery with tears and fears. When I tried to latch onto them, they disintegrated into mush.
I felt her fear and I felt my own. I felt her bravery struggling inside my own quaking soul. I felt her intense energy, hobbled and hidden, while pain pulsed in its place. And I was helpless in the midst of it all.
It’s been a month now, and she’s doing better and gaining her strength and my words are slowly sprouting, letter by letter, out of the storm drain where they collected during it all. But it’s taking me far longer to assemble them. It’s like that old game of pick-up-sticks (similar to jenga) – pluck out one to use without dislodging another, otherwise everything I want to say will crumble into yet another useless pile.
But I’ve managed to scrounge up enough to tell a cryptic version of what it was like and how she’s doing now – and she’s doing so very, very well. Her cancer was excised, the margins all clear. And while she’s got scores of seasonal scans headed her way this first year, her prognosis is solid – better than solid, it’s as bright as her neon spirit.
And I still can’t explain what that bright light returning does inside a mother’s heart. I wish I could. I can only say there’s no pain like heartache. And no heartache like a child’s ache. And no better feeling than when it all goes right, and your baby’s back to shining bright – her neon smile shining like a night in Nashville, spunky and spirited as ever.
Thank heavens for miracles and thank heavens for these four beautiful, brilliant, beating chambers of my heart.
They come in threes, they say. Bad things come in threes. And sure
enough, bad tidings rode in on their serrated fonts in swirling
impatient portals: an unholy trinity of cyst, malignancy and mass.
One slung sideways, like a fanny pack across a kidney sack, a second,
mortared to wind pipe, spewing ash into places unknown, a third sucking
marrow from mammary glands like a motherfucker. Unsanctified settlers,
all. Mother of all that is Holy, who let in the false prophet, the devil, the
beast to cast rings around x-rays and pockets full of poison, ashen shadows
on MRI scans? All that rot and stink and bile planted like rancid Easter eggs,
tangled spiders’ nests, like hissing snakes in sacred sanctuaries… Such blatant
blasphemy. Such sick sacrilege. But then, while bad things come in threes, so
too, do good. And we believe in the Good — that Triumvirate of Truth: Faith
and Hope and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. Love lends strength and
courage to fight. When we harness for God the energies of love, then love will
help conquer all. Together, we’ll banish the bad for Good. Even the dirty, rotten C word.
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