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Stacked Beauty

want

to write

words

stacked with

beauty like

magnets

or rock cairns

attracting and

guiding readers to

breathtaking views

of tangerine skies

sea glass windows

into cliffsides

cranberry bogs

lavender fields mercurial

storm-swept sea beds

to find coral and almonds

the mottled man in the moon

drink twilight smoke

cloud wisp bite

bourbon and

shoulders

hear stars click on

feel fireflies sext

in the gloaming

wings beating in wild

persimmon percussion

hearts lit limoncello bulbs

see me and see me

and see me please be seen

August 7, 2023 0

Brain-Eating Amoeba in the Headlines

I want to write poems to daybreak, to the light as it’s filtered through trees,

to birdcalls, to blossoms, cicadas in song, to the buzzing and flitting of bees.

But life yanks me back to the dark side, where beastly thoughts eat up my brain,

in headlines of kidnapping hoaxes, of killers, the war in Ukraine,

oceans with sea beds like hot tubs, inflation and costs on the run,

the subterfuge sins of past leaders and the kinks of this president’s son.

Yes, I want to write about nature, how it nurtures and soothes me, but then

the nature of mankind does neither; it warps, and it tortures and bends,

turns beautiful thoughts into ugly, twists empathy into a crime,

defiling all reason, just questions remain, without any reason or rhyme

like:

Why books can be banned, but then no, never guns.

Why it’s wrong to say gay, but not thug.

Why artificial intelligence gets exalted and praised,

yet fake news! is called out every day.

Why skills learned in slavery matter – the hell? —

but black lives and their stories just don’t.

Why pro-life laws ratchet up tighter than tight,

While child labor laws come all sorts of undone.

Why tiktok trends show us societal truths;

Climate change and vaccines they’re all lies.

Why celebrity weddings, divorces, and deaths

mean more to our lives than our own.

Why a Barbie doll’s life in a movie’s too woke,

but real women’s rights are too wrong,

And domestic dark ages are special and sacred,

and for better and worse, they’re just right.

Why it’s okay to cancel a beer and trans girl,

but never a good ole boy’s song.

And why you can’t pull a gun on a liquor store clerk

but you can on school kids when you’re in a small town.

Our minds are sickened and damaged, consumed

In the brain-eating amoeba we read

Like the kind that killed this week’s Georgia man–

still, quite rare, they assure, they’re agreed.

Why of course, then, and okay, for sure.

July 29, 2023 0

Summertime — suck it up, buttercup — for tomorrow, it ends

There’s a reason I hunker down on my porch in the summer – the only season of quiet that exists in my life.

Through June and July, I sip at the slow, sultry, syrup of summer like an addict, soaking my marrow in its sweetness, doing my best to bottle it in memory so I’m sustained when it’s gone — which happens tomorrow.

Tomorrow, summer leaves me.

And I pray there’s enough liquor of peace in my core to help me remember that it won’t always be like it’s about to be —

where time (and I) will take a beating:

a brutal, full-on assault of seconds bruising and buckling into

minutes, bleeding into pulpy, pulverized

hours, shredding to hard, dusty

days, bled dry into

months completely exsanguinated, drought-fed, and strung out like jerky, tough and leathery and jerking me around, seeming without end.

And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow spins out in its frenzied pace of work and

acting class and

football practice

followed by homework somehow and then

work again and lesson plans and

voice lessons and

football and

homework somehow somewhere and — I forgot about dinner! and

again work and lesson plans and teaching and

piano lessons this time and

football and homework where? when does it get done? and dinner how? and

here’s work once more and lesson plans and teaching and

Wednesday afternoon laundry and help me Jesus! homework and maybe dinner for real, a table and everything and

dance class and

football and maybe homework and maybe snacks instead of dinner and – showers dang it! we can’t forget showers – and

God help me, I’m going under and I forgot all about grading and feedback and

now it’s time for the Friday Night Lights that stretch and twist and warp like an elastic band thinner and thinner until they catapult us finally into

Saturday and more football and laundry, and

hair appointments maybe? and grocery shopping somehow? and selfcare, is that even a thing? HA! and

… and Sunday, bless-ed, blesss-ed Sunday – breathe in, breathe out on thank God for recovery Sunday, but

no husband, no daddy, no real time with just us at all and then, oh God! here we go again and

rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.

And tomorrow, it begins.

I’m scared y’all. This year, I’m really, so very afraid that I’m not ready.

So here I sit on my porch shot-gunning as much of the final sweet seconds of summer as I possibly can. And trying my best not to panic and and and andandandandandandandand…GULP!

I don’t think it’s working.

July 25, 2023 0

The Song of a Mother

My son swims in jell-o-bright water,

a nine-year-old Achilles dripping blueberry syrup

from sanctified limbs.

Fluid and free to flip his hair, sashay his tail,

he bobs along, suspended in color-soaked dreams.

Sweet honeyed daylight dapples his skin in flashes

and splashes like sequins (not chainmail) like scales

jazzed

and

pentatonic

daring swift-footed heroes to dance and sing

eat peaches or figs

whatever they like.

He’s not like most boys. I know this.

And he knows this too. And because he’s not,

monsters lurk in his idyll.

Charybdis and Scylla cast shadow and stone in his bright jell-o water,

stretch tentacle to tendon, would cleave him in two:

half oil-slicked wreckage half solar eclipse

Claim he’s the monster here –

not dazzling and daring,

but different and dangerous,

contagious, blasphemous,

wrong.

A sinister sign of the times.

I pray he sees the truth – how sinister and wrong they are;

masquerading their message of love

that’s not love.

Love is celebrating your bold, burnished child

(any child, every child)

and love is providing the armor

(why must it always be armor?)

to help your child live out his love

(any love, every love).

Not the love you would prefer he live –

a love dipped in non-Styx Teflon,

safe and colorless, sealing him in tradition because:

it’s easier (not because you believe it’s the right way);

it’s smooth (not because it’s straight);

you love him (not because love is love is love is love).

But love IS love is oh-so glorious and personal and… love.

So, you do love him

and affirm him. Tell him he is alright.

That who he is, is not wrong.

Or I do. Not you…

You wrong and hurt him.

Tell him he is too colorful. With too much sashay.

A boy’s light should glint with steel, not sparkle with glitter,

be myrmidon dark, not technicolor twinkle.

Should be sharp, uncompromising, heroic, brave.

To be otherwise is unwise.

Like some problem to solve correctly.

A choice on some standardized test.

Answer A or B.

There is no C. You were born how you were born. You have no choice.

At least on that we can agree—

I mean, would anyone choose something as hard as this?

in a world that hates heroes so flush and plush with sparkle?

then again, if we could — why would anyone not choose sweetness and light?

not want to live somewhere beyond bedeviled and bewildered?

beyond haunted or hardened?

somewhere

weightless and fluid and free,

my son

floats in jell o bright water,

a nine- year-old Achilles

dripping blueberry syrup

from sanctified limbs.

July 18, 2023 0

Which Loss is More Catastrophic?

Millionaires chasing dreams to explore the depths of the ocean and failing?

Migrants chasing dreams to explore the depths of democracy and failing?

Both sets determined to know the unknown.

Wanting more.

Entitled to more.

Pushing the limits of possibility.

Risking it all:

Children

Families

Futures.

And both paying dearly for their audacity

with catastrophic loss.

The fact that this is even a question

shows how deeply we have suffered

a catastrophic loss

of humanity.

** Like most of the world, I’ve been caught up in the Ocean Gate submersible saga with no knowledge of the refugee ship sinking in the Mediterranean until now — nearly a week-and-a-half later. The revelation has left me gutted, yet (in a sad, self-loathing paradox) still hungry for more Ocean Gate details.

June 23, 2023 0

For Teachers, May is the Cruelest Month

T. S. Eliot said it was April, but he would be wrong. For schoolteachersn, it’s most definitely May.

Some would argue I’ve gone completely off the deep end. That May brings summertime and a stress-and-student-free stretch beneath a benevolent sun.

And some of that is true. School years are tough and summer offers a reprieve. But in teaching, we find ourselves anchored to children for a season of their lives and we become invested in them all, those who flourish and those who flounder.

We love watching the stellar students sail like racing vessels, sleek and smart, seamlessly navigating subject matter. They make teaching an easy, breezy ride, and in these instances, May is a celebration.

And we take pride in working with the ones who struggle to learn the ropes, who make waves and challenge us to batten down the hatches and get creative. When they turn the corner and make up leeway, we cheer them on, and May is a momentous and magical month.

But it’s the other students – the ones caught between the devil and the deep blue sea –the distracted, the detached, the loose canons and the ones taking on water, going under, fighting against the current, or worse, not fighting at all– these students are the ones who make May the cruelest month.

Because these kids live in troubled waters and we feel helpless against their storms. They battle bleak circumstances, hungry bellies, haunted pasts, and their futures are so heavy that many will sink. And in May we find ourselves parting ways before finding a way to get them to safety. We’ve tried. And we’ve failed.

We’ve failed them.

So we watch from the pier as the sun sets on the horizon of another year, praying that somehow, somewhere, someone will find them, reach them, get them out of the raging storms before it’s too late.

Yes, we know we can’t save them all, but the ones that we haven’t saved haunt teacher souls so very, very much in May — and forever more.

May 28, 2023 0

The Class of 2023

These kids.

These beautiful, incandescent kids

Floating from grad party to grad party

In bright dresses, pale shirts,

Cowboy boots, and sneakers.

Lightning bugs in their element,

flickering among the tree-lined, sloping lawns.

Fire flies from their mouths

In arcs of energy,

Crackling while they sip soda, crunch crackers and chat

— about fashion, gaming, senior trips, and the beach —

One final, carefree summer,

While on the horizon, shimmering and soon:

Medicine. Engineering. Economics. Design.

A glittering nebulae of promise

drifting in the space between now and later.

Truly the brightest, most beautiful,

Highly-nuanced, and oh-so-noble group

of students I’ve taught in a generation.

They work hard, dream big, take no prisoners

And still play nice. They are Wunderkinds,

These mid-May lanterns

Bobbing, breezy and effortless, and

Soon to scatter the planet as stars.

Their souls stoked with passion,

Their brains hardwired for change; but also

(thank God for the also),

Hearts breathlessly buoyed in goodness.

And in light.

May 20, 2023 0

An Ode to Still Life

Last night it rained, leaving

white blossom shreds clinging to dogwood leaves, blown green in an instant.

Sodden confetti clots choke gutters and grass —

the pink and white remnants of an azalea bacchanalia.

The fringe tree shivers in the cold dawn,

tender bits dangling naked in the breeze.

Yesterday, brazen. Today, sore ashamed.

Spring has sprung and is already speeding by.

Time flies.

And so do the wasps, building paper condominiums in the downspouts,

and the birds canoodling in the newly upholstered trees.

And the clouds skirting the sky in vanishing wisps.

Time leaps, like the squirrel getting his nut in the damp underbrush,

or the froggie gone a courtin’ in the mud.

It sneaks like the snake shifting weight through the sod

One blink – or not, snakes don’t blink — then it’s gone.

One minute intact

Like the five pale shell casings

In their spun-twig armory in the clutch of the sapling

just waiting to explode

or turn from a sky blown blue as rhinestones, to a broiling gunmetal grey

The woods, dappled green as moss, spike fevers soon, destined to fall.

Life is ever-eager, ever-ready, ever-thrusting,

Till its not

All things

New and raw, soon fecund and fat, all grow, sting, decay and drop

But words the poets know remain

Words, the poets know, retain

the birdsong, the blue stone, the echoes of youth and the splashing rain,

the paper houses and paper dreams,

in still-lifes — so there’s still life

Long after it’s all blown away

April 29, 2023 0

A list of things I love (Susan Sontag style)

Black coffee, green clover, paper white blooms.

Morning writing. Afternoon naps.

House slippers. Cozy nooks, nubby blankets, and poetry,

So much poetry.

Football season. Football weather.

Hot baths. Red wine. Soft beds.

And family.

Pancake breakfasts with my girls. Bedtime reading with my boys.

A place to call home,

With money enough for travel and books and to spend a wee bit on décor.

The smell of gardenias reminds me of grandma.

Cardinals in shrubbery remind me of dad.

As does lichen on tree trunks

And moss on an old stump.

Hawks riding thermals,

Bushy-tailed squirrels.

And white tailed deer,

Bounding through underbrush with leaves crackling.

Pine straw underfoot.

The sun on my shoulders

A sliver of moon

The liquid of midnight

The stories of stars

Also the pale pink of dawn,

The mist of drizzle

Dust motes dancing in golden hour currents.

All hours. All times.

Dandelion fluff, eyelash wishes, butterfly kisses.

Ladybugs that light on screen doors,

Lightning bugs at dusk

Praying mantis angles,

Black widow curves

The texture of blackberries,

The perfume of raspberries,

The denseness of gingerbread,

An avocado’s flesh.

Vanilla milkshakes.

Salted caramel everything.

And you. I. Love. You.

March 26, 2023 0

postmodernfamilyblog

Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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