Uncommon Fruit

 

I need to see the sun’s first light

and flaming slide at the end of day.

I can’t escape my farmgirl sentience—

what it was to fall asleep

to the thrum of the hay dryer

with a pillow cooled at windows of sweet scent,

to hear the whistle of the freight train

on its rumble through the night

to pick up grain and carry it off.

 

With hay cut and drying in the sun,

I see those strong boys paid to help.

Heavy bales to lift, throw, and stack;

chaff in our hair, sweat down our backs.

We gathered at the hydrant,

close but not touching. Closer than touching.

 

Knee-deep in Queen Anne’s Lace

on a wend among the boulders,

glacial erratic that lined the fence—

worn pocket tops caught the rain

and made a seat for dreams of Oread

hawks and love and common things

 

and lent a view of the jagged line

of rogue apple trees

that grew along the creek

in unmannered ways,

withstood the winds of winter

and bore uncommon fruit

without the nod of a care from us.

 

Sharing an old poem about home at dVerse  (the poet's pub) and Poets and Storytellers, What conjures up home?  Nothing was ever sweeter than the smell of fresh cut hay and first love. 

Better Than Jumping Off A Bridge

A Mother’s Question To Her Daughter:

Did you come in while I was sleeping?
I thought my glass was empty
and you filled it.

So what have you been doing . . .

since you weren’t here.

 

What I’ve been doing—

    writing a novel you don’t understand

    and wouldn’t like,

    day drinking and dreaming—

you don’t want to know.

So, for you I’ve been

playing an out-of-tune piano,

and patting truffles into shape,

tending the chickens and chasing mice

out of the nesting boxes.

        Or was it a rat jumped past me en route to the door?

This cloak of guilt you’ve fitted

for me to wear like an apron

has bottomless pockets I'm working to fill.

So, don’t ask me what I’ve been doing

because you don’t want to know.

The poets at What's Going On Blog is calling on all poets who blog this week to explore the word Mother.  In all it's incantations, when a word is more than a word. 

 

Teeth Of The Beast - Monday's Musings

 

It’s official

Black Friday is now on the calendar

like an American holiday. 

Even Band-Aids are made in China.

My mother’s stainless-steel bowl

is stamped Made in USA. 

Hummingbird feeders hang untended and bereft

as summer sets sail in her wraparound skirt

throwing wet kisses from a vaporous cloud.

Can't say I'm sorry to say goodbye

because I have beets simmering in the pot

and an olive oil cake to whip up in that bowl, 

from a recipe I got at Dario Cecchini's kitchen 

the famous butcher of Panzano.

In between time I've hit send on my first  newsletter

composed by my lonely self with no help from the AI beast

that's been unleashed in our midst without so much

as a by-your-leave.

Send me a message here 

and I will share Dario's olive oil cake with you.

Over and out. Now to curl up with a good book

while the oven works.

What Summer Makes Us Do

 

The tavern’s dark interior is refuge from the heat

that blankets the city in a migraine aura.

The top-shelf bottles are lined up like dancers

in lusty green skirts and amber hues.

 

The bartender blows foam from a pour

and our eyes meet in the mirror behind the bar.

Chunks of frost slide off my mug

like a glacier sliding into the sea.

I catch some with my tongue

as he wipes the bar with his towel.

 

An aquarium sits in the center of the backbar

and piranha sweep the perimeter with empty eyes.

Condensation drips off the bottom of the tank

and I wonder what he feeds them.

 

Music spills out of the back corner

where a barefoot stranger with a guitar

sits in a pool of light in front of a fan.

 

The room is a turntable

and the ceiling fan whiffs the nape

of my neck with a reminiscent chill—

    wool scarves and galoshes

    snowmen with black button eyes.

 

The bartender flips a lock of hair off his brow

eyebrows etched in surprise, as if I’d spoken aloud.

A careless flip-flop dangles off my toe

like the towel he tosses to and fro.

 

The dancefloor is chalky with sawdust

and the musician strums a lick

that will repeat in my head

like circling piranhas in an endless loop.

 

The room is an ocean, salt on our lips,

piranha swimming free.

Joining the open link party at dVerse for beer and company along with the poets at What's  Going On?  who are asking "How's the Weather?" They are calling all poets who blog, so how could I stay home?

A Lady In Pants

 Stories from the Carsonville Hills

My great grandmother had dementia. She lived in the back of her son’s house but had her own room and a sitting room. Mother remembers riding in the horse-drawn sleigh across the snow-packed roads to her uncle’s house and seeing her grandmother drift mysteriously through the living room. Though she often didn't know where she was or who she was with, in other matters, nothing escaped her. 

Women had just started wearing pants, and great-grandmother frowned on that. She’d look askance at a lady in pants and cast that disapproval mother’s way who, upon this occasion, had dared don a functionable pair of trousers with pockets for the ride through the snow. 

In great-grandmother's day women sat stern with reddened hands, legs together, baked bread in their house dress, milked cows in their barn dress, and herded the children to bed in their nightdress.

Mother was on the cusp of attending Marygrove College in Detroit. A woman on the move who dressed smart but sometimes wore pants.

Sharing this little story (prose poem?) with Desperate Poets (something desperately different) and Poets and Storytellers United.  The prompt is Triumph or Disaster. I look at this as a triumph for my mother given the times. But we woman are still fighting for decent pockets in everything!!

Super Blue Moon

The last rain stopped

and the steel sky lifted

a bit.

Six crows fly in battleship formation

across what might be the sun,

visible orb through cumulus gray

a bit.

Then dusk descended and the crows went

where crows go and bats took flight

from their hidey holes

and the moon- what they call blue-

rose over the hill where cattle sleep

and my father's house once stood.

For a bit.

Blue Moon on the rise

shames the breadth of artless men.

Bathes the earth in blue.

Written for our BLUE MOON, which won't happen again until 2037. Who knows what state the earth will be in by then so shine on tonight and check out the poets of dVerse as they praise the moon which dims the light pollution of humankind. The haiku finale is requisite in the haibun poetry form. Also, from dVerse is their Open Link Night for all to join in.