Weight of Spring

Saving daylight, losing hours
you can never ever have back

Debts paid down but not in full
as liens come due without warning
and the price
is still to be tallied

Pay it
and pay it
and pay it...
it's more than I owe
but there's no satisfying
the judgment

I may owe my soul
to the company store
where it costs more
to eat than one makes
but you simply cannot afford
to take your custom
down the road

so spring ahead
fly
leap forward through time
don't count the minutes
begrudge the years

look back laughing
learning
how much is yet to be learned

save your fear
for things of true terror
bury ordinary horrors
in everyday humors

tears
can dampen the soil
only a deluge
can wash away
the undergrowth
but more than fire
can scorch
to the core

Fall back
remember
the history is not meaningless
nor doomed to repetition
there is reason
in the play

you may lose
more than you were willing
to sacrifice
but do not crucify
yourself

enough hangs
in the balance
spend the time like a miser
while away
while
away

waves of untold sorrow
will pound
they will recede
to crash again
and ebb yet again
endless cycles
of tide and pull

fog bows
to wisps of wind and light
shadows fleet

life
and lore
make promises
and fortell fortunes
won and lost

seize on the hope
save daylight
while you may

Look At Grandma

When I'm nervous, I can never speak the words I have in my head. My tongue jumbles them and twists them around and I'm lucky to get out any sentence at all, luckier still if any of it actually makes sense. I see the bewildered looks, and don't dare offer explanation out loud - settling for desperate telepathic messages of sincere intent. There's so much I wanted to say, but couldn't risk damaging the day. And the day was EVERYTHING...my beautiful daughter and her family.

My daughter will never call me Mama again in this lifetime - but "Look at Grandma", Billy said...and I could have fallen to my knees in tears at that moment. I cringe that I do it, but I walk on eggshells, afraid to make a mistake. I am grateful my daughter allows us these halting steps, these moments that I can see her, be close to her, see my beautiful granddaughters. I look at her face - hoping I'm not staring - and try to feel her heart. It's all I can do not to reach out and touch her, hold her as close as I used to. Back when she called me Mama and I was younger than she is now.

Proximity is all I can hope for. Proximity is all that will allow pockets of opportunity.

Today's Friend

My friend wears a rabbit hat. One of us could wear it, true, and we all want it - but it wouldn't be the same. She and the rabbit hat become one. It isn't quirky. It isn't attention-seeking. She is the rabbit hat. There is no putting on...it becomes her.

She is immensely talented, and immensely humble. I don't know her brother, who is possessed of his own genius, but count him a friend. It's the wit, the humor, that we all share. It's a bounteous feast and we all count ourselves particularly lucky to tag along. Her laugh, heard once, is remembered and found impossible to describe.

She gathers loyalty, and dispenses more. There isn't anyone close to her who doesn't know she could be the first call in the middle of the night. Straight of priority, crooked of grin...

Sure, we have a lot in common. The hat thing (the rabbit hat would not inhabit me, I'm more beret to her quirk), the pun thing, the crazy spontaneous "who cares what people think as long as we don't hurt anybody" thing...all that and more. But it's not as much about how we're alike as how our differences complement each other. How the best parts of each of us (and each of her many, many friends) come together and multiply. Rabbits do that, you know. She'd have my back - and we have hers. The mere having of such a friend invites others...it's a gravitational pull that begins with her entry into your life, and once open, there's no closing that window.

It's lovely weather - lovely weather for a rabbit hat. Let me grab my beret.

The Change

My friend lied to me, about me, in front of me. I can't say it changed anything - much will go as it has for years. There is a genuine affection, and even love remains. But I question history, now, as it has been written. I question sequence, I question cause, and I definitely question effect. Seeing clearly is a light and effortless thing, it is true. The pain still has weight, and cannot be dodged.

Even as I choose to let the sleeping dog lie, I know it is both strength and weakness. I call it weakness because it seems enormous effort to uncover and right the wrong - for no gain in the end that I can imagine. So is it weak, or is it kind? Can it matter given the distance from this time, from this life?

I believe it matters only to me, within me, as a lense to my dreams. Which ones will I fight for - and at what cost? How can I know if any choice is the right one, the one least selfish? What arbiter can there be who can know enough but be blind to prejudicial conclusion, who can see enough to weigh in safely but not so close as to be myopic?

I've kept to my word. Will that change when death grows even closer? Is desperation born of mortality, or is it a shaking of the chains, a weightlessness that knows no risk? How will I honor all the promises and still be able to promise anything to myself?

When did my perspective shift from thinking my best year was 30 years behind me, when I see it now clearly ahead? All the words I hoarded then - the words that dried up in a seeming instant...they come slowly back, in small bursts and struggle now for reclamation. How I envied that Harvard boy, madly obsessive but oh so in command of perfect words. I wish I remembered his name, could find his book, and swim again in the tales he wove.

My own words return, and I will use them lightly. Use them often, learning again to tell the stories I carry. There's no such thing as closure. But there is opening, there is opportunity, there is hope.

Swing Low

I'm finding my way out of the jungle - one step, one friend, one dream, at a time. And I grin at my reflection when I realize that only months ago, it all seemed so far away, so impossibly out of reach. I'll be happy with what I've earned, been given, found...but not so complacent I'm not taking another step, making the next dream reality.

There are always a few more pieces to put together, but the puzzle is taking shape. I can see the picture now, and when I breathe deep - it's freedom I taste.

Lost and Found

It was a watercolor layering of "What Dreams May Come"-like intensity, and all the metaphors heaped up against my eyelids don't begin to paint the picture true. It's likely not the words that are weak, but the wielder's practice of them...when the images spin you round in their flight, and you stand gaping in astonishment that one is capable of oblivious disregard: that any breathing human is not stopped still, frozen in wonder at the unfolding spectacle.

And still I recognize that it was nothing dramatic enough to reach most of us, nothing more than vivid green on cerulean blue, fig and citrus and rose entwined in breezy exhalation, and crisp shadows backlighting the deep silence that overlay ordinary sound. Motors hummed, chain clinked on the empty flagpole, wings moved the air, and all of this could be heard so crystal clear but muted as if through water.

What was it that compelled me to soak in it, when others took no note? What did I hear? Was it something I felt? that I saw, if just in unthinking perhipheral glance? If I profess religion at all, this would be the manifestation: that life itself is honored as sacred gift. That struggle cannot truly blind those who wish to see. That sorrow feeds the soul as fully as joy, in equal measure, and neither reigns supreme in the end.

Words and pictures build the hymns, and maybe the saddest lyric ever written is as simple as this: "the day the music died." And while it's not me who will teach the world to sing, I'm not too proud to sing a little backup right out loud when a happy dance shakes me on down.

It All Comes Rushing Back Again

When they stole my children, they stole my life. Nearing three decades later, the breath still gets sucked out in a rush...that moment of discovery the only milestone that still has the power to dissolve. Have you ever heard a boxer land a power punch on the heavy bag? That sound is pure velocity - the same force that even now can make me wobble if I don't see it coming.

I could say I forgive; I could say I understand. I'd be lying. If I could comprehend why, would it free me? Would it loosen even a single knot that binds me, allow me to love without fear of loss? Could anything now undo the devastation that like a tidal wave began with that theft, washed away continents of love and hope, wiped clean the ground I would walk forevermore...that still today ripples out of nowhere, leaving happiness treading water and feeling for the shore with leaden feet? Will every wave portend catastrophic flood? How long does one have to be safe to believe it? Can I never be safe unless my life is restored to me?

I never wanted as much of the world's riches as I've had before. I never wanted more than I deserved, more than anyone could ask for...I only wanted, like Job, my son and daughter restored to me. Was it patience I exemplified, or defeat? It wasn't faith, unless certainty that ill winds bring further plague is evidence of faith. The boons of reward have been many, but the world's largesse can never bring back the life that was taken.

Late in the third act, heavy fog still threatens in the distance and the same fear and loss lay like ponderous clouds on a shelf of imagining. If I am to find freedom, how will I know it? If I am to be covered in joy, how will I see it? Will it come like the wind and I'll know it by the cool whisper, the kitty-paw breezes that tuck and dart and softly caress? or by the bounding, spread-eagled puppy feet of winter freshness that jumps up and covers with love?

Even when I think I see the rainbow, I find it difficult to call out to the leprechaun. I stand, instead, and wait in awe for color to settle its vivid mantle all on my shoulders and lift me to the skies.

I don't know why they stole my children, why they killed my life. I may never forgive, or understand. I breathe so that someday I might recognize redemption if it comes: to see my babies' eyes shine, to know their smile is mine. If I believe there's any reason at all to move one foot after the other...it's nothing more than this: my babies loved me, and I love them. They may not remember, but I do and it haunts me. I want them to know it was true, that it never wasn't true. That the taking, and everything that followed, was never a choice I had any part in, that I could change, or undo.

It's not that I don't think I could forgive - it's just a path I never faced. It never felt necessary or promising. Wrapping my soul around it now, it almost pains me: an act of betrayal, of disloyalty, of denying that primal heartbeat that still pounds. It's in the pictures never taken but envisioned with such bright clarity in my mind's eye, the moments only I saw, that only I can remember, but that are no less real without photographic proof.

They may forgive, they may understand. They have their own peace to seek, and I so deeply believe the truth is the elemental part of that. I've worn it in my skin, tattooed in brilliant blue, through all the years that came after. Pain is like fire, but it's hope that cleanses, love that resurrects...and I've kept mine safe all this time. My talisman is a vision I couldn't be sure I really had, but it buoys me up - a hand, a smile, a hug that can't quite end.

I learned to live again. I'm learning to love without fear. But some days, it all comes rushing back again.

Funny How Time Slips By

I was a child, and didn't have a best friend yet. So I learned to read...and we went everywhere together. I learned to write...and took others with me. The plowhorse had his day, but my lullaby still led it to slumber.

She came in the 6th grade, my rival, my best friend...separately and together we charted the teen waters. When she moved across the country the summer before our senior year, my heart broke. I couldn't fathom life without her. But with baby steps, I found my path - out of high school, out of the neighborhood, and learned to swim in the deep end. I didn't know it then, but adulthood was still miles ahead.

That year was my milestone. I couldn't see it but I was coming into my own, drawing people to me, and beginning to find and choose my lifelong friends. Wannabe rebel who couldn't quite shake the goody-two-shoes mantle. Enthusiasm carried the day. Not one, but two Musketeerships - one of the guys, and not believing even decades later I was really anything more. I'm that same girl now...gift and curse of middle age.

With Age

There are riches I didn't treasure enough when they were new, and those I treasure more that they are old, and the ones I was afraid of losing - that I lost. I keep them still, if only in hope and dream and endless memory.

Second Sight

It's abundantly clear you have great happiness. Would I have made you as happy? Could I? We can never know, much as we might like to think so.

I can fall on convention and say, as I did, that you've got the life you have now, that you so love now, because of all the things - including me - that have gone before. Whether it's absolutely true, that too, we can never know for sure.

What we know for sure is you did deserve better than what I did. And what I've learned...slowly and painfully...is that I deserve to have happiness too. But I've also learned that as much as we "create" our own lives, I can't just snap my fingers and tell the wizard to conjure me up a soulmate. Would that I could.

Until I stumble over him on the road to wherever it is I'm going, I'll be grateful for the love of friends, the joys of family, and the hope of having time enough to be forgiven and get it right someday.