I won't miss my mom

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I sew a button on a shirt, she’ll be there.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I swim in a pool she’s there helping me float.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I make a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookie dough, she’ll let me lick the beaters.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I offer a glass of water to my crying son, to gulp down and ease his pain, she’ll be there helping him hold the glass.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I sketch out an idea about how to remodel my house, she’ll be giving me ideas.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I have some popcorn in the family room by the TV she’ll be passing out the bowls.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I pop the top off of a Tupperware lid, or happen to see one of those silly Avon aftershave decanters, she’ll be there.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I start a sentence with: “You better…” It’s her voice I hear.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I hear “You are my sunshine” or “Mares eat oats and does eat oats” I’ll hear here singing those words to me.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I’m feeling really down, it’s her heart I feel, trying to help, or just being there in spite of everything.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because when I see a few ladies having coffee together, I’ll see her and her lifelong friends.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because every time I manage to succeed, she’s in it somewhere.

I won’t miss my mom.
Because she did the best with what she was given, and loved me in spite of it all.

I have always loved her, but have only just now begun to appreciate all the wonderful gifts she gave me throughout my life. Sure, she spoiled me with material things, but that’s not what I mean. It’s all the gifts that have no value that mean the most to me. I won’t miss my mom. She’ll be right here always.

broken heart is heart broken

feeling a bit depressed.
trying to ignore it.
but it persists.
like a stationary low
hovering over
casting a big
dark
shadow.

trying to see the sun
trying to have some fun
but fun seems beside the point
now

its all about composting.
deconstruction
decomposition
absolution

I'm already here

I'd like to change some things I've done
go back and make them right
but it's too late
today has come
and I can't change yesterday

I try to get on with it all
try to be good
but sometimes I just fail
I know that in the past
I've hurt those I hold dear
I push them away
instead of holding them near
what am I to do about it now?
the past is back there
and I'm already here

forgiveness is an exercise in humility
a ride down a lonely road
but it can heal you
you can heal you
when the anger swells
forgive
I forgive you
I'm already here
I'm sorry you're still there

I'm sorry for hurting you
I'm sorry for trying
I'm sorry for shopping
and not buying
I'm sorry sometimes
for my very existence
I'm sorry for loving
I'm sorry for distance

the question is
after all
can we forgive
and not forget
can we relive
and not regret

I forgive you
for hurting me
now forgive me
for hurting you
please?

origami bird

clutch the flat
silent origami bird
unfold it
while I speak
write your confessions
in the deepest creases
refold the angles
open your palm
and watch it fly
off and out
into future parabolas
with no tether
but a lie

blueberry bunnies

About 5 years ago, when we first moved in, I went out and bought six blueberry bushes and planted them in the backyard. I didn't expect any fruit the next season, but hoped to get some the second season. I foolishly pruned the bushes after the buds had formed though and ended up with a net of about two berries.

That second fall I made sure not to touch the bushes as far as pruning was concerned. They were bushing out nicely that summer and I dreamed of the next summer and all the wonderful fruit they would bear. One night late in the fall I wandered out to mulch the plants and noticed to my dismay that the blue berry bushes had been pruned!

I immediately went in and asked JJ and Art if they had actually tried to help me in the yard and trimmed those bushes. They both looked at me unknowingly and shook their heads; "No." Well if they didn't trim the bushes, did I somehow forget and trim them? How else could they have gotten pruned? I went back out and inspected the job. It was very neat and concise. Clean, sharp, angled cuts were at the ends of each branch with new growth. Finally it dawned on me. The rabbits! The rabbits trimmed my blue berry bushes!

Well, there was nothing I could do that year, so the winter passed and as soon as the ground thawed that spring I went out and got stuff to put up a little fence around my blue berry bushes. It wasn't pretty. In fact it was butt ugly! But if it was going to help me get my blue berries the next year, I could live with it. So there is stood. The posts like little green sentries against the potential intruders willing to eat away the next years crop. All seemed to go well that summer, I still got a few berries, but the real test would be in the fall to see whether or not the bunnies would try to trim them for me again.

All was well. No unwanted trimming, but for one or two branches that poked through the fence. Great! And that next spring I had several flowers that turned to wonderful blue berries. I got about a quart out of it. Contented that I had fixed the problem I just checked the blue berry "pen" intermittently over the summer to make sure the wire fence hadn't been breached.

Everything was going great. And this spring the flowers were amazingly abundant! Triumph! I was so excited to get the first long awaited harvest from my blue berry bushes! And there they are out there now, quarts and quarts of blue berries ripening on the branches in the warming summer sunshine. I was pretty proud of myself and the job that the fence was doing. I was so confident in that fence that I put another one up around my hap hazard garden I planted this year at the last minute. There they were. The ugly wire parameters around my gardens.

It was well worth the ugly to keep the bunnies at bay. After all, this past winter with record snowfall, I hadn't fenced my raspberries in because I'd never had a bunny problem with raspberries, but I guess with all the snow they were desperate and they ate every cane down to the snow line! So this year I won't have many raspberries. Seeing this and keeping it in mind as I gaze on the "iron wall" I've erected around my crops, I'm almost considering it art.

This past week we've had record rainfall. Sunday was particularly bad. So Monday I went out to check the status of my baby flowers and veggies. Most had weathered the storms. As I was admiring the blue berry crop, I noticed a patch of brown within the rusty red of the pine needle mulch. Weird, what was that? No way! There, inside the fenced in blue berry patch a bunny had built a little nest and within it lay six furry little baby bunnies!















Fine. I guess the bunnies get the last laugh. I just hope they don't get any designs about pruning my blue berry bushes this fall. I thought about grabbing them all and throwing them out, but I knew they'd probably be abandoned by their mother and die, and they were just so cute. So there they lie. I guess I'll leave the blue berry patch up to them this year.

big black cloud

The sun was shining this morning when I woke up. I looked outside and everything was still wet from a storm. With the sun shining on it the grass looked like a carpet with threads of sparkling emeralds. The trees had crystals hanging from their leaves exploding with bursts of sunlight.

As I was getting ready to go out to my car to drive to the bus stop, the wind picked up and it began to pour down rain. I went back in and sat down in my chair, shut my eyes and let the breeze blow over me as I listened to the steady hush of the rainfall. Soon the rain slowed and I went outside to see how my plants were doing. The sun was shining while the rain was lightly coming down, so I'd hoped to see a rainbow arched across the blue and grey sky. But no luck. Just a big ominous cloud overhead. Like and inky stamp pad hovering, waiting for just the right moment to squish me.

I got in my car and drove off, keeping an eye toward the sky to maybe catch a glimpse of the rainbow. But no rainbow, just that big cloud stretching off into the distance for miles and miles. This cloud was charcoal grey and hanging, pregnant with rain. No rainbow, just rain.

what I wish I could say

I wish I could say what I'm feeling and not feel like a total fool. Because all rational thought says to leave it. Leave it. Leave that feeling I have when I'm near you. Leave it. Leave it! I just want to say that I wish I could touch you. I wish I could become someone real to you. I wish I was so beautiful inside and outside that you couldn't resist me, and you'd drop everything and run away with me. Or run toward something with me. Or dive into the ocean and swim with me and the sharks. [Wear a life preserver.] You have infested my mind. I am rendered mute by the love I feel. I am exploding inside. I am exploding with anxiety over this love. I worry it is a fantasy. I worry I am the only one. I worry I will never see you again. I worry my delusion will punish me until I die. But it is an interesting journey, this love that has fallen on top of my head, out of nowhere. I can see you so clearly. I can hear your voice. I reel. I'm dizzy. I feel like I'm a little girl. I want you to wrap your arms around me and say hi to me, so quietly, like a soul talking to another soul. I want to crawl into your pocket and ride around with you all day. Just to be near you. Just to feel you. And it is so real, this weird attraction. It is profound. I remember touching your hands, but I don't recall the contact. All I can remember is holding your hands and looking away and trying to hide my adulation. I would just love it if you showed up at my doorway once more. Quietly and weirdly. All the awkwardness of any love is what I'm full of. I feel so inadequate. I feel like a young girl in an old woman's body trying to reach out of this deformed and cankered shell to a beam of light. I feel like I can't speak to you in any other language than love. Your image is imprinted on my retina, it colors my world. I am forgotten. I am misbegotten. I have the moon to prove it. I am jaded and daunted and misguided. I am but a sorry dope in this whole big scheme. Love is having its sadistic way with me. And there you have it. I wish I could tell you. But you have this whole other reality you belong to, and I'm not part of it. But I just have to say it felt so natural to be with you. It was so weird. It felt so easy, and so right and like nothing I've felt before. I need oxygen.

quarterly depression

I'm starting to forget stuff. I can't focus. I've been riding a pretty high creative balloon for a few months. Now, with my mom's illness, and my friend Flo's illness, I find myself crashing quite hard. I want to write, and have moments where I can find my voice, but it's like I'm tuned late in the night to some wavering and drifting am radio frequency, unsustainable, with lots of background static. It comes in clear for the moment, and then it's gone before I can make out just what tune was playing.

Last night I had dreams of which only fragments remain today. There was Cosmo, we were making tofu and soy milk with some woman I don't know or can't remember, a still living, but long lost love was there too. They were all there solidly floating in my dream. I have to say it felt good to dream about people I love who are not around anymore -- to see them animated and talking to me in my dreams and suspended amid the colors that bring life to my senses as if part of some beautiful Calder mobile turning above my head.

Maybe dreaming is like death, because the thoughts manifest from my brain, so the characters I commune with in my dreams are really projected from my own psyche. We're all woven together in the after life of the spirit. So maybe when you dream you are partly dead and drifting within the mass of the infinite. I see my dead friends and they love me. They love me even more than they did when they were alive. I see long lost loves and they love me again too. I miss all of them and cry when they finally dissolve into the vapor of waking reality.

Why does everything seem to have two sides? All that I miss seems tangled in a violet mist of love and contentment, but on the other hand, it is my scourge. I have fallen in love with a dream, snapshots of time. I pine away, cuddled up to those nice warm delusions, leaving sad reality starving in the rain. I'd rather not face it. Have I betrayed it, or has it betrayed me?

The dream where I have no arms to grasp and hold what I love descends upon me. Now all my beautiful fantasy slips into the fragrant lavender ether. It all becomes too real and I am left empty and depressed. Barely able to find my voice. When I try to push the breath out to scream all that comes is silence. A vacuum. The disembodied thoughts float off and fade away into a black chasm of apathy. All hope lies within the fantasy, I just can't let it go. I just have to sleep and die to my dreams once more.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px5N5u0lLmY&feature=related

health care

Health Care. How could anything be so misnamed? When you use health care, you are usually neither healthy, nor does anyone really care about making you healthy.