lonely November
charcoal sky speckled with crows
my heart aches with you
Lonely November
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Category Archives: Poem
Sleepless
Awake
for no reason, and a thousand reasons.
Hours pass, dull and quiet
this endless night.
Turning inward
I seek an image to cling to
hoping that it will pull me downward into sleep.
There are many.
But there is one.
I set my eyes on it.
Feel where it is.
Where I am.
A warm place that I breathe in
as I sink into the sand
and gaze towards the glare of a yellow light
that obscures a picture
that disturbs
and comforts
and beckons.
Then the house creeks
and the image is gone.
And I lie there
sleepless.
Summer’s Last Days
It’s just me
and you
and
the lake, still like a glass tabletop
the crickets, their song both beautiful and desperate
the sky, darkening a bit earlier each evening.
At last, just us.
After a season of endless chatter, just us
and
the lapping of water upon the sand
the lonely drone of the plane passing overhead
the watersnake skimming the shore, seeking the sun’s warmth upon his back.
Everyone else has gone.
They’ve abandoned you.
To avoid the inevitable goodbye?
Perhaps ours is a shared sadness.
Perhaps that is giving them too much credit.
Perhaps they are just selfish.
Having wrung from you all the pleasure they could get,
they have walked away
without a thank you
without a backwards glance-
you now a distant memory
and, like all memories of years past,
soon forgotten.
But you and I,
we are good.
Let us sit here together for as long as we are able.
I will miss you my friend when you are gone.
For now, let us enjoy this perfection of
silence and still
sand and sky
water and me
with you.
Anxious Days
Some days, trees are not trees
and I am not me.
I am a misplaced thing-
a small pile of sand on the second shelf of the china cabinet
next to a stack of teacups;
a single goosebump upon the arm of a woman sunbathing;
a nit on a bald man’s head.
I am contrary to the order of things-
a vortex running counter to its designated direction-
and everything pulled into my universe becomes contrary too.
Mothers tell bedtime stories about the souls’ of the damned.
The whispering breeze becomes the discordant notes of the organ master.
Day becomes night
and trees become demons.
*
On anxious days
everything stands in defiance of God
and fear prevails.
March Sunday
March Sunday
It’s still winter
nearing spring
buried under mounds of snow.
Not knowing what to do
we decide to have brunch
at an old New England tavern.
The drive there is long.
My husband’s soundtrack of Venditti,
Nada and Vasco playing
I feel a headache coming on.
Because the low winter sun reflects off the snow
and pierces my eyes
and my heart.
The drive is so very long and slow
reminding me of so many drives before
on Sundays in March
to visit old relatives
locked away in old New England institutions.
After brunch, I suggest that we visit
the charming bookstore down the street.
I hope we won’t run into her.
She lives in the same town.
What are the chances?
We go.
It is charming
until she walks in the door.
How is everything, she asks
Fine. Everything is fine.
As fine as anything can be
On a Sunday in March.
Melt Away
Yesterday I missed you and mourned what I have lost.
Today I mourned for you and all that you have missed.
Somewhere along the journey through memory’s cloudy landscape
may we meet and discover that we mourn
because we miss each other.
Let not our memories be like snowflakes
that when they touch the not yet frozen ground
melt away.
May the snow swirl above
in an eternal dance
and the two of us embrace
and remember our best selves
together
and only what was good.
All the rest can fall to the ground
and melt away.
End of Seasons
She asked so sweetly
if summer would come back.
And I thought of you.
About how you would soon pass
and not return for another season.
*
The finality of it
so profound.
You have almost fully departed
disappearing as you breathe.
*
As the crickets quietly sing
as the leaves turn
as the season changes
and they and you fall.
*
And as the past no longer exists
nor will you.
But in the present
you will always dwell in my heart.
And there I will carry the piece of you
that I knew
that was ours
through the seasons
until I too pass.
*This was originally posted on September 2, 2014.
The Warden’s House
The hill
Four houses
Forest behind
Fields ahead
A dead end
The horizon
A prison
That place
Autumn
Dead leaves
Bare trees
My mother
Speaking in tongues
Secrets and stories
Legends of the dead
Bones in the woods
Sounds in the night
An insomniac child
Wide awake
Midnight rapping on the door
Something crashing to the floor
The dog atop the stairs
Snarling
The house next door
Looming
Once inside
A cavernous red room
A feeling of doom
Something wrong
Innocence knows
A dry fountain in back
Some toads
Chirping of crickets
Honking of geese
The noisy silence of death
and demons
Peaking in windows
Smashing down gates
The song of that place
On the hill
Where the Warden’s house stood.
*
Just the other night
I visited that house
In my dream
The red room
The living room
The basement door
I saw it all
All that dwelled there then
All that dwells there now
In my dreams
Of that house
On that hill
In that place
Where dead leaves fall
in the eerie silence
of a haunted past
This poem was originally posted in October 2015 as “The Neighbor’s House.”
Late Autumn Visit to an Old New England Home
The quaint New England village
in mid-October.
Antique shops, country stores.
White-steepled churches
set against the backdrop
of fall’s spectacular display
of crimson and gold foliage
And the old New England home.
Her porch adorned with cornstalks and pumpkins.
Her flowerbeds full of yellow and rust-colored mums.
Arrogantly she stands.
She knows her admirers.
How they delight in her unassuming
beauty.
So simple.
Tasteful.
Smart.
She leaves her admirers to wonder
whether she is listed in the registry
of historic homes.
No one
not even she
acknowledges that her charms will fade
with the dropping of the leaves.
*
Be patient.
Wait a bit.
Four weeks perhaps.
Then visit again.
This time
go on in.
Meet her.
Push open the door that doesn’t quite want to give.
She’s not easy, you know.
Hear the creak of the plank floor as you step inside.
Smell the mothballs
and the scent of doorknobs
touched too many times
by so many hands
that the odor
that’s permeated their surfaces
can never be removed.
Smell the faint aroma
of dried out pot roasts
from dinners that stole away days.
Feel the lifeless still
of 4:00
on a Sunday afternoon
in November.
Sit in the chair by the window
and see the world
from that filmy view.
The gray sky.
The skeleton trees.
Now, turn your gaze back inside
and watch the dust
dance
in the late autumn sun
that streaks tauntingly through the glass.
And watch
as a single particle
settles itself atop one of the many knickknacks
that sits lazily
upon the mantel.
Hear the clock.
Each tick
reminding you
of how very long
a day can be.
In the sickening stillness
feel the unbearable loneliness.
Catch your breath.
Breathe in deeply.
Push the air past
the knot
in your throat.
As you sit, feel the house.
The weight
of her past.
So close, really.
What’s 200 years?
Certainly not enough time
for the departed
to resign themselves
to their fate.
* This piece was originally published on Quirk N Jive on October 24, 2015.
An October Morning
Fear finds you at night.
It rushes under your skin
and makes its way towards your heart
where it constricts,
slowly strengthening its grip
like a thread tied around a finger-
pulling, making it ache
until the finger pulsates.
The tip, increasing in size,
turns purple.
So the heart
caught in fear
pounds upon the door of sleep
and awakens you, the dreamer
who, finding yourself cold and wet,
must now decide whether or not to rise.
You must decide
whether you should try to rest in a dream where fear waits outside the gates of sleep
or awake to a nightmare
or, perhaps, awake to life.
You get up-coffee, face, teeth, dress.
You walk outside into a gray October morning,
quiet-but for the crickets chirping, singing their desperate song,
hoping that if their voices continue so too will they
or, if the song is beautiful enough, at least the memory of them will remain.
You see that the trees are losing their leaves
and you catch sight of one golden maple leaf
floating to the ground,
the curtain closing upon its final act.
You listen and -in the silence of the early morning-
you hear it land.
You feel the closure
that comes from hearing a last breath,
that comes from bearing witness to one reach his final resting place.
And you feel strong.
You are alive.
Still alive.
Quirk N Jive 