I Call Her 'Baby B'

It's the end of a week, and I am tired. There have been too many responsibilities this week, with more to follow. I'd like to drink myself into a warmth that's eluded me the past several days, and then fall into bed and get lost in soft sheets that precipitate a falling away. Instead, I am faced with, "Mommy! I don't want chilli with cheese....I want ramen noodles!"
My nerves go into overload/red death mode: "You asked me to make chilli dogs and tater tots! Since I took you to the pool and cooked what you asked for, you do NOT get to whine in my presence!"
"Fine! I'll just make the ramen noodles myself!"
My eyeball fixes its laser beam on the offending child, and she starts to skulk off to her room instead of making good on the high-pitched words. They may as well have been stomped onto my dermis with feet communicating in morse code-with stiletto heels. My nerves are raw and shredded and screaming to eradicate all whining life forms within a ten mile radius. Luckily, my typically loving progeny is fairly intelligent and senses that there may an unhappy end in sight if she does not disappear quickly. I hear her snivelling as she skinks towards her room.
When blood has stopped pounding in my ears, I walk by her open door and see her hunched on her bed, talking quietly to her latest lovie. There are many of these creatures, in all stages of glory: some are new and are still soft and lovely to hold; others are missing patches of fur and have long lost the luster in their plastic black and brown eyes. But they exist in a pantheon of babies who will always matter. Her frantic, "Mommy, where's Pookie?!? I can't let her sleep in the dark by herself!" shows her dependence on all the little stuffed creatures given to her over the years. I never developed such sentimental, childish, typical attachements, and neither did my other children. Such a dependence on stuffing and buttons and sparkles is a revelation to me.
I listen at the door, ears attuned to her baby babble. A 45 lb eight year old sits wrapped in her pink and yellow blanket. She's so small, so immature, but I've nurtured her role as youngest-I still call her 'Baby'. "It's ok, you can have all the wamen noodles you want. Mommy will make it for you." She refers to gerself as she murmers these words of comfort; she holds her precious lovie tightly, and only when I clear my throat does she look up.
Large red-rimmed eyes ask the question before I hear her say, "Mommy, are you mad at me?" Plaintive, waifish-these words just don't do justice to the pathos which she squeezes from every breath as she asks me to reaffirm my love. It's a tradition we seem to need to go through, she and I.
"No, Baby. I just want you to understand that it's unreasonable to expect me to keep making extra food when I've made what you asked. You can't demand things on a whim, then be unreasonable when you don't get them."
"Mommy, what's a 'whim'?"
I search for the best way to answer this and keep her mind focused on the topic at hand. It's a stretch.
"A whim means that you wanted one thing, and then for no good reason, you changed your mind just because you can. It usually involves creating extra work for other people."
"Like you?"
"Yes, precious, like me."
"Mommy, are you mad at me?" This kid's good......
"Well, I was. But now I just want you to learn that it's selfish to always expect everything to go the way you want it to." Hmmm.....
"So can I have ramen noodles?"
"No, ma'am you can't." My anger has long since lost hold, and I answer her with forebearance.
"Ok, Mommy. I love you." She smiles and blinks at me from under bangs that have grown too long.
"I love you too, Baby B!" For a second more, I watch as she returns to her make believe. Then, turning, I slip into my bedroom, quietly close the door, and shake my head while I smile to myself. I am warmer and strangely content.

On the Wings of Words

Words: The ones I craft contain my essence, layers of me.
My introspective journeys-outpouring of expressions- define
my purpose. Inside they'’d become stale, rank, bitter

Glimpses are myopic at best.
Flocks of words fly from my mouth, my pen
fluttering, lifted by each new current, held aloft
in the cracked, flawed clouds.
They forget to land, or get blown off course
or they linger too long

Birds? Or wolves in sheep'’s clothing?
Bloody, vicious, dripping with misguided fury:
unreasoning emotions, creeping honesty in the face of crouching fear.

The sheep get devoured by the words,
while the shepherd strums his harp.
Feathered, winged creatures fly on, looking for a safer place to land.

Sometimes though, the words are captured and housed
in somrarefieded aviary. They clutter the large, ornate structure
that houses them. This cage with the humors of tropical flowers,
bright, beautiful, on the verge of decay in the humus-filled
humidity, is where they drop their feathers. The floor is littered with them.

And we return to the sanguine sheep, bleating softly.....
or are they bleeding softly? And the shepherd lays down
his harp, his life while beating the vicious rippers, the bloody fangs,
the ravening yellow eyes.
He bares his fangs, the wolves retreat, and the sheep graze peacefully.

A new group of birds find the prevailing wind.
They flap away, carrying the words under their wings.


{2002}

Our Beach

You looked at me and told me I smelled good.
I had just opened my eyes to find you
Staring at me, fingers pressed to your nose.
I looked at the seagulls, hovering, hoping
To be fed by some tourists with bags of breadcrumbs.
I flowed into the absorbing blues of sky and water
As the waves rolled inward, then back out.
White, frothy foam: the stuff of insignificance-
And I wondered why beginnings and endings
Are never clear at their happening.
You kissed my mouth
And the warmth of your lips liberated my concern.


{August '04}

Why Do We Expect So Much?

I’m not a seamstress, threading the eye of a needle, which
seems harder than herding a camel through that very eye.
Yet, I want to weave tapestries of words, thoughts, feelings-
all nebulous concepts without format.
Living outside the literal, they’re the Emporer’s New Clothes.

If I could convince just one person, the right person, that
My words fit, can clothe the ruler in sumptuous fabrics, colors, textures
Will everyone else see the poetic garment?
The one I wear every day without common recognition of its value.
Maybe I should become a purveyor of ready to wear
rather than haute couture. What is poetry, really?
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
I suppose, but I’d hazard a guess that the treasure-seeker
is a proprietor of a rather impressive line of his own
haute-couture, just waiting to be recognized.

Divorce

Divorce is a death, but not acknowledged as such.
There’s no funeral with beautiful, mournful music.
No notes designed to grip and resonate in our hearts,
giving rise to that onslaught of emotions
buried deep within. There are no flowers tossed
in the open pit or laid on the polished casket.
There’s no graveside marking a passing, a finite end, a definite
transition into a new emotional space.
There are no casseroles, brought by friends and church ladies
who join the succession of saddened well-wishers.
Instead, the grieving period is one of fits and starts,
a halting hatred and incompetent grief.
Not the romantic, tragic figure of literature and song,
you're simply a statistic-
an ordinary, expected statistic.
Emotional myopia grips with a mighty grasp
and a void deepens that must be filled somehow.
Responsibility doesn’t thoughtfully disappear.
It festers and gnaws at whatever emotive resources you have left
until you wonder, "Why can't I be like one of the dark creatures of the
night, who scurry furtively until darkness emboldens them to run?"

But I guess that's what I did.

{2001}

Slightly Unhinged

We met for a late lunch. This was unusual because we usually only meet on the weekends, Sundays usually, for a movie or dinner. We used to meet in the middle of the week, but now he's too busy with sod and I'm too busy with soccer and kids and everything else that always gets in the way. I had wanted to go somewhere overlooking the water, and we sat outside under the umbrellas. We're friends, he and I. Occasionally, our friendship slips past the normal boundaries......................................................................................

I am lying on my bed, checking my email. My laptop is in front of me, and the girls are in the other room. One of them has the shower running, and they're playing some game. The oldest is the younger one's servant (will wonders never cease?), and they seem to be playing house........................................................................

There's a story inside me, scratching to get out. The words-their meanings, their intent-can't seem to cleave to a single purpose. It's a baby who refuses to be born even though the labor pains assure you there's life and hope. This frustrates me, because it means that I have words left unspoken, emotions left unexpressed. They're a chorus singing in disparate keys. And the atonal quality of my stutterings-stories started, then stopped-is giving me a headache.
I am going through a slump.The self-assuredness I usually carry as a badge is coming unpinned. I won't let it fall completely to the floor, but like my attempts at writing, I seem to be stumbling. Missing the mark. My galumphing through certain instances has left me chagrined at times. It is because of this that the baby is breach, that the song cannot be sung.
With all this being said, I can't even finish this current thought. The baby refuses to be born; the song's chords have found no resolution. I have a welling need inside that refuses to be met head on. It's avoiding me like my colleague when she's done something she knows I want to confront her about (another set of stories entirely!). Unborn babies and off-key songs...even my metaphors are jumbled! I feel slightly unhinged.

A Moment on the Water

Last night, I wanted to go on a pontoon boat ride around Lake Martin. I tried to convince all the other staff members that it would be a glorious night for gliding on the water, listening to the motor hum as it carried us, barge-like through the murky, lapping waves. To me, being on a boat at night is sheer poetry. The stars are cast in their usual spots, and the occasional spotlight on someone's dock spreads out over the water until it can't reach any farther, and the water resumes its dark, absorbing color. Apparently they weren't in the mood for poetry.
I walked down to the water front, knowing someone was there because all the dock lights were blazing. There sat the camp ranger, waiting. I had asked him earlier that, if I could get up a group, could he take us for a ride after the kids' evening activities were done? Obliging guy; he said, "sure, if you can get a group together." I saw no one else but kept walking down the hill, my shoes sliding slightly on the gravel. My flashlight was waving sporadically as I strode down with determination.
I approached the dock, then boarded the boat. We sat for a minute in silence, as I looked expectantly at the path leading to the water front.
"I guess no one else is coming."
"We can't go for much of a ride," the ranger told me. "The motor surges after it hits a certain number of rpm's."
"Oh." I wondered if this meant he wasn't going to take me for a spin around the watery block. My fears were relieved when I head the engine burp a couple of times as he turned the key in the ignition, then felt it come to life. Backing up from the slip, we headed past the swimming area and the island that seems to inspire each new director to build something on it, but remains inhabited only by fireants and scrubby pines each year.
The sky was much darker than I had anticipated and we both commented that the stars were not very visible. A storm was expected sometime within the next 24 hours, and we wondered if cloud cover would keep us from seeing anything. We motored along at a rather sedate speed and chatted. I learned that Jason, the ranger, had been a missionary in Russia, near the Mongolian border for a year. He told me it was the most rewarding year of his life, but that it had been a difficult adjustment. I told him about my recent missionary experience in Mexico, then we fell silent.
I sat with my arms folded over the back of the seat and looked over the side. What I could see in the dark was moving water-water displaced by an object being propelled through it, then resuming its original fluid form. "That we were here already doesn't matter," I thought. Glancing up towards the sky, I discovered that the stars had come out from behind the clouds' skirts, peeking shyly at me. One even winked at me, or so it seemed till I figured out that the light was blinking regularly and was therefore a plane. That was okay-it had been a nice figment to possess for a moment, even if it was a little cliche'. The breeze lifted my curls and my hair, which had been wet from a shower, was now only damp.
Why does it matter to anyone but me? It doesn't. But for me, it was another ride on a lake I've visited since childhood. It was a moment on the water, and will be added to the sum total of my experience with deep depths. Experiences become fragmented and splintered; they unravel so that what I think are the important parts to remember become nothing but lint on my sleeve. But the splinters and fragments somehow form an aggregate memory, a composite memory that embodies an essence I failed to catch at first. That becomes the point. It was such a slight thing, the ride that the ranger gave me. He won't remember it, and it was certainly not the longest ride or best conversation or even prettiest night. But it was mine, for a brief time, and I will remember it.

How?

Pursued but not caught,
caught but not trapped,
trapped but not caged-
How can I be all these things,
and you still be happy?

Lavar

Rain falls lightly, steadily.
A tub of velvety, heated water with fragrant bubbles
sits in the middle of a grove.
Brilliant green fronds glisten with the moisture
Heaven has bestowed on a grateful jungle.
I float amidst the wet on wet on wet:
sky, earth, body.
Steamy water envelops me.
Cool drops launch a pleasant assault on my exposed skin-
that which does not sink beneath the cover.
The earth wears a lush fragrance of renewal;
it is verdant, fertile.

I am a companion in this ritual of cleansing,
floating in a womb.
Fears, aches melt away in the heat.
Droplets descend on me from the treetops-a covering roof-
making music as they couple with surfaces exposed.
Color, fragrance, sound: my senses are full, stretched but not broken.
I am clean, covered-invulnerable for the moment.