Calico

Last weekend was my nephew's graduation. Since I stayed with my mother for the weekend and she doesn't have Internet access (she can't even work her VCR), no writing was posted last weekend. Sorry. Plus, she's been staying with me this week, leading to little writing being done by moi. Sorry, sorry. Thus, I'm posting a poem I wrote roughly two years ago. I was living in a much smaller apartment in a much smaller town. An alley dumped directly across the street from the picture window in my living room, and this mama kitty used the alley often, crying and wailing incessantly. Her plight, and my imagining living her life, inspired this work.

Calico

I hear her from a block away;
she’s crying in the alley again--
not the soft sob of a disappointment
but the despairing wail of a lifetime
scarred with broken promise.
Her life is marked by poverty—
children lost to babysnatchers,
malnutrition, abandonment, or just
the fender of a passing car.
She’s cowering near the garbage cans,
catching shelter from the rain
under a rotting eave.
Who knows where she’ll sleep tonight,
but for once I’m assured
that I won’t wake to her screams
under my window as the male
in her life takes out his pleasure.
Years ago, she was fine—
like a smoky Billie Holiday tune
or a warm brandy chaser.
She’d slink down the alley,
a purr in every step,
confident, satiated, sleek.
Each step was a symphony
of balance and grace,
seduction and purpose.
The fellas all vied for her attention.
I can only imagine the names
they called her then—
Baby, Sugarlips, Sweet Thang.
No longer.
She huddles, emaciated,
abused by the storm,
Society, the man up the street.
Her hair, where she still has it,
hangs in clumps,
dirty, snarled, mangy.
Tonight, after the storm passes,
she’ll look through my garbage,
find the shrimp I didn’t finish
and dine like a queen,
sit under the flickering streetlight,
and maybe look up at the moon
in wonder at something so beautiful.
Tomorrow or the next day,
sometime soon,
she’ll curl up in her safe place,
wrap her tail around her body,
and drift peacefully, I pray,
into the home of no yesterdays.

Stress

No poem or other creative writing this week. I'm attempting to finish projects due this week for school. Yesterday I worked all day on a lesson plan for using Second Life to teach a novel. It's still unfinished. Today, I must create a power point for my presentation tonight for my Talk in the Curriculum course (boy, will I be glad to have that finished). And so on....

I find it hard to sit at my computer where I can look outside onto my sun-drenched patio and concentrate on school work. The cardinals are calling to each other; the wrens are chirping away, and the geese meander by with a honk or two. Plus, everything is just so GREEN.

But...I have lots to do, and time is passing swiftly.

I am from...

Today would be my parents' 47th wedding anniversary. At the time of their marriage, my mother was a ticket agent for American Airlines in Nashville, and my father was a traveling salesman running from his destiny of being a minister. Both had been married before and had children. My maternal grandmother--and perhaps my snooty paternal grandmother--was not happy with Mom's involvement with Dad, so on May 6, 1961, Derby Day, Mom and Dad eloped to Kentucky. It was an inauspicious beginning. They stopped to eat on the way home, and both came down with food poisoning.

My dad loved the story of their wedding, even the illness. He'd say, "We eloped to Kentucky on Derby Day...and the race has been on ever since."

So, here's a little poem about the two greatest influences on my life.

I am from a southern magnolia,
transplanted long before my birth.
Hardier than her delicacy shows,
she yearns for that warmer soil,
but her roots are planted deep
in this Missouri dirt.
I wait patiently for her to bloom,
those sweet pastels drawing others in,
but just as the buds fully form,
a late snow shower frosts her limbs,
and she retreats in protection.

She’d like me to stay nested,
a reddened robin in her shelter,
but I am not like her.

For I am also of a drifting wind.
My father, a circuit rider,
Wandering was his soul.
He’d settle for a while,
give us time to acclimate,
gain a foothold in the arduous soil.
Then, the spirit would move us
to greener pastures,
through overgrown forests,
stopping sometimes on rocky outcroppings.
He liked the change, the challenge.
She always looked for ways to keep
her roots firmly grounded.

So, while I am from fixed beauty,
I hear a whisper in my ear say,
“Fly away, little bird. Fly!”
And as my feet lift off,
I ignore the knowing sorrow in her eyes.

Trunk life

Wednesday the Today Show had a segment on automobile tires. They said that even if never used, tires could still blow if they are six years old or older. Yikes! So, I checked my tires, and sure enough, they are six years old (there's a number right next to the rim that's four digits long, the first two digits are the week, the second two the year). So, I guess I'll add new tires to my list of money draining expenses this spring. Hooray!

Anyway, I was also reading Writing to be Read by Ken Macrorie this week for one of my seminar courses and thought I'd try a little of his advice. Originally, this poem was a series of three haiku (per Macrorie's advice), but I didn't like them. So, I switched it up. I'm still not thrilled with the piece so far, but I took a clue from Paul Valery ("A poem is never finished, only abandoned") and stopped tinkering with it. Ah, well....

Tires expire.
Of course they do
if driven 80,000 miles
with nary a rotation—
other than the obvious
round and round
to reach each destination.

Tires expire
from staying in storage
or languishing in cars’ spare vault.
They have a shelf life—
well, trunk life.

Wait, that’s untrue.
Tires don’t live.
They never toil in an office,
never hook up with others
at the local coffeehouse,
never birth a little Michelin
or a chunky Goodyear.

But if not removed from service,
replaced with a younger model,
recycled to another use,
tires will disintegrate,
even as the wheels continue revolving.

At a certain point in their career,
tires must retire.
If only that moment is recognized
and embraced entire.