I am daughter
of moonlight over desert landscapes
of emptiness and endless expanses.
Too many trees stifle my soul,
enclose
engulf
suffocate
Let me see long,
watch the far horizon,
listen to the wind.
I am daughter
of puma, of jaguar,
stealing through black night
under endless stars.
Alone
wild
free.
Let me wander distances
watchful, timeless.
I am daughter
of the ancients
wise
mysterious
windblown
stark
all knowing.
Let me walk into the sunset
talk with gods.
I am daughter of the universe.
Why
and
What
draws me
to witches
herbal secrets
moonlight
ancient ruins
archaic codes.
It is the goddess blood I carry,
remembrance of a past
when women ruled
when peace reigned
and
All were healed.
Women: wondrous, wild,
daughters of the moon,
mysterious, magnificent, molten,
fierce secret keepers,
possessors of the universal key.
Lahib Jaddo painted this; it hangs in my house. This poem was inspired by the poet, Lucille Clifton, who is the featured poet this week in my poetry class.
Depression, sad days, melancholy.
Gone!!
At 26, I said, “To hell with this!
You control your life; live it!!
I tried forbidden liaisons, trained horses,
Went around the world, a cobra wrapped around my neck,
Walked the Shalimar Gardens in Kashmir,
Watched the Taj Mahal reflected in still waters,
Stood before the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi,
Strolled the streets of Katmandu,
Talked with monks at the Shwedagon Pagoda,
Bargained with sticks in dirt, math our only common language,
Downed raw turtle eggs in Costa Rica,
Danced on table tops, sang “Adonai”,
Roamed empty roads across the Navaho Nation,
Raised two charming children,
Married, divorced four times.
I have lived, running on the rim of wonder.
This poem is a response to another Mary Oliver assignment for the SCN poetry class. The prompt was to write about how we might have lived differently or made different choices. On the whole I possess few to no regrets, have been to places never dreamed of, met astonishing people all over the world, and live exactly as I want to live. I feel blessed.
This post continues the saga of my writing for the SCN poetry class. One of our first assignments included reading Mary Oliver’s poem about why she writes and then write one of our own about why we write. Unlike many writers, discipline frequently escapes me. I write when I feel like it or get inspired or have something special I want to say. What do I care about? Why do I write and about what?
I want to write about
beauty and life,
wind and flowers,
riding and writing on the rim,
sleeping in the moonlight.
I want to write to
make a difference,
challenge the status quo,
instill a love of wonder,
change the world
even if only for one minuscule moment
in one tiny corner.
I want to write so that when I die, they will say,
“She mattered!”
It’s raining! It’s raining!
It has not rained in more than a month.
I run out the door,
spreading my arms skyward.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
A smile smears joyfully across my face.
I run across the patio,
rain drops pelleting my face, my arms.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
My dog stands, rain running off her.
Usually, she hates the rain.
Lightning flashes, thunder echoes,
the steel roof plays staccato music.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
It’s raining! It’s raining!
Yesterday, I started an online poetry class with the Story Circle Network. The teacher is Lorraine Mejia-Green. This week we are focusing on the poetry of Mary Oliver. While I was reading her poems and the assignments associated with them, it began to rain. I became so excited I forgot all about my assignments and enjoyed the rain. I even posted my excitement on Facebook and called my daughter. She laughed and said, “You are a dork!”
Since I was a child, my only health issue has been headaches. When younger, sometimes they were little ones and sometimes nearly incapacitating. As an adult I could count on having at least one a month, sometimes more. Weather seems to be the main culprit now. If certain weather patterns occur, a series may hit me for several days in a row and then blissfully nothing for a couple of months. My daughter has migraines also; she must have inherited this from me, sadly. Tuesday this week, I awakened with a doozy and suddenly recalled that I had to attend this class for work. I took my medication and hoped. While waiting for the class to start, I decided to write down exactly how these migraines make me feel.
Poised above my head,
the hammer ball strikes the ten inch nail.
It drives through my right frontal lobe,
the nail point jutting out just below my right cheek, shiny, bloodless.
The hammer flips, the nail pulled out.
Pain pulses, excruciating.
Poised above my head, the hammer strikes again and again.
Endless hours the hammer strikes and pulls.
I hold my head in my hands, rocking back and forth.
Endlessly.
I was afraid of revealing me, the essence of me. Who even, indeed, was I? My mother told me, when I started dating, to hide the essence of me, boys wouldn’t like it. Too smart; too aggressive; too full of myself; too intense; too serious; too burning inside strong; too adventuresome; too nasty a temper; too full of desire to feel, taste, see, learn; too much in love with a world of possibility. I took her advice, married a genius scientist, safe, timid, disadventurous. He liked me because I could shoot a bird off a wire hundreds of feet away. I time, we all died, him, me, the bird.
This piece was a finalist in a flash memoir contest.
This post by a fellow blogger says a lot about what I think regarding certain movies in which American Indians are portrayed or in which they act. It also relates in some ways to my own previous posted poem, “Blood Quanturm”.
Bet y’all didn’t notice!
I am one short on my promise of 10 Little White Indians. Well, it turns out that my three-part series on White Indians has four parts, and there is surely a good Monty Python reference in there somewhere, but maybe we’ll save that for another day
***
Let us start with a brief consideration of the near misses.
WIND TALKERS (2002): I remember when this movie was on its way to the theaters, rumor had it that the flick was about the Navajo Code Talkers. Working as I did then on the Navajo Nation, I was (like a lot of my students and colleagues) really excited to see this part of American history portrayed on screen. My enthusiasm waned considerably when I realized it wasn’t about a Code Talker so much as a white guy who might have to kill a Code Talker if things took…
View original post 1,713 more words
The following poem was chosen to be published in the Story Circle Network’s annual Anthology this past autumn. I submitted two flash memoir pieces, including the Spiders story on a previous post, as well as this poem. I was very surprised that this was the one chosen.
Marriage
I remember the time he touched my face, melting me.
I married him; my face slowly, inexorably froze.
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