Patchwork Prose and Verse
two summers ago
I bought a
night-blooming
Cereus for
ten dollars
thinking of
Dennis the Menace
getting in the way
of that plant that
blooms every 100
years and wondering
whether I’d be up
late enough to ever
see it bloom or
whether some
distraction would
forever keep me
from seeing it
but this very week
as a friend lost her
husband, this flower
bloomed in the dead
of night
like a smile from
Heaven
approaching the
edge of grief
alongside a friend
and the blur of the
numbing steals all
sense of time
and place and memory
of sequence of order
of hunger and thirst
of exhaustion in the
energy of fumes
we’d just returned
from lunch Tuesday
when her call came.
I’d missed it, called her
back to learn her
husband had fallen
from his chair at
work and she was
hospital bound.
I let our boss know.
A friend and I
arrived to a
room full of people
we did not know.
And just like that,
a lunch special
slice of pizza and
salad with lemon
water later, the
world is changed
forevermore
just hours
before she
broke down
in the waiting
room with the
declaration
we weren’t finished.
they were getting
ready for an afternoon
wedding when the
husband stepped out
of the shower, kissed
his wife, said
I love you, Blue Eyes
laid down on the
bed and died of
a heart attack
leaving her and
their four sons
grieving
this is why when
my husband came
to my bedside
this morning before
stepping into his
shower and kissed
me I wondered:
should I give him
an aspirin?
should I take one?
there’s an inner rage
that flames up and licks reason
charring, severing
forever changing
this relationship landscape
since she departed
Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com for the third day of February’s Open Write is Dr. Sarah Donovan, who inspires us to write poems that experiment with broken lines. You can read her prompt here, along with the poems of others.
I took the ghazal form today of 5 couplets with AA BA CA DA EA rhyme scheme and measured meter, reframed the whole form, relaxed the rules and broke the lines as I thought of my mother’s 81st birthday and the moments I’m so glad my camera captured before she left us in December 2015 with Parkinson’s disease. Above, she reads to her great grandson from The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss.
Shaping Future Tense
when nothing else
made any sense
when family strangers
made you tense
your lap unfolded
picture books
that tore down
every guarded fence
great grandson's
heart and mind you shaped
each page
a moment so immense
your fingers curled
his eyes unfurled
his focus on you
so intense
when nothing else
made any sense
picture books
wrote future tense
Dr. Leilya Pitre of Ponchatoula, Louisiana is our host for today’s Open Write. She brings us a short form, the sevenling, which you can read about here.
Foxglove Funeral for a Grandson
Foxglove bells chime joy, bring smiles
on Mother’s Day in Georgia, painting gardens
in blush colors: the female womb blooms
Foxglove bells toll grief, stir longing
on Mother’s Day in Kentucky: a petal flips, a
cradle rocks in heaven ~ the female soul cries
empty arms mourning a baby not born
Common Threads 