Realign

The words don't flow anymore like they once did.

Like creases unravelling in velvet fabric

Or voluptuous crimson.

My tongue is dry now,

Like this boxed-in, no-key-to-turn-the-door, or exit-sign

Kind of city

In a drought.

Nothing fits in symmetry like it once did.

Not our hands or our heads.

Yet maybe, our open and ruined hearts will align

If you lay with me and we give this time...

If the World Knew

For Michele

The gardens that she walks through

In the winter

They would bloom for her.

The cherry red,

Black beaked bird

Would hum his morning song for her.

The skies would dance

The stars would fall from gravity and land on every child's joyous face

For her.

The little girls in white socks and pleated skirts with skipping ropes

Would giggle on the sidewalks in April

For her.

All,

If they knew a mother's love.

Words and Watercolours

Tuesday morning

We sit in a circle

We search for a poem –

‘What Hurts the Soul’ ‘What's Inside the Ground,’ ‘An Ebb’ . . .

A Goldilocks poem

Not too happy, not too sad, just right

Is what she deserves.

Is it a sin to assign poetry?

But how about a Ronna Bloom poem? She loves Ronna Bloom.

And I know she loves her mother,

I know her mother loved her.

Because a woman who paints minds

With words and watercolour

She was brought up by love.

Because a woman who gives generously

Without counting the cost

She was brought up by love.

So now this grieving woman in black

Stands where sea and sky are one

The daughter stands as she should

Clothed in love.

Funeral Conversations (A Remembrance Day Poem)

The cracks of church pews creek

letting out a muffled over squeak

as the droop of dark fabrics rise

and remembrance is paid.

A stranger to the deceased: unchanged.

her life touched for such a temporary moment

she is the sympathy that clouds over me today---

She will remember for a short time

and then she will forget

for a long time

it will float away into space someplace beside a guardian angel

until she is called to remember again.

An acquaintance of the deceased: apologetic.

should have, would have

talked more with him

shared more with him

seen more of him

been more to him

she is the regret that climbs into me today.

She will remember periodically---

but only in moments when a photo

or link of chained words presses into her veins and strikes her heart,

only in times of black and violent rain.

A friend of the deceased: questioning.

who will she go to when she lacks in laughter

what is there left to do when justice for all does not seem to justify what's ended him?

why so sudden? why by war?

she is the disbelief that strangles me today---

She will remember when she does not want to.

A wife who is my mother, a son who is my brother, and I the daughter:

grievers.

although it's said in hollow tones

that all the fighting is over now

it is we who are left over now to fight this.

We will remember at the break of morning and we will remember when the dark sky blinks stars into positions of constellations

we will remember when we feel absence

and we will remember when we feel family's presence, but it does not include him.

we will remember in the moments of ringing and and the beat of drums

and we will remember in the moments of haunting silence.

We will forget we are forever remembering.