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1. . It was a day of brilliant sunshine after
several slate gray days of rain Thick droplets of snow mixed
with the moisture rising up to water Spokane Valley In the days immediately preceding it
but as the sun broke through it chose to remain. I
sat outside the building, watching the mountain tops play hide and seek in
the promised, threatening clouds as a sense of peace enveloped me. I
walked on clouds of my own excitement as thick and protective As
any in the azure and phalo blue overhang that rested its elbows on the sun-dried
mountains as Summer paused to look over her shoulder regretfully for
one last time now that Autumn has presumptively taken over the calendar in her airy
sister’s place. It was a day of brilliant sunshine after
several slate gray days of rain and my heart took flight. It
was the landing that left me numb with pain, but it is the opening in the clouds
I will remember, a window opened to Heaven by GOD so
He could lean His elbows on them and smile at me, on my way home. .
2.. - The
days leading up to it were intense. I don’t usually celebrate my October birthday, It’s
simply the one on my birth certificate, not the day we were born, Nancy won her point, with
seven identical girls from a single egg I would never have the chance oth4erwise To
be more than one-seventh of a person…the cruelest irony, it didn’t change anything! Except my enrolment dates, and hers.
so long, long ago….like Yom Kippur seems these three days past! And
yet I have GOD’S ‘promise’ –when the others have come true, that
Two thousand Twelve will be ‘the year’ that ‘changes everything’ and
hoping change for good I quest to begin it on the Jewish New Year…but the changes
which have over -taken, over-shadowed, over-whelmed, are
simply profound…and sad…and I am more alone while I nearer to Him…. How
strange! -
3. . I
find myself barely able to walk. Worse, Once
I stand, I don’t want too. Walking hurts. I promised myself I wouldn’t
turn on the TV it takes hours away like a towel soaks up blood and
there’s nothing to show like there is when I write. Worse, Once
I couldn’t find anything even boring to hold me there, I stood. I didn’t
want too. Walking hurts. it takes hours away like a towel soaks up blood and
there’s nothing to show like there is when I write. So here I sit, knowing
I will have to stand And I don’t want too, I want to lose myself in
what is to come But I’m left with what is. And it hurts. I
promised myself I wouldn’t turn on the TV it takes hours away like a towel
soaks up blood and there’s nothing to show like there is when I write, but
I did. But there’s one thing to show for the hours the pain takes from me, Patience.
I find myself barely able to walk. But
my ‘people’ walk, and jump, and laugh and play for me… it
takes hours away like a towel soaks up blood .
4. . The drunks are strangely quiet But my website makes up for it in annoyance Earlier today I wrote this poem and it
held intact Tonight all the lines run together Without spacing I must add that and it takes twice the time So it would seem I am
required to endure a certain amount Even though Cat gave up claiming my lap/and
finally went and laid down in ‘his’ chair. Now I hurt too much to write and I ache too much to be silent, Go figure…. Time was my ups and downs
just depended on my blood sugars Or the weather Or whether or not I’d eaten and raised-or –lowered-
my blood sugars Now my mind races and argues with its former self, Luckily I am ‘with book’, I
don’t have to stand as much For when I stand and the pain immobilizes me before I’ve even begun to walk toward my goal months before the snows have arrived, my rational mind loses out and my emotions take hold, resentment. And yet, what am I to
say without losing the ride altogether? “This is a shared ride program, you ride-you share” I know…but that
doesn’t help. It’s reasonable and logically and I am not So I click and clatter and my teeth clinch and unclench And then I’m too
exhausted to vent any longer and I waddle to bed Where the fight continues in unfair dreams And tomorrow at sunrise, I rise. Tomorrow at sunrise the
weatherman expects rain, I expect pain But a part of me just steps back, “ This too will pass “ – for good or bad,
nothing
lasts forever, not even saying goodbye. Nor saying goodbye when a year ago I thought it’d end… And now I feel like I’ll
live forever, If this be living? This too shall pass! Make it so hard I will say something, Then I say something and
it makes so hard because I lose the right…If this be living? This too shall pass!
. 5. . This year Yom Kippur fell
on a Friday, and lasted till dusk of the next day Which happened to be my birthday, the 8th, Most years I watch to see what show will
open where on the part of the weekend where my birthday falls, but it seemed significant/that this ‘special’ year should fall on that solemn Day of awe, not ending the Ten Days
of Awe, as beginning the other three hundred and fifty five… I have never felt so alone, I have never felt so brittle… My escape was planned… My escape was implemented… My words were true and
honed with experience And my words left me a greater emptiness A greater void Filled by a greater understand of an Infinite Being capable
of holding multiple galaxies in place, in the same space by layering dimensions of a wisdom so vast I mock myself to
think I comprehend it then I turn and He is there, smiling at me by the joy in my soul, soothing my fears by the peacefulness which surrounds my
cries, stilling them. A God of thunder who whispers – “I love You” and it takes a holiday He himself instigated for my selfishness to
diminish long enough to consider all that He has done, around me, for me, through me, to me Beside
me and I am finally ready to lay aside the hateful strife I so detest and cling to him as I hear His
heartbeat in the click of seconds marked out as time by the clock on my wall another year another Yom Kippur and I am here slower, sadder, wiser,
but ready to reach out to a God of thunder who whispers – “ I love You, Dear One! ”
 6. - The
time of seasonal transition begun I can feel the changes within myself mirrored by
the reflections of drifting rain and static fog on the outside of
the window on the outside of me the
brief resurrection, Life, and death of a dream locked on
the inside of me only three days… I asked myself in contempt ‘Why
not just let it sit until the pain passes?’ It’s only been three
days But I can’t…. That isn’t my speed I’m
too conscious of mortality The fleeting nature of Time’s resolute passage into nothingness The
expectoration of failure and humiliation ingrained in me under Nancy’s harsh scrutiny where others saw a Saint, filled with patience,
cursed by this child it was the only voice I had to speak until
the day I bought a website for a hundred dollars and a s credit card for the
price of my soul my dream costing me because others saw through me yet
yielding something no one else saw on the inside of
me not even me till the Son broke through
the clouds The time of seasonal transition begun Renewed
this morning As I rise too conscious of mortality The
fleeting nature of Time’s resolute passage into nothingness The expectoration of failure
and humiliation Now yielded to the slow passage of good with Yom Kippur, 2011.
7. . There was a comfort available to me today as I woke Cat asleep beside me,
nestled, content that I’d answered the silent summands to rise and feed him by five o’clock to take my numbers and
take my shot then stumble back to the warmth
of the bed without having to wake up without having to be conscious of the time without having to measure how long till I
had to rise without having to worry if I’d get downstairs in time without having to wait for the elevator without regret, if not without. Some measure
of pain the rainy gray of promised precipitation a lovely cloak of milder hues to match the quiet voice of my spirit as I
rest recoup. regroup. Cat sleeps on the end of the bed, Content that I’d answered the silent summands to rise and feed him by
five o’clock to take my numbers and take my shot then stumble back to the warmth of the bed without having to wake
up so I am allowed a brief respite from my silver shadow, my better half and I write, feeling the healing soak in with each silvery hum,
each cliquey clack each quiet passage of car tires on damp pavement that proves the world is till there outside below my window it will wait for me and
tomorrow when I must rise again and leave him to his own devices.
8. . It’s early afternoon as I sit to write I feel a serenity slip
down around my shoulders illuminating my mind with peaceful calm outside of my usual experience and I am deeply grateful
to the One who remains invisible as well, Indivisible in Unity, in Nature, in kind and as I listen to the traffic picking up
speed, my smiles grows Its early afternoon The essence of creative eternity available to mortal fingers a heart being offered
respite it craves, desires, all too often lacks, Soaks up like the sweet rain that seeped from heaven’s hinges Wetting the ground, caressing the trees comforting them in their
loss of summer’s heat, warmth, anxiety,
growth as I am as I listen to the traffic picking up speed, my smile grows/in the early afternoon as I share the power of Creation with the One who created me and I sense anew there is so much more
available to me then I will allow myself in my blind homage to the past! .
9. . I miss Big Ed so much as the year wanes But this year I welcome
him to the home I have created I feel his warmth as never before The certainty of his love as he modeled Jesus of
Nazareth for me through his actions more than his words and I feel a warmth renewed the unbroken circle as much by the promise
that 2012 will be the year that ‘changes everything’ as I am by the view of myself I wakened with
this morning what has been fleeting what was torn from me` now fills the quiet house no smells of baking yet, I’d rather
type but I smell gingerbread and spices I
hear a child giggle I hear her say: “ When will they be done, daddy? “ Yet oddly, I don’t remember him ever
baking? That was Grandmother’s house where it was assumed I burn myself on the hot stove or I’d drop a raw
egg or I’d spoil everything by making Nancy cry and I did my best to live up to the part expected of me, so it’s a raw pleasure to have this view of myself
and Jesus in familiar if superimposed roles that offer me respite that allow me to see my peace or my angst
depends on me that I can not undo the past but I am free to form the future and for the first time I’m ready to embrace
the dreams offered me as a lonely child Truly, this IS the year that changes everything! .
10. . A
sleepy eyed cat wanders in and steps under the desk he has learned to wait for an invitation but
unfortunately his patience is as long as his tail and he wears me down I
signal up to jump into my lap As if I really wanted him there as I type!
11. . Change takes Time Time demands change This Monday for a change I choose to make cinnamon and raisin waffles rather than to take the time to go downstairs and wait for ‘the
Bread man’ to bring frozen bread from the House of Charity intent on using the time I’d saved for a change to focus on these current
projects and yet, there’s always a
‘but’ or a ‘yet, and yet, I am lost within the fluidity of time where memory changes to soothe over the unkind, to erase the embarrassing good and cause a ripple Within the space-time continuum, to
create An entire world, which exists outside of Time because Time demands change This morning, for example, I choose to make cinnamon and raisin waffles rather than to take the
time to go downstairs and wait for ‘the Bread man’ to bring frozen bread from the House of Charity and because of that, I am changed by this small slice of unexpected time where I may create what I will and what will be /after I am not. .
12. .My gaze is caught by Cat’s Christmas
Tree where
it rests in gentle patience year round on top of the refrigerator. If I touch it he meows and demands
of me in Cat what my intentions are toward ‘his’ tree???? When he was small he tried to sit
inside it but since it is short, and metal with green ‘limbs’ made of plastic, he had to give up and yet it stirred a question in me
that still remains… When I was small, the only way Daddy could comfort me at the death of a beloved black cat
was
to promise that some day he might return that unlike mere humans, who had only one
life lived
well, or lived poorly, without exemption pets went to Heaven to play with the unborn children and the angels on the grassy knoll outside of Heaven’s
Gate; and
when the pain of separation had passed, the angels put them down ‘chutes’ a bit of quick improvisation here to answer an innocent child’s
question and that sometimes in the long distant times of having
your own life they might return or you might only glimpse them from afar and rest assured and since Sargie LOVED climbing into
the yearly live tree and howled his agony asking to be let ‘indoors’ to use his liter box a look of sheer confusion every year
to discover it was simply down the hall my adult mind tells me it’s cat’s heritage to climb in trees to sleep, for safety. to cache food from scavengers on the
ground, and yet… there it is again, that magic word, and yet…the child’s part
of me that indulges in daily creativity and creation of worlds and peoples that don’t exist outside my head, or my Reader’s
heart, is wedged… the quiet question if Big Ed was right? .
13. . Of
course I can see other people’s views but that doesn’t change my own! I
see too well how emotions color our perceptions but I think the world was deliberately
formulated to have two sides to every story in
the same manner it has time, space, and texture! I don’t believe GOD wanted us
to have a warped view of Him Since Creation speak of His Being and Nature For
when we reach the end of life and discover Him waiting It mustn’t come as a surprise That
His view differs from our rationalizations for by that time who
is in a potion to argue with Him? .
14. . I have begun to bake The first of the season and it invites the festive memories and Spirits near! I’m grateful that both my Jewish roots and my Scandinavian roots include the love for food lovingly prepared, although I fear cooks in the kitchen are more like to bring up images of Jamie Oliver or Chef
Ramsey, than
of plump, matronly women smiling benignly as they fold their hands across flour dusted checkered aprons. Even Julie Childs, bless her English Heart, Doesn’t come to mind; but a single rectangle in a Fallon Nevada farm house The one I think of, now a strip mall, While the beloved
house had been left behind Less than a mile away but
a lifetime away with another man and the half grown
brood of blondes mixed with swarthy brunettes as if a line was drawn between the bloodlines crossed only once every twelve generations by a boy with hazel eyes... how I longed to be him as a child… boys could do no wrong boys raced in with calloused. Muddy hands to pilfer the yummy treats cooling on the groaning table while girls hide behind their mother’s bulk and stuck out tat their tongues at the greedy seizure of sweets they’d slaved all day to create preparation for adulthood in an unbroken line said line slightly swirled,like the edges
of a geometric mathematician’s star, but resting, nestled, deep within me as the smells arise, and I remember or pretend that I do… and forget the rest! Halloween is still orange cake with dark frosting… Thanksgiving is still turkey and cranberries And I am still just one dream behind Racing with all my might to catch up
15. . One of the few ‘pleasures’ of
being ‘retired’ willingly or not! is that you have a set income you can look forward too if not the means to expand it While the government may shrink it
at any time the way the price for things does daily…sigh… it has become a necessary portal to
life one
where I might imagine that who I am matters more than the forces that shaped me or carried me/to this time and
place! Where I am tormented by the love of a needy cat, as I shaped him from kittenhood in
my neediness, who’s quiet presence, coming to rest beside me warmly at night, taking his place in the crook of my
arm, where
he’ll linger till I threaten to move, or he needs too, to cool, the epitome of cool as James Bond
never achieved with his underdressed women, while Cat wears white fur daily,/and make it look
cool! Chic!
Reassuringly
Cat, content
to share a life of his own choosing with someone he’s locked up with day and night who’s quiet presence, coming
to rest beside me warmly at night, taking his place in the crook of my arm, where he’ll linger till I threaten
to move, or he needs too, to cool, the epitome of cool as James Bond never achieved One of the few ‘pleasures’
of being ‘retired’ - willingly or not! .
16..
TENSION… it’s
a necessary ingredient for any of my books… I wonder that it took me so long to
see that when I was a child? Dazzled by the characters I could pretend were me, Going
places I wouldn’t have dared Doing things my cautious soul would have shrank from. And
finding in their success, A measure of my own! .
17. . As the sense of night and the absence even
of rainy day falls away from the window behind me I am surrounded by a curious lingering of tranquility so unlike anything I’ve known
in the decade leading up to this ... evening has fallen, like an Autumn leaf from a tree still vigorous with summer growth and bold new colors,
flaunting
its resistance to the coming cold as it did the searing glare of summer’s unbroken gaze and I hear a peculiar resonance from
a fright train that doesn’t pause at the passenger depot/on the hill I find my thoughts snagged on its
swift. Determined passage and I feel my pulse quicken in acknowledgement And yet when its gone and its gone too swiftly having occupied the back of my mind as I wrote for an unguessed length of time Le Chat graciously accepts my ignoring his quiet bid for an invitation to my lap and passes under my chair also unseen but felt as the words pour of my in a healing
rush, to
pool briefly at my need to edit them before
they slip away. Shiloh gracefully leaps to the well used cushion on ‘his’ chair while I stare at the gunmetal gray
keys and tap… I have no idea where they will leap to rest in contentment that is beyond me to say I may say only what it is my heart And hope that as the fire engine siren races away from me And my pulse slows to the rate my
bent fingers may type That when life resumes its nomadic, challenging pace I will remember the third day after Yom Kippur and how GOD rested beside me, as I rested beside my cat and shared the goodness they’ve
loaned to me! . . . . END Page 1 .
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