Poetry Challenge Day 17 — More snow

Driving Home in the Snow

I convinced myself that driving
in the snow would be okay,
that I could get from here to there,
to somewhere with the windshield
wipers flapping, snow drifting.
Minutes move fast, then slow, then
I don’t see much through the wind-
shield at all and somehow I’m home.

Poetry Challenge Day 16 – Poem About Nothing

Poem About Nothing

There are not enough hours
The sun seems too bright
to allow the coming storm.
There are not enough hours.
The dog snores. These are just
words taking up space.

Poem-a-Day Challenge Day 15 — Lost in Tranlation

This morning I received an instant message from my cousin Sicily and tried my best to speak to her in Italian. I don’t speak Italian, or write it for that matter, but it was nice to at least say hello. I met her and her sisters and many other cousins when I visited Sicily with my mom and sister in 1994. So, Facebook has at least brought them closer after many years. Saying hello to my cousin reminded me of a little incident that occurred back when I was going through cancer treatment. My mom was staying with me, helping me with the kids, and my dad was back in Arizona on his own. His aunt called from Sicily. He tried in his rudimentary Sicilian dialect to tell my aunt that I was sick (he was born in the U.S. to Sicilian parents). What my aunt heard, though, was that I was dying, which wasn’t the case at all. That little incident inspired today’s poem in three parts.

Lost in Translation

I.

If my American-born Sicilian dad
is like me, phantom words  with liquid
shapes float through his head
long enough for him to cling to one or two
before they disappear, leaving
him to communicate with the fat, clumsy
tongue of a toddler.

II.

Once my father spoke with
the best Sicilian dialect he knew
growing up here in the cold Michigan
winter, nothing like the ocean heat
of Trapani where his father came from,
where his family still lives.

He spoke to his aunt in Sicily
thinking he had told her I had cancer
but would survive.
Later that day, my phone vibrated
with messages from my dad’s cousin,
his urgent voice in perfect English
asking over and over for a return call.

III.

Death in Sicilian is ghostly. I felt
the salt of the ocean waters
crusted on my bare skin, saw the praying
hands of my aunt clasped and waving frantically,
tasted the sweet juice of fresh fig,
before remembering that I am very much
alive and well here in Michigan.

Day 14 – Ode on a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer

Two weeks down, only 50 more to go. I made juice and thought about what I’d read today in my copy of Poet’s Companion as I sat at the beauty salon waiting to get my hair cut–which looks adorable I might add. I read the first few pages again, which inspired me to write a poem about anything and make it mean something else.

Ode on a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer

Taking it apart after turning whole fruit
to juice, I think of Jack and how fit
and strong he is, even at 95. I clean
the bits of pulp from the teeth
at the bottom of a shaft that pushes
the fruit to a grater. Is this really
his secret to longevity? This and his
years of fitness? I was fit once too,
could run for miles, would think
now there must have been some
equity in that, but I’ve been lazy now
for as many years as I’d run I’m sure.
Still, is it lazy enough to warrant finding
a  lump in my breast, to warrant the subsequent
months of chemotherapy or the subsequent
years of little things, like a little more
pain in my hands in winter, or a lot more
meat on my hips, things that don’t seem
like much on their own but together I feel
like Jack should feel at his age? Still, I drink
this juice, sweet with the life that Jack might
promise, thinking something’s got to work,
something’s got to give me a few or so more
years, but I’m sure even Jack knows that
nothing is that certain.

Yearlong Poetry Challenge: Day 13 — When a Friend Comes Back From the Dead

This is a poem I got to thinking about after I went on Facebook today. I’m trying to figure out where my private messages went. I can’t seem to figure it out, but that is not what inspired today’s poem.

When a Friend Comes Back from the Dead

I’d gone years believing a childhood
friend of mine had died young, could swear
I’d heard it from a credible source,
maybe another friend, a friend of a friend,
my best friend’s mother. It’s all a bit hazy now.
I had a picture in my mind, though, of her house,
the one on the corner in the subdivision where
all the houses looked the same. I remembered
picturing her room, or blue, which I might have
associated with her room, because pasted
in my scrapbook is a photograph of her in a sequined
dance costume posed as if she’d reached
the end of her routine, posed  at the end
in my memory against a blue backdrop.
Cancer, I’d heard. She died of cancer.
That’s what I’d believed, the picture I’d imprinted.
I’d mourned already, paid some kind of respect,
though I’d not heard from her in a while
when the news came of her death.
Of course, I never expected to see her
again, never expected her to appear, an apparition
in photo and name, on my Facebook site
asking me to accept her friendship. What could I say?
I thought you were dead? Thank God you are alive?
I said nothing and hit accept.

Day 12 – almost forgot

Grades
math
movie
almost
forgot
Day 12
yelling fake
doctors
I’ll remember
Day 13

I’ve got to find time to think of these a little more, but I’m tired. Sorry.

Day 11 – trying not to burn the porc au lait

Here is today’s poem. That’s all I’m going to say today.

Why I Don’t Cook

My husband tells me I have to stir
the pork au lait in five minutes
as he sets the timer, zips his jacket,
and rushes out to get cat food.
He’s trusting, though my daughter warns him
that it’s a mistake to trust me with the tender
care of something so fragile as a classic French
dish, our Wednesday dinner. After he’s cooked
all day, he cooks again for us, happy to nourish
us with his art, but now I, a bumbling
apprentice known to burn pizza regularly,
am left to care for something so delicate.
He’s left simple instructions, but the timer
beeps and I’ve already forgotten them.

Day 10 – Short is the theme, snow

Riding on snowy
roads moving slow three hours
later I arrive

Day 9 — Time for a List

It’s Monday. Mondays meaning work and meetings and driving all over. I have to get ready for my big old day of teaching tomorrow. My exciting evening has consisted of listening to the Village of Clinton council talk about village things and returning home to The Bachelor, which is on our big, fat television. My tough bicolored cat Thomas is limping, but won’t let anyone look at it because he’s tough. My kids lost her hearing aid. It’s been an exciting start to the week. None of this has anything to do with my random list poem for my ninth day.

Things I Saw

Blue leaflets, edges curling
In the breeze, strewn about
the lawn outside the cinema.
A convent. A shoe in the snow
on a lonely bridge. A man
with a cane retrieving the mail.
A tree without leaves that looked
Like a Joshua tree, but couldn’t be
Because this is not the desert.

Day 9 – Brain-fried bad haiku

Don’t have enough energy after commenting on student papers for most of the day, so the result is bad brain-fried haiku. Something is better than nothing.

Blankets all in heaps
Floors gone cold on winter night
Must drink cup of tea