This week, sort of in honor of Good Friday, I wanted to share some poetry with a little more meat on its bones. Neither of the two poems here have been published anywhere except my poetry collection, Rae’s Bar & Bistro.
The first poem here I wrote after taking a train trip from LA Union Station to Santa Barbara with some girlfriends. I had come down from San Francisco to visit friends and it was a whim, last minute, as we all wanted to snatch some good fun out of life, share wine and hopes and dreams before we had to go back home and deal with real things.
In the Company of Women
As the train clackety-clacks over tracks
passing from L.A. to Santa Barbara,
light filters past clouds, through windows
and lands on our table;
blessing us with its
seaside-after-rain-glow.
Accompanying our communion of
paper cup wine and fresh fruit
is talk muted with the wholeness of us;
the holiness of delight in our own company.
Confiding hopes, discovering goals,
passing on dreams and desires,
we weave a rope of fearlessness;
a rosary of faith to hold onto
when we lose our way.
And the clackety-clack of the train on the tracks
plays to our sacred litany;
a liturgy we repeat as we
work out our own salvation
in the company of our selves.
Los Angeles’ Union Station – major stop for Amtrak and the Red Line.
This poem is a sestina, which I is a form of poetry I have not always been a fan of. But a friend of mine challenged me to tackle it anyway, so I did. And now I have to say I am a fan. If you’re interested in checking out more sestinas, the University of New England Press has just published a collection that looks to be 40% in honor of poetry month. (The paperback looks like the best deal.)
I wanted to save it – the message.
Something to hold onto during those times –
you know – those times when trouble comes to visit.
Leaves us both huddled and hurt in our corners.
Funny thing about trouble is it comes out of nowhere.
Sometimes it feels as if I am nowhere.
If I sit in this one spot long enough I will just. be. gone.
Disappeared forever, but for one part of my soul – the corner.
Raggedy edge left behind like a note in a bottle. A floating message –
adrift on the sea. If it just keeps bobbing along it might visit
exotic places, see all sorts of things, given enough time.
Better, though, to simply exist outside of time.
Angling out over eternity in an everywhere and nowhere
of being. Watching, seeing, understanding and able to visit
and then leave. Is that where the hurt goes when it’s gone?
Fragment of self haunting our plane like a ghost with a message.
Nothing left in this 3-D world but dust in the corners.
I wonder about the specters glimpsed from the corner
of my eyes. Did they know when it was time?
Or was it sudden and unexpected? Or was it a message
from a loved one that it was time for them to be nowhere
and everywhere? When all is said and done and they are gone,
do they ever wish they could visit?
They always come in threes in the fairy tales – the visits:
Wise men, fairies, ghosts of various Christmases. They wait in the
corners –
off stage – for their cue to enter, present their magic before they’re gone.
Trodding the boards like old pros, they know their times.
Stand outside and watch the smoke from their cigarettes drift nowhere –
while Hamlet’s stand-in recites the playwright’s message.
But, back to the lost message,
left on my voicemail after your last visit.
The one that said we were okay, that you were going nowhere.
The one where your voice reached into the dark corners
of my heart, assuring me it was all okay – this time.
I checked today, after our fight. Now it’s gone.
Words stored nowhere on a chip, message lost in the ether.
Gone, only to haunt me now like a ghostly visitation,
lurking in a corner until time for it to return, maybe, someday.
So, what poetry have you been sharing or writing or reading this past week? What poetry are you working on now?
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