The cold and rain gives way/
to early morning fog and mist./
The Arizona desert in Phoenix/
is not supposed to be like this./
I’ll always revel in something different.
I saw a Badger trucker/
rolling north /
through the snowcapped mountains.
Top down,
I pointed to my “G for Greatness” /
Packer bumper sticker, /
and flashed him a “W”
Wisconsin sign.
With his mighty horn,
he blasted “On, Wisconsin!”
Two Cheeseheads,/
on the freeway,/
connected./
I hope /
he knows /
he made my morning 🙂
Cleaning house
in service
for those who can’t
or won’t,
I play an old tape.
Hell yeah!
It’s Mahalia
Jackson,
Sleep in Heavenly Peace.
I can’t contain
the torrent of tears
as I clean
even more earnestly
because that’s all I can do now.
Now that I’ve left.
Now that I’ve ripped
lives apart.
This used to be
my city,
my town,
my house,
my family,
my life.
This music brought joy
down the stairs.
I have tapes.
I have videos.
This used to be everything
I lived for.
But now,
I’m cleaning the living room,
and
there is no room.
I lay,
room spinning,
throat choking me,
wondering what was reality
and what was dreamscape
fantasy.
I wondered if I’d become as Coleridge,
if I should take up my pen and write and write and write
of things seen in fantasy vision,
of women danced with and light cotton gauze summer dresses,
of time lost in a solitary tick of the clock,
seeming to go on forever and yet being a moment.
Or was it longer?
And as the codeine cough syrup flowed through my veins,
I felt myself elevating above the bed and spinning and turning and collapsing again down,
and wondering if I would never rise again.
But determined to rise I was.
Determined not to die and be found by my mother,
wide open I’d died,
smelly rising of flesh
when she’d come in the morning,
but instead,
sitting up,
swinging my feet down
so they once again touched solid ground,
and did not dance in the air.
I determined to find me there in the morning,
codeine free,
empty,
and willing to deeply drink not drought
but the draughts of
Springville springwater.
If this seems foolish to some,
so probably seemed Xanadu foolish then.
And will someone knock on my door?
She gazed into her mirror,/
but still never knew/
she was the muse/
he was referring to.
My sister told the tale/
of being under sail/
years before.
She capsized,/
but she knew,/
and was not surprised/
with how quickly from the shore/
our Father flew/
to her rescue.
While I was glad/
that she was loved by our Dad,/
I knew/
Between him and me/
there would never be/
such sharing/
or attentive caring.
Yesterday, decades hence,/
my cousin and I went/
on a day sail,
and our mast ripped apart and failed.
So, we drifted, demasted,
but my anxiousness only lasted/
a moment or two/
before I knew/
that once more/
my Dad had watched from shore/
and quickly, in his boat without crew,
was coming to his child’s rescue.
Because that’s what Dads do.
You were the mother
of my escape,
of the start
of the birth
of my
(as yet unfinished)
self-discovery journey.
It was you
who set my feet on the path
that opened up my soul
and my heart
and my mind
to what could be
and should be
and now,
increasingly,
is.