I've been away for a few days, extremely busy with work, and got to this thread for the first time and I'm blown away. When I have some more time, I want to re-read every one of these.
This site gets so mucgh richer every day.
By the way, CJ, is poetry ever useful? Only if your soul and spirit need nurturing.
I actually get paid to write. But nothing anyone here would want to read--business writing. I do dabble in poetry and short fiction on the side: I'll see I can find something to share.
MY thought is that many CDs have the problem of expressing said self and when the poems are dark is that hurting onesself by placing the darkenss in front?
I love words, I just wish there were more positive ones out there to make one feel better. The dark ones make one sad or depressed. I THINK THERE FOR I MUST BE!
I appreciate material that ventures into the darkness because without the dark side, we'd never really be able to appreciate when we have it good. People looking solely for the goodness (or bright side) of life are looking for an utopia that doesn't exist.
Poetry doesn't have to be dark. Although I think the old saw about "artists need to suffer" is especially true of poets--some amount of suffering is necessary to produce a good poet.
Good poetry, as opposed to jingles, shouldn't be trite or sentimental. That's hardest to achieve in love poetry or erotic poetry. My best effort in that direction so far is this snippet...
And now, oh now, it's spring again,
And I'm remembering Newport girls,
And it seems I can't get away.
I'm so moved by what I've been reading here. Wow. Beauty is right, this does rock.
I can't locate any of my own poetry--it must have been the victim of a purge at some point. I do have a short story I wrote a number of years ago. I think I was planning on entering it in some sort of contest, but I never did. It's a lot longer than the poems--I hope no one minds, but I've wanted to share this for a long time, and I can't imagine a better audience.
Love,
Sara
Late afternoons
I was 35, and the mother of a son and daughter, before I began to understand the secret life of parents. After Mom moved in with us, right after Daddy died, I think I learned more about their lives together than I ever suspected existed. I don’t think she meant to talk about him as much as she did, but come the afternoon, after I got home from work and the kids went outside to play, she would make some tea and we would sit and the words flowed as easily between as warm honey.
It was at those times that she began to share her memories. I’m always taken by surprise at the memories of people from Mom’s generation. The world they recall seems so fresh and whole. My mother could recall names and places as if the events in her life occurred only yesterday. I have trouble remembering what I did this morning.
When Mom first came to live with us, I admit that I gave her stories only one corner of my attention. There was supper to prepare, spats between Jenny and Steven to resolve, and a hundred little chores calling to me before Christopher came home.
It wasn’t long, though before I really began to listen to her. I never could tell her I didn’t have time just now, or that I had heard the story before. When I saw her eyes search for little details, I knew this was important to her. And somehow, a daughter is obligated to sit at her mother’s feet and learn of how she saw the world. So I was a captive audience, but soon I became a willing captive. I began for the first time to see my mother as a woman, propelled by the same passions and problems, the same joys and faults that I find in myself. And I began to see my father for the first time as a man, much like Christopher, who fretted and worked, and who loved, too.
I guess it was partly the thrill of hearing secrets, peeking behind the curtain that time had dropped and seeing things I had never expected to see. Anyway, I began to look forward to our afternoons together, and now I cherish the memory of them.
Each day, it began the same way. Mom, who had ruled her household with gentle iron, was sensitive about seeming to step over the boundaries in another woman’s home, even her own daughter’s, so each day, she would pretend that our conversations were just one of those little distractions that came along unplanned. Yet I could see how happy those hours made her and how she had a mother’s way of letting me see her unspoken disappointment on those days when we could not sit down.
Looking back, I always picture Mom and me leaning towards one another with the late afternoon sun spilling across the table between us, the light giving a blush to he wonderful soft cheeks. She was with us for more than a year, and I know our talks helped brighten some dark winter afternoons, but I always see them in summer.
“Abigail,” she might say as I walked in, “I’ve just put on some tea. Why don’t you go and change your clothes and then we can chat for a few minutes before Christopher comes home. I’ve already put the chicken on for you” “Thanks, Mom,” I’d say, “I’ll be just a minute.”
She hadn’t yet grown weak, and in many ways her moving in had proven a godsend. She was there each afternoon when the children came home from school, lifting away some of the guilt I had felt when they were younger and I had to leave them each day for work. And she still loved to cook, often baking sweet things that delighted the children and left a permanent welcoming aroma in the kitchen. I would plan the meals, but she insisted on cooking, and I was delighted—for both of us.
It seemed to me that we had always talked easily. Even the frequent battles we had when I was at that impossible age were usually short lived and the worst ones ended with both of us crying and feeling closer than ever. Then she had grown to depend on me in many ways after Daddy’s stroke and first my sister Kathy and the my brother Michael had moved away.
Anyway, I would go upstairs and change, and each afternoon, the tea would be sitting on table when I came down. She loved to make the tea in a fine pot she had given me one year for Christmas, and insisted we should drink from china cups with saucers, not from mugs. Mom, always being a Mom, would first ask about my day, and I would tell her tales from the office; about the creepy salesman who insisted on touching each of the women on his forays through the office; about the problems with the new computers; about who was pregnant or getting married—whatever the highlights were in a usually mundane work day. Then it was her turn.
Her stories were mostly about Daddy and her; how they had met and how he had courted her, their life together with its ups and downs, even, later on, just a hint about their lovemaking.
“You children never really understood how much your father and I cared for each other,” she said to me one muggy afternoon, the sonorous buzz of cicadas drifting through the window and above our conversation. I thought we did. We had teased them constantly about hugging each other, and even when I was a girl, sometimes while putting me to bed, she would tell me about his letters from overseas before they were married and he was a soldier. But now my mother was finding comfort in sharing things with me that had been theirs alone.
“When we would go to bed, we liked to talk about the day, about what you three were up to, and other things. Do you know what your father liked to do then? He would reach under the sheets and just take my hand and hold it until we fell asleep. He was always like that.”
Mom glanced out the door toward the yard, where we could hear the echoes of the children’s voices. I could see her beautiful brown eyes had grown moist, and felt the tears in my own. I’m not sure if in that moment we were sharing grief or joy. I reached across the table and touched her hand. She turned to me and smiled, stood, and walked to the stove to put on water for more tea.
That may be the most vivid memory I have of that time—her eyes and then her soft tiny smile, filling my own heart with love for her and Daddy and despair that such things must pass.
There were so many stories she told me. But I think maybe what was most important for me about having her with us for that last year was not the stories themselves. I think what was most important was that I had been given the chance to see my parents through adult eyes, and know for all the ordinary trouble we had to endure as a family, that they had lived their lives together with a contentment that seems so elusive for so many people—myself included, I guess.
When Mom became ill, she slipped away quickly. Often, in those last days as she lay in bed, she would call my father’s name softly. I don’t think she was delirious—just dreaming out loud. At least that’s what I like to think. In the end, her spirit had gone ahead of her life. I could give her little comfort then. The best I could do was to reach under the covers to hold her hand until she slept.
You girls write some amazingly deep thoughts. It's a pleasure to read.
Here's a little thing I wrote last year.
Thoughts
Once in awhile I have to smile,
And ponder the things that I like to do.
Of all the things that go through my mind
The one that stands out, is loving you.
I plan to post excerpt from the story I am currently writting. The section I will post is probably the strongest feelings I ever had when I wrote them down. It came out of in moments but the word, oh the words they felt so great to place on paper.
But nothing anyone here would want to read--business writing. I do dabble in poetry and short fiction on the side: I'll see I can find something to share.
