that's mrs. mediocrity to you

because shedding your skin
is just as necessary
as gathering hips
for the tea
you sip
from the cup
of yesterday’s
parody

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My back door opens onto a little sort-of-sunken alcove (which is a bad thing when it rains a lot) and in spring it’s my favorite place to sit with my first cup of tea and watch the golden light wake up the flowers. This is my view this morning, daffodils and euphorbia and sunshine bright enough to be blinding. The birds are singing out in a concert of joy, and it’s hard to believe that just over a month ago, this very spot I’m looking at was buried beneath a five-foot mound of snow.

These are the days when it’s hardest to stay inside and work, my garden teasing me with new green, fresh promise, and the relief of sun on my skin. But there is work to be done, and that is life. Naughty kitten keeps coming to my window, asking me to come out and play, and I laugh and tell him no, even as I wish I could be him.

Already, I feel behind in my garden. Mother Nature always runs faster than I can and there is never a day when I don’t see ten things that need to be done. But no matter. The windows are open, the robins are busy, and the daffodils nod hello each time I walk by.

Good morning, I say. To all of it. The distractions and the worries and the work and all the broken bits of life that need fixing.

Good morning, here we are again.

It’s a beautiful thing.

The crows and I have tea every morning, rain or shine, smile or sadness, awake or still mired in dreams. I am drawn to the world outside my tiny window, a world of birds painted bright on a backdrop of trees. The shape-shift of shadows as we pass through the seasons offers up a daily dose of impermanent art in one corner, the place where no one ever sits.

Soon, I will be out of doors as much as I am in, and these walls will talk to each other. I wonder, often, what they say behind my back. Sometimes I catch a whisper when I walk around the corner, or crash through the door with my arms full of groceries, and hush! becomes an echo of everything I’ve missed.

A house is always telling stories, but you never know which are fact and which are fiction, so you label them all tall tales and let them bob around up high, near the ceiling, and watch the spiders eat them for breakfast.

Late at night, sometimes, those same stories will drip down the walls like tears, and I’ll remember a day long past. I’ve lived in this house almost 30 years, more than half my life. There are words shoved deep into every crack and crevice, and all the dust is made of promises. It’s a tiny house, and someday I think it will burst with the memory of all the lives that have marched on through, in life and in books and in my imagination.

I never thought I’d spend all these years in one place. Never thought I’d still be staring out these same windows with the eyes of an almost-old woman.

We’ve grown up together, this house and these birds and this creaky laughing body of mine.

Beneath this sky that holds the sun that draws these ever-changing shadows.

It’s my job to sit here, to watch and to listen.

The crows and I have tea every morning.

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and let the rain wash down
to the valley of drown

in an avalanche of
forgiveness

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 30
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Whew. I did it. Thanks so much to all of you who followed along.
It means a great deal to me.
Today is also Poem in your Pocket Day (more about that here).

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but you can’t stand still with a photo
in one hand
holding claim to borrowed memory
even a dead crow
dreams of color
sometimes
and everything buried will
eventually
rise
to the catacomb
of temporary
surface

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 29
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

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and even a star can get pulled
out of shape by the weight of living
and eventually
everything rusts
(except plastic) and you
can bury your heart
in the landfill of everything
but you will still
hear it beating
in corners

boxing

you in
and you’ll just keep thinking
you win
you win
you win

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 28
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

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of course she had no regrets
she’d wear that red dress again
if she could find it

rubbing ankles in the dark
and smiling smugly at the waiter
with his tray of sweets for the sweet
thinking he knew
the definition
of divine

and the whispers she couldn’t quite catch
shuffling by from two tables over

grief and apology
perhaps
or something smaller

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 27
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

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you say age cannot wither her, sir

but i say what a piece of work is man all filled up

with woe is me and heart on your sleeve and

a rose by any other name when what you mean is

love is blind or bag and baggage but i carry you

to the corner of frailty, thy name is woman all

green eyed monster and fight fire with fire

(really, i have green eyes)

and lay you down under the greenwood tree knowing

for certain that all the world’s a stage

and the milk of human kindness will save you when

the game is up and thereby hangs a tale

of more fool you though

this is the short and the long of it

and the course of true love never did run smooth

but all’s well that ends well and we both know

there’s method in my madness

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Et tu, Brute i say, Et tu?*

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Today I took Poem A Day’s challenge one step further and filled a poem with
Shakespeare phrases, in addition to using words he coined in the title.
All phrases in italics are Will’s.

A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 26
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

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somewhere in a garden in spain
your long lost great-great-grandmother
buried a key on a gold-plated chain

no one knows this but you
and the ghost she still sends
to tease your serpentine dreams
with the scent of yesterday’s roses

one day
as you walk to your car in a hurry somewhere
you’ll notice the nod of a purple veiled flower
and catch a barely-there whisper

spoken
in a language you can’t understand

and that’s when you’ll begin
to listen

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 25
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

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i remember the day you died or
to be more accurate, chose to leave,
or to be more accurate still, i remember
when i found out what you’d done

i wasn’t there
but i’ve never stopped seeing
the violence of your last moment
and the lifetime left
wondering
what more we could have done

the first time i understood
that life is precious
was also the first time
i understood
the hole that grows with living

one shovelful each day
until we’ve formed the mountain
we must climb
to jump back in

and i wonder if
on the way down
we think of
flying

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 24
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

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