that's mrs. mediocrity to you

for surely
something wonderful
is about to happen

the sun will set
and color will come home

the moon will rise
and stars will dance with midnight

a seed will burst through the soil
a leaf will unfold
a flower will open
an egg will divide

somewhere, a face cracks into a smile
somewhere else, tears are falling

and in all the miles between
anger and silence and joy and rhythm
form a quilt of square and triangle
rectangle and hexagon
inviting you to settle under
snuggle into
cover over

the rich dark soil underneath
wet and dank and teeming with
worms turning
turn turn

a darkness that feeds you
through the hollow cave of night

until morning comes and warms you
with promises promises
of another day

another chance
to sit there

watching

stand there

waiting

for surely
something wonderful

is about to happen

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Linking up today with the fabulous dVerse poets for Open Link Night, join the fun!

::

Post a photo of yourself from before age 10.
Write about what you remember of the day the photo was taken.

::

For my fourth birthday, all I wanted was a Jane West doll. Jane was a cowgirl, yes she was, and that’s who I wanted to be. The day came and I put on my blue party dress and waited, anticipation running through my mind like Flame, Jane’s trusty horse. Presents were opened, no Jane.

Still, I waited. At long last, my Nana handed me a box. I ripped the paper off, and there she was. Or so I thought. It was indeed a Jane West box, but inside was a new… outfit. My birthday balloon instantly burst. I’m pretty sure there were tears.

After all my gifts were opened (still no Jane), an old paper bag was placed in front of me, crumpled, unassuming. I peeked inside, and there she was. And there were smiles, and laughter all around. Was it a cruel joke to play on a four-year-old? Perhaps. But that was my grandmother, a strong, flawed woman who raised eight children practically by herself, worked full-time as a nurse, and had a slightly twisted sense of humor.

I believe, now, that she was trying to teach me lesson. I had talked non-stop about Jane for months. My grandmother came from poverty, a place where you made do with what you had, or didn’t have. I think, looking back, that her intentions weren’t as cruel as her joke. But I still remember the sting of that misguided betrayal.

Fast forward eight months.

My family, along with my aunt and her six kids, went camping for summer vacation. Three adults, ten kids, one large canvas army tent.

And here’s what happened: It rained. All week. The old tent was not waterproof, if you touched it from the inside, water would begin seeping through. Which my dad made the mistake of telling us. So we all had to test his theory, and he was right. As soon as you touched it, just a little fingertip…a drip would form, and then another, and then another. Pretty soon it was as wet inside the tent as it was outside.

That was our week.

On the last day, we packed up our soggy camp, planning to attend a birthday party on the way home. I put on my blue dress. On our way out of the park, I asked to use the bathroom. My parents stopped by the side of the road and pointed me in the right direction, there, across a field of grass. (You could do that back then). I took off running. Somewhere between the car and the building, bam! I went down, face first into a puddle hidden in the grass. When I stood up, I was literally covered in mud from head to toe. But no one in the car had seen. I ran into the bathroom, bawling my eyes out. My party dress! Ruined.

I stood inside the door, sobbing, no idea what to do. A girl, 13 or 14, approached me and asked if I was okay. I’m sure I bawled out some sort of unintelligible response. And then she took paper towel after paper towel and wiped me as clean as she could, and walked me back to our car.

Most girls her age would have laughed. She did not. And I still remember the comfort of that small act of kindness.

Same dress, different day.

A blue party dress that taught me, at age four, a little bit about life, expectation, the hurt that only comes from those you love, and the kindness you find when you least expect it.

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this post is part of the scintilla project. see more here.

this story was also my first contribution over at Vision & Verb a few years back, but it fit this prompt so perfectly that I decided to re-post it today.

if i had known it was you
on the corner that night

all staggered and cerulean blue
spinning me blindly
with a bump to my shoulder
down a dark-sided rocky path

i would have turned back
and taken your hand

filled it with bread
and boxes of paint

covered the mirrors
and sold you on hope

written you ‘cross the sky
in one long blinding comet

and then reached for your ankles
so you couldn’t float away

.

but your path was set
long before you were born

an arched trajectory
of red ochre
burnt umber
alizarin crimson

left to trail behind you
in the stare of eternity’s night

while i wander this path
in the darkness, this ever blinding
always wanting
mars black shadow hole
of crow and star and

listening

always listening

for the echo
of your footsteps

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..

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Linking up today with dVerse poets for Poetics
(on interactions with historical people)

::

Sometimes we wish we could hit the rewind button.
Talk about an experience that you would do over if you could.

::

This could be the kind of list that goes on forever,
filled with things like:

the time I yelled at you for not picking up your toys

the time I forgot your birthday

the time I turned left instead of right

the time I threw a book at you

the time I messed up the banking and left you
stranded at the checkout

the time I scratched your brand new tub
while cleaning the fish tank

the time I said the words I knew would hurt you most

the time I burned you with a match-tip
because I didn’t do the joke right

the time I sat with my friends instead of you
at the concert

all the times I bought something I didn’t really need
instead of saving my money

all the times I didn’t take the time to spend with you

all the times I said no when I should have said yes

all the times I said yes when I should have said no

.

But really, this is the only one that matters:

all the times I didn’t say I love you
when I could have.

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this post is part of the scintilla project. see more here.

::

Talk about where you were going the day you got lost.
Did you ever get to where you meant to go?

::

truth be told
i get a little bit lost
every day

drawing your own map
makes living with questions
the only direction

but somehow
i always find my way
back home

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this post is part of the scintilla project. see more here.

::

Describe a memorable experience that took place
while preparing or eating food.

::

It was one of those crazy humid hot summer days in late July or early August. One of those days when the air just hangs on your skin like an extra set of clothing. By early evening, my family had gathered on the front porch because it was just too hot to be inside, and rain was on the horizon. My cousin, who was a year or two older than I, was staying at my grandmother’s house, just kitty-corner across the street. He had come over to spend the day hanging out with my brother, probably playing G.I. Joe or War or some such thing that the boys were always playing back then.

I’m sure that we were all drinking Pepsi, because that’s what we drank every night back then, one of us would walk around the block to the corner store and buy the eight pack of tall returnable glass bottles. And then most nights, to go along with it, there was either popcorn or some sort of candy. On this night, it was M&Ms, the biggest bag you could buy, divvied up between the five of us. (Me, my three siblings and my cousin). We held them in coffee cups, because you know, you always had to be certain that no one got more than their fair share.

I don’t think my dad was home that night, he worked trick shifts, so his scheduled rotated every week, one week 7-3, one week 3-11, one week 11-7. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to adjust to that change every single week. No wonder he was always falling asleep at the kitchen table…but that’s another story.

I remember little else about the evening until it happened. The wind picked up, there was thunder and lightning, and we sat there on the porch enjoying the show and the cooling temperatures. And then the rain came, and the wind picked up even more, and my cousin started to get scared and wanting to go back home to my grandmother’s house. We told him to stay put, and I don’t really remember why he felt the overpowering need to leave just then, but I do remember that he grabbed his M&Ms and hopped on his bike to scoot across the street at almost the exact moment that what I can only describe as a mini tornado came zooming down the street. I’m sure there is a technical name for such a thing, a whirlwind or dust devil, it wasn’t very tall, maybe eight or ten feet, but it looked exactly like a tornado funnel. And even though it was small, it was powerful.

I had never seen anything like it before that night, and I have never seen anything like it since. We generally don’t have tornadoes here in western New York. It traveled straight down the center of the street, and you could see leaves and branches and debris swirling around in its path. My cousin zoomed across just in time to avoid it and the giant chestnut tree that came crashing down right behind him, blocking my grandmother’s car in her driveway, but somehow managing to avoid doing any real damage to it, or to my cousin.

He made it onto her porch and looked back over at us and we looked back over at him and I’m certain that we all had the same mouth-wide-open, holy crap! stare on our faces.

He was okay, and the tree, though a major inconvenience, hadn’t actually destroyed anything. But his M&Ms were gone, and so was the cup. We all searched for it the next day and never found so much as a shard.

Apparently, along with her temper, Mother Nature has a sweet tooth.

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this post is part of the scintilla project. see more here.

we’re always looking for something to ground us
a way to tattoo ourselves onto existence

indelible ink wash rivers
flowing through veins of indecision

brushing all sharp edges into
smooth curves and blurred remembrance

fitting pieces together in a nest of silt at the bottom
while the corners get washed downstream

memory is a gazing pool of fortitude
what we forget is the skeleton of living

winter freezes everything that runs

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Linking up today with the fabulous dVerse poets for Open Link Night, join the fun!

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some weeks leave you

feeling spent,

and i am there

.

it’s time

to buy more flowers

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::

Talk about a time when you were driving
and you sang in the car, all alone.
Why do you remember this song and that stretch of road?

::

It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down, I had the radio on, I was drivin’

Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever is one the few albums I’ve ever purchased immediately after hearing one song on the radio. (Counting Crows August and Everything After is another,  and more recently, just last year, Sean Rowe’s Magic was added to this short list.) All of these albums quickly wove themselves into the fabric of my life, becoming part of my personal tapestry.

But back to Tom Petty… I was young when this album came out, the same age that my son is now, 27.

My little boy was three at the time, and my first marriage was struggling for its last breath.

I remember exactly where I was when I heard Running Down a Dream for the first time, just a few miles from my house on a back country road. And it WAS a beautiful day. I had all the windows rolled down, (my tiny Toyota Tercel did not have air conditioning) and I pulled the band from my ponytail to let my long hair dance. I turned the volume up loud, I put the pedal down, and for those few minutes, just as the song goes, I was flyin’.

Later that year, I packed up my tiny car with a weekend bag and all my favorite cassettes. (Yes, I said cassettes.) It was mostly Dylan and Joni Mitchell, along with Mozart’s Requiem, and of course, there was Full Moon Fever. I drove myself to the Adirondack Mountains on Friday night after work. I had no reservation for a place to stay, no idea what town I would be stopping in, and no cell phone. None of these facts phased me in the least, but that is the blessing of being 27. I had a full tank of gas and a stereo, plus chocolate.

Late that night, after what I admit was a brief period of panic in which I realized it was quite possible that I had messed up and wouldn’t be able to find a place to stay in these sparsely populated mountains during off-season, I came upon The Melody Lodge. In a town called Speculator, which, in my rush past the sign, I read as Spectacular. Perfect, right?

The Lodge was the old-fashioned kind, the rooms didn’t even have their own bathrooms, everyone had to share the one down the hall. But I was there and it was dark and it was late and I wasn’t about to try a better place. And in retrospect, it was perfect. It was cheap and it was warm and the people working there were friendly. And I had all these blank notebooks just waiting for my words. I wanted to be a poet.

The next morning I got in my car with my music and I spent the entire day driving through those mountains, all the way up to the northernmost corner and back again, all the while playing an endless rotation of my favorite songs.

I was running down my own dream in the only way I knew how.

The day after that, I drove myself back home, back to my life, the one that was broken, and back to my son, who was not. And I knew that somehow, there would always be something good waitin’ down this road, and I would always be pickin’ up whatever’s mine.

I’m still running down a dream, still workin’ on a mystery, still goin’ wherever it leads.

And I’ve come to understand that I always will be.

Because anything is possible.

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this post is part of the scintilla project. see more here.

::

What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told?

::

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It’s simple, really,

and it always goes like this:

I can’t.

.

I’ll probably tell it again

a million times,

but I’ll refuse to believe it

until the end.

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this post is part of the scintilla project. see more here.