Waiting for Recharge

I alternate between vigorous activity and coma-like crash.  It’s the nature of this disease.  No middle ground, it seems.  Or maybe that’s just the nature of this personality.

We celebrated Christmas early this year.  A Saturday afternoon gathering, and I cooked.  First time in four years.  I felt a certain sense of pride till the last guests left and I turned to face the aftermath.  Now, just  two days later, I am packing up the household and preparing for a four-month excursion.  I think I’ve defined a new breed of crazy:  waiting for a spurt of energy and then frenetically doing until I hit the next wall.

Winter pelts windows,
stirs frenzied need to escape –
waiting for recharge.

(Imelda is hosting in the dVerse pub tonight with the prompt: waiting.  Coincidentally, waiting is also the prompt for Manic Monday’s 3 way challenge.  I have also received inspiration from Ragtag Community:  vigorous, and Fandango: coma.  Tomorrow is load up day and then we hit the road, so not sure how often I’ll be around until we get settled somewhere.)

After The Party

99 emails await attention
brain, like legs, plastic –

To do’s flood consciousness,
constrict breathing –

The sun, reacting to yesterday’s
intensity, has stayed away –
a co-conspirator in misery

I wait for illumination –
clear direction on how
to begin, motivation
to follow

Dampness seeps in –
a body-snatcher –
I must move

Emptied wine glasses
linger on countertop –
remnants of celebration

I turn the faucet to hot
immerse glass and flesh,
will progress.

(Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing prompt: illumination in 73 words.  Also linking up to Fandango’s flood, and Ragtag Community’s plastic.  Image from personal collection.)

Glass Caskets

What mysteries lie in ancestral roots,
what clues to illuminate the dysfunction
that permeated our familial ties, cursed
us with a pervasive sense of perversity?

We are a portrait of deviancy: still life
torsos, dismembered from birth, non-
conforming hormonal structures denied
reception in the aftermath of Victorianism.

An aunt, who despite her outer female
attributes earned the nickname Billy,
tried her best to acclimatize to girlie legs,
distracted herself with industry, could not

bear the swirl of dresses, nor the reek
of men’s cologne, banished herself to
far off lands, followed a brother – also
optically illusive – knew himself as Liz,

adapted arms and legs of steel to bury
his essence, donned military rags, and
macho outbursts, failed to escape his
inner truth.  Raised by this disembodied

woman, whose embittered cries echoed
through our hollow chambers, shattered
any attempts at compassion, we were
observers at a funeral, where the casket,

made of glass, held a lonely figure – head
and shoulders solely visible – all but dead,
suspended, like a science experiment gone
terribly wrong, abandoned in a gel-like bath –

embalmed dysmorphia on private display.
Lacked the resources to understand the
complexity of their sufferings, too entwined
to be rational – ignorance blinded by shame.

Only now, in the light of current revelations,
is the depth of our misguided conclusions
made tragic – with I could reach back through
time, adjust the settings to acceptance, but

lack the currency, have no recourse, other
than these words, to communicate the sheer
brutality of discrimination – have witnessed
the bloodied carnage of authenticity oppressed.

(Glass Caskets first appeared December, 2016.  It was published in Little Rose Magazine, March 2108.  I submit it here for my weekly challenge:  deviation.)

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A Child Glows

Child,
delightful youth,
my heart’s jewel,
you are light-bearer,
hope for the future –

antics haphazard,
laughter contagious,
spreading joy,
sparking imagination –

I pray that your spirit
remains joyously vibrant,
that reality dawns gently –
does not spoil the radiance
of your glow.

(Written in honour of my granddaughters, for dVerse pub, where Lillian is hosting and a quadrille based on the prompt spoil is called for.  Also linking up with Ragtag Community – jewel, Fandango’s- haphazard, and Manic Mondays 3 Way Prompt – heart. )

Tempting

Escape sits
stalled,
waiting,
one small key
an ounce of courage
and off I’d go,
a wake of water
heralding my exit.

Instead,
I retreat –
courage resides elsewhere,
such exhilaration
belongs to youth –
will ponder adventure
another day –
wait,
stall,
escape
into a nap.

(Written for Twenty Four’s: 50 word Thursday.  Photo supplied with challenge.)

Growling Funk

Put this corduroy cat out,
give her only fish-eyed dirt –
it is moister than green grass,
less porcelain to devour.

Bleed the soft morning air
See eternity throb
Listen, dance, surround joy

Go! Do young night growl –
delicious, ferocious, wet heart.

(Playing around with Magnetic Poetry online.  Want to play along?  See what you can make with the words above.  Only caveat – you have to use all the words. Photo from personal collection.)

Abandoning Mother

Day, no more than a sliver, casts a subtle glow on the path.   A small bird tap-tapping on windowpane has awakened me, invited me out.  I follow it now, as it flits from tree to bush along the way.  We come to a stream, whose waters swirl in a nearby eddy then rush over the rocks, merrily singing Earth’s praises.   Seventy-eight acres of untouched land surround me.  Birch, oak, and willow among the giants that offer shelter. I have come on retreat.  A chance to regroup and recharge.

This bird is not the first to rouse me in the early hours; it had been happening for days leading up to this journey.  I take it as an omen: be awake, pay attention.

I feel the presence immediately.  I am not alone at the water’s edge this crisp, cool spring morning.  Although I cannot see her, I know her at once – an essence I have not felt since I was child.  Mother Earth.  I begin to cry.

“Why did you abandon me?”  The words tumble, unexpectedly.

How long has it been since I’d felt her reassurance, the protective shield of her patient strength?  I remember how as a child, locked out of home, she walked with me, whispered to me through the subtleties of the wind, and taught me the rhythms of life.

“It was you who abandoned me.”  The knowing hits me, like a punch to the stomach.  It is so true.  I turned my back on her, adopted the ways of civilization – embracing education and busyness as a means to happiness, forgetting the promise of inner peace she offers.

‘Can you forgive me? ‘ I cry.  The sorrow of our separation now hitting me in waves of grief – a torrent of shame and blame, and guilt.  How I have lost touch with so much in the years since she and I passed the days in innocence.

“There is nothing to forgive.  I am always here, whenever you need me.”

The thing is, I tell myself, as day’s light obliterates dawn’s encounter; allergies keep me indoors, and as a mother of three, I spend my days chauffeuring. What time do I have for Nature, for daydreaming?

I will not find her again, for many years, when sickness closes the door on accepted life practices and forces me into isolation, desolation.  It doesn’t happen all at once, but gradually, over time, starting with a little bird’s tap-tapping on my windowpane, inviting me to look outside.  Inside.

(Written for Willow Poetry’s challenge:  What Do You See?  Image supplied as part of the challenge.)