“Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.”
She is older now – no! – not elderly yet,
but getting there, enough so the face
staring at her from the hall mirror
is her mother’s or her grandmother’s
The plump little sparrow of a body
she’s living in, slow, matronly, aching
Well, certainly it’s not hers . . .
The place where she lives is a bit alien,
balmy weather, more-or-less one season
The street is not unappealing having
trees, birch and magnolia positioned
among aging oak and reliable evergreen
At daybreak, birds nesting there make
harsh and urgent conversation, pitching
their morning news against the endless
rumble and whoosh of a nearby freeway
Dressed in her mother’s face looking down
at her mother’s hands, she sits and listens,
no longer a juicy green story unfolding, just
a crisp brown sidebar to other lives, she’s
set in a place with rare moments of quiet
They drop like the cool spun-silver of dusk
after the unrelenting heat of a summer day
The hush, sudden and infrequent, shocks
her mind into musing, memory, nostalgia
She wonders what it would be like to
lie awake listening to the quiet of a place
where snowflakes sometimes drift to
earth, powdering the landscape with
tranquility, or what it would feel like to
walk outside and press her naked face
to a winter sky, to feel icy crystals against
warm skin, to see their shapes reflected by
the stars, to know eveyone she loves is
dreaming under the same alabaster moon
She wonders what it would be like to walk
along 93rd Street in new Easter shoes,
to make her way to Mass past spring flowers
dancing above the last of the snow-pack,
to buy a colorfully-mixed bouquet after church,
to make the requisite call to her distant father,
to hear her name on his lips just once more,
to ask him the questions she never dared ask,
to roast lamb scented with garlic and rosemary,
serving an overflowing household at a table set
with roses and damask and best tableware
She wonders how it would feel to live
once more in a land with distinct seasons,
to dance with her high school sweetheart
and to retrieve all the loved and lost souls,
to welcome back the nights pillowed in silence,
to awaken on crisp cosseting Regina Pacis morns,
to say good-bye to the numbing consistency
of endless balmy days and highway drone and
strolling strange streets in soft stoic solitude
seeking new rituals, new traditions, new friends
to replace the irreplaceable, knowing those
spring days are gone and gone, never to live again
© 2019, Jamie Dedes
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT
Part of the process of growing older is loss. That’s not to say there aren’t compensations and rewards, but that would be a theme for another day. Aging is rich in learning the spiritual lesson of nonattachment, especially as physical abilities wane and funerals are more frequent than weddings and birth celebrations. In my circle, we’re no longer living in the houses in which we raised our childen. We’ve all downsized to studio apartments or small cottages or homes. These lessons of loss, acceptance (not to imply resignation), and reinventing life, are part of the human condition. Please share your thoughts and experiences in your own poetry.
NEW RULES
- please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
- please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose
Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published.
IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.
Deadline: Monday, June 24 by 8 pm Pacific Daylight Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.
Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro. It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you.
You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.
ABOUT
Recent in digital publications:
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littéraire
Upcoming in digital publications:
Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review
A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Dick, this lovely poem is in response to a prompt that closed on June 24. However, I’ll get back to you in a few days and we’ll see what we can do.
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Whoops! Sorry. I’ll get the hang of the protocols, I promise…
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No worries.
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HOUSE-HAUNTING
With my back leaning against the paneled door,
I’m assuming solitude.
But gradual glim reveals high corners webbed with
cotton bedsprings, cargo-nets of gossamer
with spiders’ empty landing gear still climbing.
And there too the paper husks of wasps, skin-winged,
reamed and curled into themselves, against
the thick, occluded windows, phantom panes streaked
and crazed like mother-of-pearl, light tiger-striped.
All this trapped and coiled and gone to powder and strands,
wrapped like forgotten gifts.
I breathe it all in, breathe deep the vinegar dust.
Now I’m master of the stairwell, kicking the years
out of the naked risers as I rattle the floors
like a hot ungodly wind.
I straddle doorways, arms and legs frozen
inside star-jump crucifixions.
I ring each hollow room like a bell, wordless first,
then with the silver hammer of my name,
its plosives booming off the plaster and the lath.
And then when my name falls into mockery,
gibbered syllables turning into bubbles
inside that deep-water silence, that impenetrable trench,
it’s doors – one door and another until the final blind-side panels
give to the push and wrench
and brash summer sun
tugs me into the long grass,
to the cricket’s clatter,
birds’ wings wheeling close
and the slow, untroubled breathing of the world
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I have been to summer before
I can think of winter special*
but when someone says
Come spring, a poem make to silence me.
Flaming red, Emerald green
Sort of things
I have been to summer before
I can think of winter special*
but when someone says
Come spring, a poem make to silence me ….yeah
How do you know about me?
A SUDDEN CHILL BLANKETING MY SKIN 😐
How do you know about me?
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Thank you for sharing you poem, Pali. I’m sorry you missed the deadline. The poems in response to the last prompt were just published. Also, the theme was aging. However, as you will see from the next prompt which will be published tomorrow, Wednesday, this poem will fit perfectly. So if you, like send a photo and short bio to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com and I’ll include you next Tuesday.
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Hi Jamie! Here are my contributions for this week – two poems that I wrote a while ago but relevant for this week’s prompt.
“Details” – A Poem for my Parents
I zero in
On the cracks in the walls
The spaces between tile and grout
The layer of dust on the grand piano
The peeling Formica under 80’s sought after giveaway cups
The places where your innovative nature took precedence over getting the job done right.
I zero in
On the grays in your hair
And the spots on your hands
The slowness in your cane aided walk
Your mouth agape during your afternoon nap
The hand me up shirt you’ve been wearing for decades because it still fits
I zoom out
And see the humor and kindness in your eyes
The hands that lovingly prepare my favorite meal
The 20 year old bed that fits generations
The clock where time has stopped but happiness lives on
The struggle of remembering and honoring and forgetting and accepting.
I zoom out
And notice what you do without
What you’ve sacrificed
What you’ve preserved
What you’ve done with love
What you’ve done for love.
I zero in on that detail.
“Fighting Age” – A Haiku
Combing through darkness
Five stand, admitting defeat
Plucked out – victory!
One is about accepting growing older and the other is about fighting it (I’ve been plucking out grey hairs for years and will continue to do so until they outnumber the black hairs!). I hope you are having a good week! 💐💐
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Thank you. Yes! I remember the first. Trick regarding gray hairs: waterproof mascara. Did it for years. 🙂
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Mascara!! I don’t wear make up so I never would have thought to use that. Would be less painful than the plucking. Must add that to my Target list!
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Yes! Also, now I have too much gray to do that, but I have a few stray gray eyebrow hairs and I use mascara on those. Cheap. Easy. Safe.
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It’s a brilliant fix!
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Hi Jamie. I tried a Haiku this time.
The years drift away
Capturing glimpses of time
Lost in memories
Jen goldie
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Never Too Late To Learn
Teeth were small, milk-white bones
that fell painlessly out of my mouth
and meant sixpence under my pillow.
Hair was a length of chestnut strands
my mother brushed, combed, twisted
into plaits and tied with bright ribbon.
Who will leave fifty pence for teeth
that decay despite silver amalgam,
Oral-B paste and regular check-ups?
Who will help me style white-grey hair
that escapes across the bedroom
like blown seeds of a dandelion clock?
Who will tell me birthdays aren’t burdens
but lemon drizzle cakes topped with icing,
candles and rice-paper primroses?
My response to the old age prompt. A bit wistful!
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Here’s my response to the prompt which I’m having trouble posting.
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maybe there’s a smile in the process
Mind the Gap
For seventy minutes a one man play
by a man in his fifties who memorized
multiple characters on their way
to heaven or hell, each would decide.
He changed characters’ minds and voices
debating reasons, they pleaded and cried
lured by tempting leave or stay choices
to inflate their positions and their pride.
How to break the chains and be set free
to discover our own truth deep inside
separating delusion from reality
hope is alive, it never died.
His memory used to recite the lines
continues to find new roles to ride.
Proving old folks still can shine,
I wait in the wings to make my stride
A thought within me – it might be my time
to step into the light sublime
but my body and memory long past due
on stage all I recited was an aging haiku.
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#21 THE WORLD
The World is so much more
Than Earth and the visible
Night sky
Telescopes and space cameras
Transport us to galaxies unknown
Where tarot cards were first shown
Although there were always a few souls
Who knew what was out there in the vastness
Of space
THE WORLD is the archaeology of our past
Moving us through the present
And showing us the future
Symbols on cards mimic
Symbols of everyday life
Like the day I found an engraved coin
With my name and home address
Of a place I lived before age seven
Lying in the mud near a shed of broken crates
My past zoomed in and saw myself
Winning tickets for Skee Ball
To use on the mechanical engraver
In an Atlantic City arcade
Before casinos wrecked the ambience
Of ocean and sand and fries in a paper cone
Of cinnamon donuts and black coffee at midnight
From Mammy’s with my Gran
I rediscovered the coin
After finding a feather
That pointed the way
Very small feather
From a Florida Black Vulture
Stripping the flesh
From a corpse so fresh
And so here is my future
I thought
Death
To live in the now
Would be best
So I hauled out my tenor guitar
Music,the most beautiful part of
Anyone’s present
Although old songs transport us back
To the past
The words are seared in memory
Never to go
Always with us in the current phase
This trio reminds me
Of a wedding superstition:
Something old (coin)
Something new (guitar)
Something borrowed (feather)
Uh, oh, I’m blue
Because I
Always have
Always do
Always will
Need to find images of life
And force them into
Patterns
Patterns that ease the chaos
Of my world
And like the moon
We go through the stages
Circularly
As past, present, and future
Twirls like the Earth
Orbits the sun of our existence
And tilts with the seasons
The World
The tiny world that is ours
Our personal world of elation and sadness
Of terrible regrets but moments of gladness
We dream of space and vastness
But we are the microcosm
Like symbols imitating life
We mimic the macrocosm
Because the World is us…
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wish aging were as beautiful as your poetry, dear Jamie
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Time Triolet
Grey hairs fall in tides on foreshores
Wrinkles contour into round earth.
Time’s tooth too long in the wild wars.
Grey hairs fall in tides on foreshores.
Earth’s skin gets thinner with the sores.
Ordnance survey lines huddle steep.
Wrinkles contour into round earth.
Grey hairs fall in tides on foreshores.
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My Decrepit Is Good
Bring on grey hairs turn to silver.
Bring on sharp pain in the knees
as I hobble downstairs.
Bring on memory loss
as I know no different.
Bring me my stick,
my arrow of desire.
Bring it all on, fuzzy brain,
misty sight, zimmer frame,
adult nappy’s, oxygen through
plastic tubes, a knowing.
Bring on wrinkles, laugh lines,
tang of autumn, radical spice
of spring, footskate winter,
wild summer, all natural process.
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What a lovely poem you wrote, Jamie! I will look through my aging poetry (have dozens) but feel you have expressed the feeling perfectly…
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Thank you. Looking forward to yours.
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She aged more,
noticed the wrinkles by the eyes,
that dropped the last tears,blurring the sight
soon smoky clouds blocked the cool moonlight,
in the window where she sat alone, unconscious of
unknown seventy years, a time called ‘age’
she ignored the sagging skin, the broader forehead
but looked for the divine mark, in vain
in a few hours, she had aged more, waiting-
waiting for just one special valued birthday wish=
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The poem you posted is brilliant, Jamie. Hoping never to become ” just a crisp brown sidebar to other lives”. I also like the poem in the comment above.
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Thank you, Angela.
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.the rain came suddenly.
sun, was done and dusted.
by the slate they talked, shining.
faces older now, friendship retained.
learned a little more on life, the small
things, wisdom rings
the generations.
i did not need all the mange tout.
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.the critic.
i have the urban dictionary,
on line, and the standard
in the book case, thesaurus
in the cellar, where spiders
and cowebs abound.
typing goes wild if
i get hiccups, whilst
the flow depends on
radio plays.
i was born in england, south coast,
now live in wales. we speak a different
language.
difference should make no
difference.
i am older now.
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men in the village, are older now. the moth returns.
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thank you Jamie
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Sorry to report a goof. “five minutes from by” should be “five minutes go by.”
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Got it. Thank you.
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father timebomb
she shouts from the bathroom
that she doesn’t know what to do.
her son shouts back, CLEAN YOURSELF UP. BE GENTLE.
OK. a flush. NOW WHAT?
WASH YOUR HANDS IF YOU CAN. IF YOU CAN’T, THERE ARE WIPES OUT HERE.
there is the merciful sound of water in the sink. five minutes from by.
YOU ALL RIGHT IN THERE?
NO. but she sounds curious, not distressed. then, as yesterday, THERE’S SOMEONE ELSE IN HERE.
THAT’S YOU, MOM. THAT’S YOUR REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR.
OH. And in a minute she eases herself past the hallway doorjamb, that hesitant smile on her face.
her son hears the ticking
of his own Father Timebomb,
and wonders who he will be
in twenty years.
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😢
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love and gratitude from LA
title: where did Opa go
accordions were not of import to me
until you were no longer there
the caramel and gray plaid La-Z-Boy chair
sat gaping at the ceiling wondering as i was
where did Opa go
we didn’t really talk no one taught me how
instinctively you knew though
that i loved your oversized navy blue trousers
and your red suspenders
except for the lederhosen not my style
regret burns hotter at night
while i sit silently on the kitchen counter
alone in the dark sometimes with pained wrists
and old cracked ribs dislocated in my youth
sit along beside me good times
where did Opa go
time rippled down your face
porcelined and freckled
both by illness and by cure
you would stare at mom’s cat
as the din of Lawrence Welk
seemed to echo from the corners of the room
where did Opa go
remember when i was 13
my socks were old and dingy
five sizes too big
and as you shook your head
you took out $50 from your wallet
and motioned me to get new socks
i just shrugged and smiled
turning my back on you
Mutta’s fancy mirror
stabbed me with
your puzzled dewey face
at my ignorant rejection
why did i let go
Opa
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