Winter Poems, 2020

I planted this giant Water Oak as a 4 foot tall twig 25 years ago.

My backyard on a sunny Winter day last week.

Winter Trees
By Marion Lawless

The trees are all bare tonight,
their gangly limbs, 
bony-fingered arrows
pointing to the ghostly full moon
shining luminously overhead
casting murky shadows
on the frozen ground.

Unearthly they seem---
like beings from another realm,
vulnerable and naked,
yet sure of who they are---
safe,
watched over 
by the stars.

<><><><><><><><><><>
  
"Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?" ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982 

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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

March, Winter’s Death Mask by Marion

Winter Snow, 2015

*+*+*+*+*+*

March, Winter’s Death Mask

By Marion Lawless

The spindly, naked trees are gently swaying—

one warm day, a row of tiny

leaves appear, marching up the branches,

specks of green from dead-looking, dry limbs,

like baby grasshoppers walking slowly in file.

Cold returns for a bleak few weeks,

knocking on the doors and windows, trees bowing in respect,

the jade leaves clinging as if glued to each branch.

Cold rain beating the new emerald-hued grass

sheets of ice, clear, like bits of tiny broken glass

fighting to stay much longer, in spite of time passing,

the sunshine gently molding mud, 

an annual mystical task...preparing

Winter’s death mask.

3/11/19

Zombie Haiku

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My life!!!!!  My 'give a shit' is officially dead...kaput.  From here on out it's my way or the highway.  My hair is silver/white.  It's as short as I could cut it.  One side is shaved bare.  I'm thinking of getting a tattoo there.  I'm in severe pain 24/7...in too many places to even mention.  Walking hurts.  Standing hurts.  Sitting hurts.  Just call me PAIN.  

I envy the zombies.  They're already dead.  They're just walking bodies, waiting for the delicious, sharp blade of that glimmering sword to end their empty existence.

Please, cut me...

PAIN By Linda Pastan

Smile, even when you feel like crying...

PAIN
By Linda Pastan, from "Waiting For My Life"

More faithful
than lover or husband
it cleaves to you,
calling itself by your name
as if there had been a ceremony.

At night, you turn and turn
searching for the one
bearable position,
but though you may finally sleep
it wakens ahead of you.

How heavy it is,
displacing with its volume
your very breath.
Before, you seemed to weigh nothing,
your arms might have been wings.

Now each finger adds its measure;
you are pulled down by the weight
of your own hair.

And if your life should disappear ahead of you
you would not run after it.

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Pain is with me 24/7, 365.  Nobody can see it, so few believe it.  It feels like I should be bleeding profusely, covered in bruises...but I'm not.  Autoimmune disorders, say the doctors...no known cause, no cure...just pain that affects mostly women...go figure.  To those in pain...I wish you relief.  xo

A Few Words For the Visitor in the Parlor by Olena Kalytiak Davis

An old, lace-winged friend of mine...

A Few Words For The Visitor In The Parlor
by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Every time you wish the sky was something happening to your heart, you lose twice.

Mother kept sending me back to the kiosk. Where they wrapped the paper in fish. Pivovarov and the other artists, they were worried. The blood was Ukrainian and it was all over the place. Go and wash your face. No, no one said anything about auto-workers. I am simply saying to you what my mother said. I am simply saying what Pivovarov painted: Go and wash your face. People are coming soon. It is not good for them to see you looking like this.

I slept the afternoon, but you know what Breton says: I was not in the mood for visitors. Picture yourself inside that word. And yes, my house is a word, but my words, aren’t they words also? Today, the sky just wouldn’t happen. Today, I was blind sided. Neither pain, nor its powdered absence. Like most days, I became the kitchen sill. I’m simply saying what I always say: what is lace-winged cannot be strong.

My wedding dress hangs at the end of things. It’s the kind of thing you think while sitting on someone else’s couch. There is something elegant implied by length. Or: So this is a living room, what was I thinking. Grass stains where the peach-colored silk drank in the ground. But when I get home the urge to clean immediately leaves me. Alone, I can only think of visiting those plain and exotic places. Oh, my cloud covered heart.

She was a branch covered in hoarfrost. I must forgive myself. Something clings to the whore’s hem. Dear visitor: you divide your age in two then square it by a dying mother. I am always gathering her up in my arms. Believe me, you never forget someone that thin. You start remembering the way that summer lay differently on top of that year. The hood burns you. I tried driving as gently as I could, but you know, the road had last winter inside it, the winter before. That drive was painful, just look at her face. You remember because someone starts talking about time. Someone says time, time is like water. Someone says: There was once a living room made entirely of death.

Today, the sky was white. And the ground was white, too. Yet, I could tell them apart. They were that easy to distinguish.

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*Bold sentences are two of my favorites ever... - Marion, brawling w/pain & losing

 

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 From her amazingly perfect book:  "And Her Soul Out of Nothing" by Olena Kalytiak Davis

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