Being a Wife by Selima Hill

Poem below from page 244.  Great anthology!

BEING A WIFE by Selima Hill

So this is what it's like being a wife.

The body I remember feeling as big as America in,

the thighs so far away

his hand had to ride in an aeroplane to get there;

the giggles I heard adults giggling with

I was puzzled about,

and felt much too solemn to try;

buttons unbuttoned by somebody else, not me;

the record-player

neither of us were able to stop what we were doing

to turn off;

the smell of fish

I dreaded I'd never get used to,

the peculiar, leering, antediluvian taste

I preferred not to taste;

the feeling of being on the edge of something

everyone older than us,

had wasted,

and not understood,

as we were about to do;

his pink hand gripping my breast

as if his life depended on it;

the shame of the thought of the mirror

reflecting all this,

seem long ago,

yet somehow authentic and right.

Being a wife is like acting being a wife,

and the me that was her with him in the past is still me.

~∆~∆~∆~∆~∆~∆~

Feeling better today.  Reading poetry does that... xo

In the Fields of Time by Mahvash Mossaed

I am moon; you are sun.  Colored by Marion.

IN THE FIELDS OF TIME
By Mahvash Mossaed

Walking on an eggshell,
With a piece of cloud on a string as my kite.
I am going nowhere, lost in the fields of time.
Running around, looking for a good wind.

I have a body which will not last me long.
I have a soul which wants to come out and fly.
And I know when I go back where I came from,
when I go back home, God will be there waiting for me.

But for now I will fly my soul like a piece of a cloud,
or like a kite, while I am running around in the fields of time.

~π~π~π~π~

I succeeded in getting up this morning.  Now, to make it through another lonely day.  The flowers need watering and the cats need to be fed.  There's that... 

~π~π~π~π~

"As we do at such times
I turned on my automatic pilot
and went through the motions of normalcy on the outside,
so that I could concentrate all my powers
on surviving the near-mortal wound inside." 
                       ~ Sonia Johnson

~π~π~π~π~

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain." 
                       ~Carl Jung 

~π~π~π~π~

Life is suffering. ~Buddha

~π~π~π~π~

Psalm 126:5, 6 - "5 They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

6 He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

A collaged journal I made...

Failing and Flying

BY JACK GILBERT

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It's the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Jack Gilbert, "Failing and Flying" from Refusing Heaven. Copyright © 2005 by Jack Gilbert.