Another member of the family
expired yesterday. We weren’t close
except in age – some years past 70 –
related through our kids. She lost her mind
before she gave up functionality,
but even that forsook her over time.
It’s been two years since she’d remember me,
but loss is sobering. I’m varicose
with sadness for her orphaned progeny.
It seems a bit like being born again,
surviving staying in the ICU.
You’re patiently immobile, even when
you’re conscious – you are helpless, and it’s true
your favorite items will be oxygen
and fluids. You may have a point of view,
but after the experience, you’ll find
you have no recollection in your mind.
All three of us had narcissistic moms
who gazed in mirrors more than at their girls.
They blocked our feelings with their upraised palms,
and teaching husband hunting, dropped no pearls
of useful wisdom. Each preferred her son,
and deprecated women when they could.
Transactional perspective formed their run,
and beauty, wealth and status were their good.
So we are linked by histories, but not
as similar in navigating years.
For all had fathers not to be forgot.
Although one drank too often, it appears,
and two did not assure the wife enough,
the third was made of strong and loving stuff.
I’ve often felt anxiety asleep –
a dream of travel, racing to connect,
or trying amid hurrying to keep
my stuff with me, to gather and inspect
the needful. If an omen, I neglect
considering how it should guide my views.
Last night the vision morphed – my way was wrecked
by phone map hacked, displaying useless news.
I pulled the papers out a year ago –
three stacks of correspondence from old friends,
I stored for half a century or so
within the trunk my father made, that tends
old paperwork and serves in table’s stead.
I sent one batch, acknowledged soon with “yes!”
Another went, as yet I think unread.
The third I held uncertain of address.
A month ago I made a flimsy try
to find that erstwhile pal, although the more
I thought of him, the less I sought reply.
At last I shook my head, and chose “ignore.”
His letters met the blue recycle can.
I’d rather recollect than see the man.
I used to think that I’d be recognized
for writing as I did. As I still do.
I practiced and I never was disguised,
for nothing big was hid – it all was true.
But though to me the syllables were prized,
I didn’t sell or bid the process through.
And now I have a plethora of poems
residing in the cloud, abiding homes.
Enduring 90 minutes medically,
when 20 would have served all issues well,
I left the place a grateful escapee
from patient posture and attempted sell
of medicines no doctor can compel.
Full happy to be ambulating fast,
I took the route by where I used to dwell –
a 43 year token of my past.
Arrested by pink
petals as I pace up hill,
my pause is well paid.
We children of the 50s chanted claims
espousing beauty, freedom, equity.
To overturn stale culture were our aims,
destroy the old and dance in amity.
So revolution was the path we blazed,
we thought, our numbers large, our energy
unending. Even now I am amazed
at how we withered in maturity.
Today we witness one who sits on high
and decimates traditional with haste,
dismantles, closes, hamstrings, sends to die
the ethos, without thoughtfulness or taste.
A master of destruction’s been set free,
to gild us on a path toward entropy.
Surveying daily my anatomy
while meditating, as I’m wont to do,
I focus extra on the parts of me
that evidence more wear. So in my view
(internal, eyeless), visibility
is centered cervically – the avenue
of neck and throat, esophagus and gland,
of my attention makes the most demand.
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