“Now more than ever” they say addressing “these uncertain times” while the quiet is a lovely, spooky thing
Like Prufrock’s curling fog or the calm eye at the middle of every storm
I play the sober girl’s version of a drinking game–keep a running tally of each meaningless thing we say
To ellipsize all the scooped-out half moon lost stitches
In the story of our world
In my grief I sit on a park bench with you, both of us just cartoon characters feeding pigeons when I turn to you and say, it’s going to get cold soon
Better find shelter.
You take the burn boat out
Should have been used to
Ferried day trippers
Or taken provisions for the larder
But not this–
Watch a man built then burn
His own funeral pyre
With the ease of a fraud or
Automaton
Feigning the act of breathing
In and
Out
Just to
fool us all.
The call costs five cents a minute and you have to be ready with a form of payment. On the other end of the line there is
A princess stuck in a well
Bears curled in around a wee-sleepy home invader
A girl in a badly blended family with a knack for the most inconvenient footwear
And all the rest of us-
sleeping beauties, garden-of-Gethsemane-tired
Of hearing about
This impending crucifixion.
We sleep in boats
Strewn out across
An unending sea
Cling to blankets, shelter, each other
An archipelago of contained air
All that holds us
Up inflatable dinghies,
Flotsam unstable
We call to each other
Sun-drenched dazed
Testing our new words
Like… beach balls….
Flood….
Antediluvian–
post-apocalyptic always
Cup your hands
Across your eyes
Look to the deep
Where the leviathan hides
Home.
She has her back to me. She is telling the children a sort of fable–if fables started if instead of once upon a time.;. And if the princess were a royal pain in the….well, you get the idea.
So Princess is unravelling a story. What if we had no mom or dad, no one to tell us what to do… Her voice conveys the magic of this scenario. Thanks to public assistance she has now had a few years to live the dream, and I will not venture to comment on how that has worked out for her.
It is her life.
And I was once just a random woman willing to wipe her…oh, you, get the idea again.
You could look at the things she has lost playing out her orphaned-with-cash fantasy. But that does not matter as much to me as this—
This world is God’s house and we may presume he has just run to the store for grapes. But I would not be so foolish as to underestimate Him. He owns this house and will return to clean it.
You can live your whole life without a mother and somehow muddle through. But to stake your forever on the dream of autonomy is risky precisely because you may just get exactly what you wanted…
Forever.
There was a moment in time when I held them
My babies
Fear flooded my mind
So that the moment/the babies/the mother I was then
Is cut into amber
She breaths in and out deliberately
Wanting to shelter
These two little ones
From inevitable Monsters
I see the light
Pouring out
Over the lawn at night
The girls in their pretty
Dresses fan out in the lines
Demarcating light and darkness
Can you hear the haunting
Music?
I can
The strings of slow lament
The partygoers
Lurching toward the wrought
Iron gates
Boozy and fatigued
Wondering
who will show us the way home?
What if I lost you?
What if you were not there?
What if one moment I saw you
And then blink
You
Were
Gone?
I ask myself these questions
With every beat of my heart
Knowing I have walked down these lonely roads before
Looking for the babygirlchild
Woman
I lost that day
no replacements found.
is a beautiful
girl
swimming
smooth strokes through the water
how did she learn to do that?
was it me?
was it you?
was it the strength of all our recessive
genes?
we would say everything
she did was beautiful
and that would be true
but we were
her family
and now
that she has slipped
through the waters
with her confident stroke
not paddling
awkwardly like a child
when i was a child…i thought like a child
reasoned like a…
child
come back!
you can do flip turns
with your eyes closed
come back–
do not
put childish ways behind you–
I need you here
cannot
think
of the world
one day without you
even though I know–
believe–
that we do see
but a poor reflection
(as in a mirror)
then we
shall
see
face to face
Again.
(tiny voice)
still small voice…
come back–
Elealee's Blog 