my senses can assault {poetry thursday}

my senses can assault.

sometimes I am prepared.

smell
lily of the valley blooms in May
(and in perfume, soap, lotion)
a freshly opened tub of ponds cold cream
yes, this will be you.

hear
a line in a song by Kenny Rogers
(“if I close my eyes, it doesn’t hurt quite so bad”)
your voice as I make applesauce
it has already happened, so I am ready.

touch
two pairs of soft fluffy indigo socks
(one mine, one yours)
a long flannel nightgown
memories of past Christmas mornings.

see
the picture in my studio
(we walk on the beach holding hands)
the turquoise on my right ring finger
I know you will be here.

but taste.

even my tongue can interrupt
the simple cadence of my day.

the cold, tart cranberry juice
hits my taste buds,
a usual event.

but today
it is this flowered glass,
similar in weight, texture, color
to the small faceted juice glasses
you would fill with this sharp red liquid
and put before me at the kitchen table,
mixed with the taste of peanut butter still on my lips
and the aroma of this tangy fruit juice.

the unlikely combination that leads me back
to you.

grief has no manners
no understanding of time and place
no tact
no empathy.
they say it comes in waves,
but I think it sucker punches you
whenever the hell it feels like it.

********

I started this poem a few months ago when I was eating peanut butter on toast and drinking cranberry juice out of a new glass used for the first time. Poetry continues to be a way to push through the grief. I stopped everything and just started putting the experience and emotions down into a poem.

Revisiting a poem and stepping back from it and finding a new phrase or stripping down an idea to the image you want to convey, I am enjoying this more than I ever imagined. I love poetry.

Read more poetry on this Thursday by visiting Poetry Thursday.

making sense of it.

Little snippets swirl in my brain as I again try to make sense of it.

A friend has the truly traumatic experience of watching her dog, her dear friend, die in the middle of the night. A seizure that lasts forty-five minutes takes the little beagle. Having lost her father almost five years ago, she knows this grief. She knows how it will bring it all back again.

A friend calls to tell me her uncle died suddenly in a car accident Monday night. I can hear her say, “it just doesn’t seem real at all.” We find our way to laughter in our conversation to give her mind and heart some space from the bewildering pain.

I catch the news this evening as I am getting ready to go and teach yoga. James Kim was found dead today in Oregon. This family has become known to everyone here in the Pacific Northwest in the last few days. An amazing blessing that Kati Kim and her daughters were found Monday. A blessing James has been found, but such a deep sadness for those who knew him and those who searched and searched hoping to bring him home safe to his family.

David Whyte read “The Hazel Wood” at the reading last Friday (a new poem you can find in his new book). Before he read it, he described the scene to us…how he was walking across the Irish countryside to meet up with a group of people and found himself suddenly in a horrific storm fearing his own safety. In the poem he describes how sometimes life is like a warm room full of people and life and security and other moments are like a raging storm where death makes a choice. A snippet from his poem,

its more like some edge we’re on, everything
sustained by an invisible thread
that’s just about to break, the storm a possible
death about to choose or not choose
one life among all other lives it sees below

I try to make sense of it. Of It. Of grief. (Of death.) I am, of course, always trying to make sense of my own grief, and I know that it is okay that it doesn’t makes any sense at all. And really, I know that I cannot make sense of it all, right now in this moment. But I will keep trying. I will keep turning the thoughts in my mind and then pause to breathe. I will keep finding moments of stillness to be open to the understanding that I will never really know. I will keep searching for a place where I can feel the space to know that what I believe is enough.

a witness {poetry thursday}

This week, I have been spending time with Sharon Olds and the poems in her book The Father. If you have been stopping by here on Thursdays over the last few months, you have probably noticed that I tend to share poetry I have written about my grandmother and sometimes about her death. I haven't really found a "voice" to talk to her as I am living my life and she is no longer alive. When I reach for the phone to call her and then remember she is dead, I don't start talking to her anyway. At least not yet. (Though when I was cleaning my home office/studio a few weeks ago and kept running across letters from her/pictures of her in the oddest places I did start talking to her. "Janet, I have had about enough of this.") It is through my poems that I am finding my voice and addressing her. She is the "you" in my poetry.

Some people have mentioned that it must be healing to write about her. I am not sure I see it as healing. Though do we realize we are healing when we are or do we just notice it later? I don't know. One idea that has to come to me lately is this: By writing about her, I am a witness that she existed. She was a woman who didn't have many friends, she spent most of her days in her home, she wasn't close with many people, and she had a tendency to alienate others. But she changed my life. She taught me about laughter and acceptance and finding little joys in living a quiet life. It saddens me that it seems she didn't really teach anyone else these things. I am the one who experienced this side of her. And I can be her witness to share these pieces of her.

I also feel that writing/talking/sharing grief has to happen. We do not do this enough in our culture. I am almost bizarrely fascinated with it. I want to talk and talk and talk about my experience. I want to listen and learn from the experiences of others. And poetry has become a vehicle for both of these things.

The book of Olds’ poetry that I have been reading this week is all about her father, his illness, and his death. How to explain the feelings that come up as I read her words?

Before my grandmother died, I did not understand stories of people falling on the casket sobbing or someone pretending a loved one was still alive and talking to that person as though she is sitting across the dinner table with them, even when others are in the room. During my uncle’s funeral, his casket remained open. A song was played over the speakers while we all sat their quietly. My aunt stood up and went to the casket. I remember thinking, “does she know we all can see her?” I realize now that I was simply embarrassed by the intimacy of the moment. Goodness. Now I realize the last thing you are thinking about when standing looking at someone you love who is in a casket is what others are thinking about. This doesn’t matter much when you have lost a part of your heart.

After my grandmother died, I suddenly understood why people do all that they do that we cannot understand when “dealing with” the loss of someone they love. Sharon Olds writes about this in a way that has me nodding through my tears. I am fascinated by her words, her images, her truth. And, I suppose, I am also healed by reading.

To hear Sharon Olds read a poem from this book, visit poets.org via this link.

*****

edited in 2011: Poetry Thursday is referenced throughout my blog in 2006 and 2007. It was a community website where participants shared a love of poetry through their blogs as they posted their own poems and poetry by others on Thursdays. 

a poem for poetry thursday

Today I am sick, working from bed all day. Millie keeps coming in somtimes cuddling with me on the bed, sometimes looking at me with an "are you really staying in there all day?" expression. My post for Poetry Thursday is late. But I didn't really start writing this poem until this afternoon, when a sudden connection danced across my brain. It is still a draft, but I decided to share it here. It needs to be set free into the world and not trapped in my heart. 

Untitled

She opens the door and motions us down the hall.
As we walk, she says,
we had to put him on oxygen.
He pulls his face out of the mask,
looks into my eyes, reassured by my presence.
Or so I believe because he cannot tell me.
How much time?
I say, stroking his forehead.
He is suffering, be quick.
I whisper in his ear,
then nod.
Seconds pass as he looks into my eyes.
I stroke his forehead,
his eyes slowly droop.
She nods.
He is gone.
Sobbing, I lay over his body.

Today I think about you.
Wondering about those last seconds
when you were dying,
when they couldn’t fix you.
And I rage inside
at you
at God
at them.
I wanted to be there.
I wanted to stroke your forehead
and whisper in your ear.
Though the moment would have been greater
than a nod from one person
and an IV full of finality,
I wanted to be there.

She leads us back to the room.
A few minutes later they bring him to us.
I run my hands down his back and legs
wanting to feel every inch,
memorizing.
Touching his face, nose, neck,
removing his collar,
folding up the blanket
that cradled his body in the last moments.
I catch myself mesmerized by the stillness
of a body that would usually react to any touch.
Today, I wish I would have spent more time,
stroking, praying, wishing,
but then I was thinking,
they need the room.

A few hours after they wheeled you
out of the chapel, I was softly crying
(knowing my role was to be composed),
aching for the honor
of looking into your face
when the doctor nodded.
My aunt said to me,
we would have never gotten you out of that room.
I admit she might be right.
I might still be standing beside you,
stroking your forehead,
mesmerized by the stillness of your body.
And if someone said, m’am we need the room,
I would not move,
no,
I would just stroke your forehead
wishing you to breathe
just once more.

the poem that woke me up {poetry thursday}

It seems like Poetry Thursday was just a couple of days ago, but here it is again. I smile this morning knowing that the next Poetry Thursday will be here next week. I love poetry.

Sometime in the last two weeks, I visited Christina over at My Topography and read this post about a conversation between Robert Bly and William Stafford. Although my heart was warmed by Stafford the story (if you visit me here every now and then you know how I adore William Stafford) and I appreciated the idea behind a poem a day, my instant thought was, “Well, I don’t have time for that.”

This morning, I found myself awake an hour before I planned to wake up and the words for this poem came to me. Even though I drifted back to sleep, they woke me up an hour later and insisted they were a poem meant to be written. This is just a draft, a simple morning poem, but I share it with you.

A morning poem (9/28/06)

In the hour of vulnerability just before dawn
my fuzzy thoughts are with you
in your hospital bed as you took your last breath.
In the kitchen, my husband takes a plate
down from the cupboard that
clanks as it touches the counter.
That sound incites my memory
to grab my hand like Peter Pan,
and we slip out the window.
I pad down the hallway and
curl up on the couch with sleepy
anticipation of our day together.
Sliding open the kitchen door
you see me and say the magic words,
“Do you want a Surprise?”
A slight smile curves around the security blanket
thumb in my mouth as I nod.
Before you turn toward the kitchen,
you walk to the television and turn on Channel 9,
knowing my internal clock sets to
“The Bozo Show” the weeks I stay with you.
In a few minutes you will appear again
with exotic treats of sliced banana, cranberry juice,
and peanut butter sandwiched between Cheerios.
In this hour of vulnerability just before dawn,
grief and love tuck me back into bed
as I drift off to memories of
you, laughter, and sounds of “The Grand Prize Game.”