Living the Dream

When path led only from my door
to the pickety fence, choice easy then
but for a swing with old board floor,
a sky to hold a dream and more;
I chanced to see a forest glen.

Once old enough to step beyond
the sunken steps of plankard path
and summer green of lacy frond;
was tempted, then, betimes conned,
to trip full free of well-placed late.

Now, autumn is as fallen down
as any bar that stops my way;
those footsteps lost on sunken brown,
walk away with darkened frown
that I have chanced to go astray.

“I shall be telling this with a sigh”
to children who mind so very well
and forget to test a place nearby
for their near chance of touching sky
by walking wilder wonderside a spell.

 
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
  And sorry I could not travel both
  And be one traveler, long I stood
  And looked down one as far as I could
  To where it bent in the undergrowth;
  Then took the other, as just as fair,
  And having perhaps the better claim,
  Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
  Though as for that the passing there
  Had worn them really about the same,
  And both that morning equally lay
  In leaves no step had trodden black.
  Oh, I kept the first for another day!
  Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
  I doubted if I should ever come back.
  I shall be telling this with a sigh
  Somewhere ages and ages hence:
  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
  I took the one less traveled by,
  And that has made all the difference.
©Robert Frost-The Road Not Taken

Perhaps I choose to write this this poem because I fell in love with Frost in his walk through the woods.  Perhaps it is because it rationalizes, for me, the reason I took the less traveled path.  For whatever reason, I wish the world’s children step lightly and spritely to enter the world in wild and wonderful ways.

Tags: Journal Blog, Poems by Shewolf
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My left hand stutters and there is a monster
lurking just behind tomorrow or the next.
I know him well and he has been here,
on my left shoulder, whispering dire warnings
about how he can own half of me again.

He speaks of stealing my reason for being,
my expressions of love for the word,
my pitiful attempts at prioritizing
all manners of passions that the world
have served me in order that I might grow
fat and full of feelings on.

I could live forever in my mind, but not fully so,
for I have need to sing my song to the world,
from mountains of white papers, red letter,
black punctuation marks, sometimes misplaced,
words, scrambling to make sense of it all.

But that would not ever be enough.  My psyche
does not appreciate itself enough.  It already survived
un-blessed moments.  I have need to reach back
to put a light to path others may wander
on their own dark nights.  It is not the ‘end-
all’ to have simply broken through hard ground
myself and revel in not having to share some light.

What flower ever found itself being smiled at by the sun
and enjoy being the only blossom in the nearby garden.
Perhaps that is why single ones stretch so and grow taller
than is expected.  They are trying to check their faith
that others have’ made it’ too and that ‘making it’ was a blessing.

The ogre, and the angst of it, flick a place on top of my head,
just under the thin bone that was boled up the last time
he attempted to escape.  Pushing him down did not cure
him of his evil doings, it merely caged him for another moment.
I know he is there, waiting to slather over my last words
and to wriggle gleefully at having eaten my last love.

 
Today is “D” day.  January 28, 1982, I had a brain bleed and was thrown into left side paralysis.  You would not know it to see me, but there are hints the monster is still there.  He never lets me forget how thin the veil is.  Every year, if I make it past this, I can begin to exhale slowly…I have the month of March to make it through. 
 
The headache started about 10 am and the “pop” came at about 6:26 PM.  I lost three months, the ability to move my left side, and many memories that have taken these 25 years to retrieve.  I am grateful I was young and had not damaged any cells that my brain needed to do the job the old ones did for me.  They were a little confused, though, because some of the cells had a mind of their own.  They show that in my typing and my ability to do triple gainers over peripheral things most would have seen.   When I am tired, they show their true colors in the slight drag and droop.  I have lived on borrowed time and know that.  I have spent every day being grateful to wake up and every night saying a silent prayer I had done enough ‘Good’ that day to be allowed to stay another night.   I am always mindful that the monster is still there, more so as the body and mind naturally slow down.  My fear drives me to write reams of poems…to get it said… “for no other reason but for this…that I have not lived this life as if a dream.” (R. Hooker)
 

Tags: Journal Blog, Poems by Shewolf
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Tonight, when I was heavy with need
of a word, a phrase, a ream of gentler things;
there came the magic of you,
when I needed a different image

other than the one the mother in me has
of a daughter on the street, leaving
her babies to fall where they may

other than one the sister in me has
of my baby brother’s earlobes
being burned off by the foster parents
he was so “lucky” to get while I was taken
by such good and gentle people

when I felt most abandoned,
and the weight of it hurt,
here you are, speaking of stars
and skies and friendship soared
into that little lonely space

I was trying to pen poem to ease the angst
and through a hole in the sky you fell
speaking to me of freefalling
in the panorama of God’s sky

but, you said….

in order to do so, I must believe
in fairies, angels and frustrated poets

and I do, my friend, I do
for god so loved me he sent you
tonight when the window
I was seeing my heaven through
was smudged with sorrow

And the poem wrote itself:
Tonight a gentle soul came winging
in dark night, I heard him singing:
“Though I know not what blinds you at all,
come, let me teach you how to free fall.”

Tags: A Pack of Poets, Poems by Shewolf
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What if, by noon, I had walked
entire length of the beach,
smelling nothing but salt air,
hearing nothing but shush
of white fringed waves,
and off, on the invisible ledge
of the hovering horizon
came your little sailboat:

What would that feel like?

What if, just before sundown,
I was hurrying to be out of the forest,
for fear of unseen big brown things,
charging through the downfall
and it happened to be you
instead of something fearsome:

How would that feel?

What if, at midnight, I saw two stars
crossing in the shroud of night
to tear a hole in the perpetual gauze
between heaven and here
and now was married to then…
oh, yes, I have had
a feeling like that.

Tags: Beloved Be, Poems by Shewolf
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We used to get up in the middle of the night,
make grilled cheese toast, start the fire
in the old fireplace, and write poems to each other.
Then, you would brush the crumbs from your hands,
pick up the guitar, and put music to the words.

Sometimes a cheesy line would send us into gales
of laughter. Sometimes the song was so powerful
that we would look at each other and the Swiss moon
turned her face from us.  Green with envy, the blue
sky could hold no contest to how sad some tunes were.

At times, both being fond of the smell of oil paint,
we would set up the easels, side by side, push
brush or cloth, and sometimes bodies, against
the canvas, smearing ochre and vermilion
on each other and went about for days
looking like we had been to some sacred tribal event.

Once we loved sharp, the camembert, peel
of waxy skin to dip into creamy texture
and offer the tip of a tangy  finger to each other.
These days, I am lactose intolerant.  Perhaps
we overdosed on evenings and cheese.

Tags: Beloved Be, Poems by Shewolf
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