To Frank the Pug

Oh Frank,
I wake up in the middle of the night,
and you're there.

Faithful friend.

I get up in the morning
And you follow.

Loving companion.

A dog like you is without price
Beyond compare

Except,
my dear--

You snore.

waiting

Frustrated with waiting I sit,
Staring at the door which stubbornly refuses to open.

Thinking about times past,
Wondering if today is just a token
of things to come,

Or if my life will once again reverse,
become the life that once it was,
that I thought it was meant to be.

But we
are not gods.
We do not know
the future.

In fact, sometimes
it seems
that we hardly know
the present.

And so,
I sit
impatiently waiting
for something
to happen,
for something
to change,

for something
to finally
start.

Lord, You

Sometimes I'm so high that it seems
Life will never
be anything
but rainbows
and sunrise,
and wildflowers
And I thank you for that.

But sometimes I'm so low that it seems
Life will never
be anything
but heartache,
and pain,
and death all around me.
And I thank you for that.

I thank you for the sunlit times
Because I know that they are what they are
Because of you.
I thank you even more for the times of despair,
of hopelessness,
of weeping and sorrowing through the night
Because You are the Joy that comes in the morning.

angel in the icu

the waiting room was empty
who would be there
anyway
at 3:30 in the morning
unless they had to be.

unless they had just heard
that their world
their life
was ending.

he was brain dead.

nobody could have foreseen this happening.

but there she was.

she had been there before,
though i was never sure why.

she was there when i came
and she was there when i left

i never actually saw her enter the icu

she said that she had a brother in there

and it never occurred to me to wonder
why she never visited him.

that day, though,
there was no pretense.

she wasn't there for a brother

she was there for me.

she saw me and gave me an encouraging smile
as i opened the door
and spent the beginning of the last day of his life with my husband.

no response to pain
no gag reflex
three major strokes
had taken my warrior away from me
away from my children
away from his mother and all his family.

i stayed the allotted time
and when i left,
expecting nobody

there she was.

she said not one word
just came to me
enveloped me
and held me while i cried.

when i was ready,
i left.

i never saw her again.

i don't know for sure if she was an angel,
but she will always be an angel to me.

Thoughts on an alternate universe

People congratulate me on my ability to talk about my past.
They marvel at my dry eyes as I speak of life,
and suffering,
and tragedy,
and death.

What they don't realize is that I am not talking.
The person who speaks so sincerely
is from an alternate universe--
a universe where pain doesn't exist,
and where words are devoid of meaning and emotion.
Not for the listener,
but for me.

It isn't that I have no tears.
I have them,
they just don't come out during talks,
or during demonstrations of others' suffering.

When I speak, I might get a bit hoarse,
a bit breathy,
but I don't cry.
When I listen to others speak,
tears generally don't come,
and when they do,
it's only because
for a slight moment
you have breached my alternate universe
and touched the real me.

The real me feels.
The real me still,
even after 20 years,
sobs uncontrollably at the thought of my husband
growing cold in his hospital bed.

It hardly ever happens when I think of my husband, though.
It comes unexpectedly,
when Rose is separated from Dr. Who by an impenetrable wall
and she must live out her life in an alternate universe
where she is surrounded by beauty
and love
and people who love her--
in fact, she is surrounded by everything…
except the one person that she needs more than anything else in the world.

How did you eventually come to feel, Rose?
I mean, before the happy ending that was truly bittersweet.
Did you learn how to live again,
or were you stuck in a universe within your universe
where you existed as a shell,
perfect and beautiful on the outside
and dark and void on the inside?

I know that I might
one day
live to love again.
The question is
do I want to?

How could I ever open up my heart again,
knowing that it could all come crashing down
as it did before?

It has taken so long to feel healed--
I don't know that I could survive it,
should it happen again.

And so, I continue on in my half-life.
I live in the moment
and I try not to think of the people that I've lost.

But every once in a while,
I will turn on a show
one that ends in happiness or sadness,
it's all the same to me, really,
and I will feel a strange sort of satisfaction
in the tears trickling down my cheeks.

No, they're not tears about my situation--
that is too painful to inhabit--
but they are tears, nonetheless,
and it feels good
for a time
to feel normal.

am i getting old?

I look at my face in the mirror
and see a woman that I barely recognize.
She is wrinkled,
her hair is dyed to hide the grey,
but she knows that every red highlight hides a grey hair.
Furthermore,
she has those lines going down her throat--
those lines that you only get when you are getting old.

Am I getting old?

I listen to my friends reminisce happily about past things--
Gilligan's Island, rotary phones, stick shifts,
and I remembers every one.
What I don't remember,
more often than I'd like to admit,
is the name of the person that I'm talking about
or to.
I thought that only happened when you got old.

Am I getting old?

My children are grown,
most of them are gone,
and there are grandchildren galore.
My youngest,
the child I had in my 30's,
is now twenty.
I look around at the mothers of my students,
and their parents are old enough,
some of them,
to be my children.

What happened?
I don't remember getting old!

But old, they say, is a state of mind.
Old, they say, is what you are,
Not who you are.
Maybe so,
although I feel that the people that say that
are even older than I am.

I might be getting old,
but, as they say, the alternative is worse.
So okay, I'm getting old.

I'm really okay with that.
Really.
Well, sort of.
On a good day.
But whether or not I'm okay with it,
It's happening.

So I will enjoy life while I can,
plan adventures,
visit new places,
revisit old ones,
and enjoy life while I can--
while there's still time.

I might be getting old,
But I'm not dead yet!

Every day holds new promise,
and so I will hold on to that promise
and I will continue to walk,
until the day comes
when I can fly.

about writing and stray ideas

I used to despair of my life.
It wasn't easy, living inside my head.
For one thing, it was noisy.
There was always some pesky little idea,
longing to get out,
that kept me up at night
until finally--
usually at 2 in the morning--
I would give in,
get up,
and give voice to that idea.

Next thing I knew,
it was 4am,
and I would go back to bed,
jubilant,
but knowing that jubilance wouldn't help when the alarm rang
in less than 2 hours.

Today, things are different.
I sleep through the night,
usually,
and rarely does an idea cry for release.

Instead, I spend my nights in dreamless slumber
and wake at the alarm
go through my day
and then come home,
sit down,
and summon ideas.

They no longer annoy me into being.
Instead, they are polite and wait to be thought into existence.

You know,
I miss them.

sheol

I would love to tell you that everything is beautiful
Here in Abraham's bosom.

Don't get me wrong--
It is as good as good can be, or as it can be now.

But every day there is the reminder
God is not here.

We are the righteous,
But we are not free.

Every day it is the same.
We are comforted,

and we wait.

We have waited for so long that some of us
have started to wonder
if we will ever
ever
be free.

Not that things are bad here,
They're not.
In fact, they're quite nice.

But hell is just across the chasm,
and we are reminded--
constantly reminded--
that we are as separated from God's love
as they are.

But we wait
and we hope
and we pray…

Wait--who is this man?
He comes in as we did,
Nail scars in his hands,
fresh wounds throughout his body.

He should go to Father Abraham and bow--
What's this?
Father Abraham bows before him!
He takes our father in his arms,
lifts him up,
and promises him freedom.

Freedom?

Who is this man?

Paul

Born into the law,
Son of  a Pharisee
 a Pharisee himself.
Paul knew the law
Forward and back,

Hearing of this Jesus,
He was unimpressed.

How could someone
so lawless
so little inclined to following the rules
be Messiah?

It was inconceivable.
And so he did not consider it.

His disdain,
he felt,
proved accurate.

This man,
this Messiah--
crucified?
Ridiculous!

The Son of God put to death upon a cross?
Inconceivable.

He felt himself justified in his unbelief
and he began zealously persecuting those
who persisted in their foolishness.

Others believed as he did.
They acted upon their beliefs
And he held their cloaks.

He continued blindly in his zealous conceit
Until that day
on the road
to Damascus.

"Saul! Why are you persecuting me?"

A voice so strong, words so deep,
that all around him heard the message meant for him.

"I am Jesus, who you persecute!"

And in a moment of blindness,
All was made clear.

He continued to Damascus
led by the hand
And found himself in the care of Ananias.

Who showed the greater faith--
The blind man, trusting that God would provide
or the faithful man, healing the man
who delighted in persecuting his people?

From that time on,
Saul fed the church he had persecuted,
Both physically
and spiritually.

God chooses those that he chooses.
He uses those that he uses,
and always for his glory--
They come to tell his story.

napowrimo

Hi everyone--
This is National Poetry Month and I am, among other things, a poet, so I am joining the napowrimo challenge.  This month, I will only be writing poetry.  No worries, though.  I always (almost) write poetry, so nothing much will change :)

The Poet

It used to be that the poet sat at a table in a bare room--
preferably somewhere in France--
solitary, poor, and wholly devoted to the MUSE.

Times have changed.
The poet today sits at a computer desk--
wishing she could be in France
(or England, Ireland, Italy or the Tardis)--
at times when she can be solitary.

She is not always poor
Because she finds that she cannot devote herself wholly to the MUSE.

There are mouths to be fed, bills to pay,
and so the poet
writes before work,
or when she goes home
or surreptitiously during breaks.

At least that's what this poet does.

What do we both have in common?
We dream.  We seek. We write.

And sometimes, if the mood strikes,
We rhyme.