THE MEMORY OF STUFF

A brown tweed dress from Saks I saved months to buy.

A telephone operator toy set I begged my parents to get me for Christmas.

A note from my mom when I still lived at home with instructions on staying at the house alone while she worked.

A box of special Christmas cookies I made and sold for $5 back in 1961.

A rented Vespa in Italy, ******* my *** as we headed to Sorrento from Pisa.

A sailors hat worn when I was ten, one summer at the lake, when I rowed a boy around.



Do they have my feelings of fondness and become something more?

Do they wait to be used?

Do they remember longingly our relationships?

Are they happy to be remembered?

Do they sit waiting for one more jaunt into the world?

When we die, do they weep silently for us?

My Sister Gay - December 6, 1959

She was the older
Always the best
I was the second
And always less

She didn’t want me
But I dragged along,
Trying to protect her
as my special one.

I made due with second
As she won every game
But I tagged along
Hoping to do the same.

At 16 she shouted and cried each day
And I left the house to avoid the display
I shuffled the leaves in the cold windy fall
And wished she would go away, any way at all.

At 17 she grew wilder and I watched her dissolve
Wondering what puzzle she brought, wanting it solved
Then on a cold December day she did go,
Leaving me shivering in the holiday snow.

Sixty years passed, I’ve been brave and daring
And now after all, I find my lost caring,
Forgiving myself for wanting her gone
Yet thanking her for years of silent urging me on.

Is leaving our friend?
Is loss our perpetual neighbor who drops by too often?

What is this strange world we all inhabit, our only home, our mysterious mother?

Living in a glass box looking out at the huge thing called all of it,
moving through each day mesmerized by the merest of daily events, hoping for the best, refusing to see the sign saying ‘the road ends here.’

What can we make of this vivid,
inimitable, unpredictable universe we leapt into?
What is our job here?

Are we to make friends with every loss along with every awe filled moment of shattering beauty?

Why not say we each are walking a road home, to a God we chose or into a distant light of the unknown?

I came for the skies of illusions with mirrors
I stayed for days of laughter and tears
I left with the lights of a great unknown
I leave for a place we are all at home

I’m a person who writes poems when someone dies
Who gets up every morning at dawn to see the skies,
who paints a watercolor every night,
And over politics will pick a fight.

Who is the pale person who looks out at me?
who walks like my mother and rarely  shows glee?

Who trips on the steps and cracks in the road
As though the years are a heavy load?

Who avoids mountain passes that give me a fright,
And is often afraid to go out in the night?

That’s not me
That’s not me
That’s not me

I pull a trailer across ten states,
And sit alone under stars til late.

I donate monthly for a wild horse
And in hitting a squirrel, go through days of remorse.

I pick up old people in the freezing cold
Whenever I spot them stumbling down the road.

How to include the different views
Is an enigma and leaves me without a clue

But it’s not a problem if we know it to be
That our lives have the meanings we make for free.

I am not afraid
I am fearless

I am not flawed
I am whole

I am not sick
I am well

I am not uncomfortable
I am comfort -- and the world is mine

Thousands of years of humankind
Have led us to this place.
Alone and unprotected,
We shiver out in space

I yearn to go to the desert
With arms that keep us safe.
A world for all the children
With smiles upon each face.