I sit curled on my chaise writing,
engrossed in the parsing of words, punctuation, rhythms
when the snoring dog at my feet
starts to thump his tail
and I am pulled back into the physical world
where the clamor of his dreams
and the warmth of his rump on my toetops
reminds me I am happy
Earhart, named for Amelia because you seemed fearless at first, ignoring the sonic booms from fighter jets overhead.
I called you Earhart, Sweetheart, Sweetie, Sweetie Pie. When you went you left a hole in my heart that will never be filled. I kept your collar, your tags, hung them on the wall with your picture, just one of the shrines that recall you to us.
I couldn’t replace you, so didn’t try. But the emptiness needed filling, so we brought home Rolo—to have and to love, but only to hide the shape of the hole, never to expand and fill the whole. I knew my need for you would still leak through at the edges. I wasn’t wrong.
But love is magical and infinite, always grows, always expands. Rolo built a new space in my heart, next to the leaky hole I couldn’t and wouldn’t fill. Continue reading
Yesterday’s summer haiku challenge from NPR has sent me toodling down memory lane. Three haiku apparently weren’t enough, so I keep flashing back to new memories of summers long gone.
Blink, and I’m looking at the two-acre plot at the back edge of our rural property where my mom made her vegetable garden. Rows and rows of corn and beans, potatoes, onions, radishes, tomatoes, peas, blueberries and blackberries, zucchini that grew to the size of Whiffle ball bats…more than I can remember. I see my mother crouching between rows, weeding and harvesting, filling up bushel baskets with each day’s plenty. Continue reading
Poet Kwame Alexander issued a call this morning on National Public Radio for haiku inspired by summer memories, but without using the word summer. As Alexander was finishing up his segment on NPR’s Morning Edition, I was just pulling into the parking lot of my office building, and the opening line “Watermelon drips” popped into my brain. I forgot it for the duration of my (11 1/2-hour) workday, but after coming home I opened my notepad and started playing.
Here are my three offerings. Continue reading
Driving home from work tonight I heard the word “copse” in the audiobook that’s currently keeping me company in the car, and my mind set off on a path of word association that took me deep into my childhood.
I grew up in the rural Midwest, roaming 300+ acres of pastureland owned by my family and my best friend’s family. “Copse” immediately took me back to the wooded alcove set between two hills in my grandmother’s pasture, near the creek that ran in summer and froze in winter, a place where I played and rested and read, both alone and with my sister and friends, for hours and hours on end. Continue reading
We hesitate, glance over our shoulders,
hear whispers from our past,
and murmur, “Mother,” “Father” to ghosts long gone.