#Poemaday 5: Web

 @budtheteacher provided a prompt today that I immediately knew would cause me to write about my grandma.  I just didn't know it would come out like this.  Honestly :)


Web

Let me tell you a secret.

I lied.

That night when you asked me what was wrong.
I was in a strange bed in a strange state.
It was dark downstairs
because you had closed the door at the bottom.

Still awake? you asked.
Nightmares, I lied.

Dad was on the road,
headed back to L.A. for Mom and the rest of our things.
Now I wonder how we could have had enough
in those thin times for more than one trip.

Then TV won't be good for you.
And you closed the door again.

I wasn't having bad dreams,
just wanted to be close to someone who sort of
felt like my mom
and loved me like only grandmas do.

I lied and lost my moment.
Don't think I ever got it back.

If I had a park bench that let me have you back,

I would sit for days and listen,
even if you didn't speak,
I would listen to you.

For days on that park bench,
I would tell the truth.

Let me tell you a secret.
I lied.

Grandmas

I lost my grandma before I had my first son. As I have relied on my mom and seen her be a grandma to my kids, it has made me wish I could see my grandma again because I finally understand what she did that was so wonderful. I know my mom is the grandmother she is because of her own mom.

My mom is the grandma who will do whatever she can, not only for her grandkids, but for me. She is the kind of grandma who didn't have me cancel plans to get away for a night with my husband even though the boys have had the flu (third one came down with it this morning!). Instead, she took them, all three crazy boys, and sent me off to Disneyland.

She knows the boys need the time with her. She knows I need time with my husband. And I hope she knows how much we all appreciate her. And I hope she knows that she not only helped me be the mom I am, she is already influencing the grandma I someday hope to be.

Poetry Month!

For National Poetry Month, I am celebrating in a number of ways.  Daily, I am posting a short poem or line from a poem on my classroom whiteboard, posting a poem on my class website, and reading a poem (some of which I have written) to my AP Literature classes.  I decided it might be nice to share some of my poems with you as we go through the month -- maybe not every day, but with some consistency :)

Here are the ones I read today and yesterday to my classes:

Bitter Winds
My father lies on the floor
     beside the sliding glass door, open,
     listening to the Santa Ana’s.
Almost 300 pounds, his heaviness looks odd on its side.
Getting up will take work, but
he cannot help himself.

He has never explained what it is,
what the witch’s wind says to seduce him to her side,
but – without fail –
her howl lullabies him.

I have heard tales, how the friction of her swirling winds
brings the devil out of people,
causes sleepless nights and high anxiety,
coerces some to commit crimes they would never consider
in the calm.

These winds that turn chaparral into fuel for fire
quench something in him.

Maybe it is her whisper
     blades of cut late summer grass
     brushed with her breath
which deepens to a mother’s moan
he thought lived only in his stomach.

Maybe her song is his,
as David’s lamentings are our own,
timeless cries giving voice to our shame,
giving voice to our need
for a home in God’s heart.

When my father lies on the floor
and listens to the wind,
I tease him for his adolescent devotion
          a boy lost in daydream of a girl
          who does not know his name.

But, what I wish I would do
is lay down next to him
     my own heaviness on the floor
so that I might finally hear
my father’s song.

On a Grandmother's Passing
English teapots and ruby rings
peridot bracelets
a cameo pin
Barbie dolls and black shoes

closets and cabinets cluttered
with what Grandma did not have time
to give away

Now the children
and their children
and their children
sift
through the things she had collected
the things she left behind
hoping to heal themselves with objects
just as she had tried to do
all those years.

But the Virgin statue on my mantle
and the bracelet around my wrist
really remind me nothing of
my grandmother,
a round woman worn thin as apron strings,
fragile like a hollow Christmas tree ornament,
but packaged ina a thick skin and snapping tongue.

She pranced, danced around her kitchen,
skin dewy from the heat,
eyes flickeringwith the flame of the gas stove,
eyes flickering with worry and want.

She was a woman
who wanted to be Scarlet O'Hara
or someone, at least.
Instead, she was
Evangelina turned Vangie
turned Susan,
turned Eve,
wife and mother,
grandma and great-ma,
enough for us,
too little for herself.