Category Archives: poetry

a poem I didn’t write but wish I had

Posted on by
Reply

Lesson In A Language I Can’t Speak Yet
by Rita Gabis, from The Wild Field;Alice James Books, 1994

The jellyfish lies naked on the sand,
a circle I can see through to the bright harvest
of stones. On one side of it is white foam,
on the other black seagrass.
A gold line of sunlight circles the bay.
I don’t know how the life of a jellyfish begins,
I don’t know where its sex is,
or why the circle is its shape among
all the shapes in the world. The flesh-colored
armor of crabs dries on wet sand.
The snail retreats when I touch it.
The footprints I leave here are full of the vanished
weight of the body.
The heart of the jellyfish is clear,
I was born deaf to the sounds it makes, its cells that shine
next to the rough arms of the starfish,
the starfish that can regenerate
its severed limbs. I have entered
another country, where lost parts of myself re-form;
hatred from the same salty center as love,
desire that had been torn from me.
I have to be open to powers
I know nothing about.
Identity in small things,
the jellyfish that smells like the sea,
the sea that touches all corners of the earth at once,
holes in the sand where mussels breathe.

writngs from a workshop

Posted on by
Reply

Having strayed so far from my poetic roots, I am taking a brief writing workshop based on the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. Blogging has given me plenty of practice with the first person essay; but it’s poetry where my heart is. I need some help getting my brain to follow.

The writing “prompt” for the exercise was the word “breathe.”

She does not swim –
afraid to breathe against
the weight of water, afraid
of those breathless wet depths.

But she goes to a sweat lodge
where steamy smoke rises —
thick breath steadily blinding
a clear winter sky.

She lets herself be led into the wet
dark already slick with steam
and sweat, cool water hissing,
smoking stones.

Thoughtless with dread
she stumbles out into the cold,
blinded by water and smoke
and a clutch of fear that sends
breath into memory:

— a child’s cry for breath stunted by fever
lungs rattling beneath a tent of steam
thick as smoke, heavy as a depth of sea.

Well, its a start.

toe dipping

Posted on by
1

I finally have begun dipping a couple of toes into the waters of life — at least the waters that are not to deep, since I can’t swim.

I have sent poems in to two contests being held by regional poetry reviews. They are old poems, but they might be good enough.

I have enrolled in a four-week poetry workshop based on the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. It’s a start.

I took my first water aerobics class today — just the thing for elder women, and there are a bunch of us. My plan is to go twice a week.

It’s a start — at loosening up my social skills, my once writing talent, and my tight back muscles.

It’s just too easy to just hang around here and be entertained by my 7 year old grandson. Here’s what I mean.

I need to create the life I want to have at 70 (which is only 7 months away). It’s a start. And it’s about time.

as above, so below

Posted on by
2

Early in my marriage, I tried to grow some house plants and they all died. My once-husband used to say that I could kill plastic plants.

I grew up in a city-space house devoid of greenery. What did I know.

Later, when my own nuclear family moved into a house on a rural hillside, I started a garden. About the same time, I joined a writers workshop. Things started to grow, inside and out.

Today, the jade plant I’ve been nurturing for years is on its last leggy legs. Even the ivy in the hanging planter is drying up. My garden outdoors is wilting. This blog hasn’t been faring much better.

And so I’m on a quest for a Fall writer’s workshop. I need to get that green thumb moving, need some seeds, fertilizer. Need to stir that dirt, above and below.

there’s a dinosaur in our back yard!

Posted on by
Reply

dinosaur

My daughter is getting ready for my grandson’s “Jurassic Park Birthday Party” scheduled for next week, when he will turn an enthusiastic 7. The dinosaur that she built behind the fence will remain there long after the party is over because my grandson loves it, and we all think it adds a certain sense of adventure to our back yard. — which already is a haven for all kinds of creatures anyway.

The little plywood play boat that my daughter built last year has deteriorated into the perfect home for a couple of friendly garden snakes. A shy newt makes an occasional appearance among the foliage near the fire pit, and our weird resident bunny keeps the clover crop in check. The ever-fatter ground hog periodically lumbers out from his home under the shed to nibble on what the bunny has left behind, and the chatty family of cardinals joins the flickers and finches each morning to make short work of the bird feeders’ seeds.

So why not a dinosaur!

last night, last life

Posted on by
1

Last night, as I sifted through some of my earlier poetry, I remembered just how therapeutic writing it was at the time. I was so young, unprepared for the realities of husband and child/children. And I married someone as unprepared as I. He dealt with it all through multi-media productions of his original scripts. I would sit in the audience and watch the characters he created speak to our relationship more poignantly than his face-to-face words ever did.

I’m not sure I ever showed him the poems I wrote as I slowly felt my own self lost in the wake of his magnificent obsession. I’m sure there were many young women like me. Some went mad. Some got mad.

I am no Sylvia Plath. These are not great poems. But they were, and are, an essential part of my story.

Patterns (1967)

I await the unexpected,
the unsought.
My life is a contradiction.

When the goal is set,
when conscious action
strips away the dream,
I turn off.

Because I am
(why?)
a patterned person,
I am surrounded, bound, bonded.

I don’t need any more directions to go
or any more goals to touch.

I wish I were the wind.

***

Nonessence (1973)

Change is what I
wear at the edge
(where I have the best perspective)
waiting for familiar whims
to coax me into shape
and coast me down
the deepening dayslide.

Essentially, I am
not.

Medusa, I
am stoned on my own reflection.
Words curl straight
from the hurt in my head
forming questions,
marked and mumbled
under a heavy heartless hum.

Pan (Peter), I
cling to the rings
of endless adolescence,
hanging tight
as the merry goes round

Zelda, I
run screaming
toward the dark and gathered things
that claw at the threshold
of darkest dreams
and dive naked and dancing
into the fountained pool
behind my eyes.

not yet spring (1999)

Posted on by
1
All kitchens should have windows
double wide and Windexed clear —
if not into sunny vistas,
at least into frames of sky
beyond a stand of trees marked
by clumps of day lilies,
maybe a lilac bush
or two —

certainly a bird feeder
filled with lilting movement,
and a wide indoor sill
where green seeds sprout
even when winter still
shrouds the view.

copyright Elaine Frankonis

Maxine sums it up

Posted on by
2

maxine1

My grandson helped his mom make a delicious carrot cake for my birthday.

Got lots of birthday wishes from friends and relatives.

My new printer was delivered today; my old one finally died.

It’s raining and I’m expecting another kind of storm.

As birthdays go, it wasn’t bad.

I wonder how I’ll feel next year when I’m 70.

maxine22

a black cat almost

Posted on by
1

A black cat almost crossed my path yesterday as I walked along almost spring streets.

It saw me coming, took a left, trotting a path ahead and parallel to mine, looking back to see if I were still there, moving forward.

With a last look back, it skittered under a car and watched me pass.

I wrote the following a decade ago while on a weekend writing retreat.

Walking the Stone Labyrinth

Sometimes life
like a labyrinth,
leads you where you have to go.

You think you make choices–
this man or that,
some child or not.

You set your alarm,
choose your shoes,
gather friends for tea,
count your changes.

Until one day a corner comes,
slipping you a glimpse
of those strings of stones
shaping your shadows edge.

And sometimes, perhaps,
on a perfect day,
under a perfect sky,
a perfect black cat
with eyes like glowing stones
races across your path
and waits in the early ferns
for you to cross hers.