oh restless moon
release me
or better still
seed in me
everything I wish
to give
~
Category: VT Poetic
Sign of Spring remembered
I miss the Reading Lady on Williston–that tiny road on the back side of town.
She was my favorite sign of spring.
Appearing there on the porch of her aging Victorian.
Layers shed beneath gingerbread lattice
While the season unfolded into summer.
First a cup of tea and a blanket.
Then a glass of lemonade and a sun hat.
And always a book (and reading glasses.)
Well into autumn.
Right there on the corner as I drove by.
Did she move away or worse–pass away?
I like to imagine her on the coast of Maine.
Overlooking the ocean or perhaps beside a quiet bay.
Waves lapping at the dock
Where she reads
And reads
And reads
While the world
Spins
A bit slower
Around her.
~
more on the gift of a woman’s presence in Vermont:
The Flower Lady
No Virgins
There were 20 minutes when no one was there.
Not on the beach.
Not in the water.
Not across the pond.
I strip down in an instant
and dive into the September waters
without compassion
and daringly continue out
toward our town
center–
the altar of summer.
I lift myself onto the dock
and lie there
under the sun,
one middle-aged breast
deflating to each side.
No virgin offering
to this lasting day of summer.
And before I hear a car door slam
or the crunch of a stick underfoot,
I slip off the dock
and make my way back through the cool water to the shore.
I wrap myself in a towel,
and stand at the water’s edge
to let the sun kiss my face,
in communion with the stillness
of water
of Everything.
Just then, a head appears,
out of the soft ripples I left behind.
It’s the one we’ve watched grow from a chick on his mother’s back
to being left behind by the mating pair to come of age on his own.
The loon and I regard one another,
and then he dives under the water again,
and I sit down with a book.
Russ and Andi appear
in their beach chairs
behind me
in the grass.
And together
we hold the silence
of the eternal moment…
of this summer day
Until we’re startled by a flock of geese
who lift from the banks
and swoop across our view,
and circle the pond
and rise over the mountains
Heading south.
~
The Month of May
May 29
The world conspired to keep me awake. The warm air. The intoxicating sounds. The sky. Especially the sky! First Mars. Then all those constellations whose shapes & names I never bothered to learn. Then something else. A first for the season! So soon? Maybe it was a plane. A falling star. A UFO. I got up three times. After midnight. To be sure.
Fireflies!
~
My guys strut around in the Rockin Rose towels I bought for spring, Makes my feminist heart sing.
May 27
Here’s to black fly bites & ant infestations.
Without which we’d drown in the intoxication of May.
~
I suppose I was 17 and she was not quite 2. We dove under the sea together and the salt water soaked her long lashes and made the gift of her in my arms under the warm sun almost unbearable.
“You have such pretty eyes, Bon Bon,” I said.
After which, she looked at me, just as earnestly, with the sand kissing the fine hairs of my face, and said,
“You have two eyes too, Kel Kel!”
~
One year ago today. Bernie announced his campaign. On the waterfront. In Burlington, Vermont.
May 26
both boys back in the house
~
At 52, I’ve become such a risk taker. In relationship. First with a friend. Then a sister.
Exposing where I’ve been hurt instead of tucking it inside. To fester.
After I share, I listen and respond to the ways I’ve presented a similar challenge. To them.
I am so brave. And vulnerable.
We all are.
~
May 24
after 10 days away, i love re-integrating back home
under the cover
of rain…
May 22
Another day, another graduate!
Cousins
May 21, 2016
Am I pretty?
52, and I still want
to know. Daddy,
do you think so?
May 20
Medicine enters the next generation…
Nephew Corey (my sister Robin’s oldest and the first of our next gen) JUST graduated from Medical School.
Continuing on the path of his father (ER doc), grandfather (Surgeon) & grandmother (Nurse), great-grandfather (Surgeon), great-great grandfather (Physician) & great-great grandmother (Nurse), and his great-great-great grandfather (Health Officer.)
May 19
The island in May. Empty of commerce. Pulsing in preparation. Landscapers. Dune-shapers. Painters. Stockers. Deliverers. A shoulder season like September, but intemperate & gusty with an unwelcome chill. A desire for baring, not covering. Skin. Aching for swimsuits, not sweatshirts. The anxious cheer of Open for Business. Eager staff training & being trained. Busboys seeking anything upon which to apply clean rags. Everyone practicing on pretend customers, like me, before the real ones arrive, in throngs, in season, with the height of the summer sun…
~
Happy 26th Anniversary of our Marriage, Casey
the “backdrop to women’s oppression for centuries”
(I wouldn’t want to live inside this institution with anyone else.)
May 18
Though I was born here, and lived here from time to time throughout my life, it is the returning that I most appreciate. And in this, I have been well received, both by the sea, and by those who have welcomed me and my family over a lifetime. First grandparents, then parents and in-laws, aunts & uncles, siblings, cousins, friends, friends of siblings, parents of friends–each providing spare bedrooms, empty apartments, entire homes–so that I might know, and always remember, that I belong.
May 16
The pre-patriarchal goddess, Hera, returned for a ritual bath to the Spring of Kanathus every year to renew her Virginity–the quality of belonging to herself.
~Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
~
In my bag, I have packed, just about 700 pages
My own
Ready for gentle eyes
May 14
Game Changer?
First a chipmunk beside my chair.
Then a bird nesting above the door.
A fox barking at the boys beside the fire.
A buck grazing near the bath tub while I shower.
A hummingbird too, circling me, and the spray of water, on consecutive mornings.
Cue the yellow butterflies escorting our departures from home, and our returns too.
On the evening walk, a beaver paddles by.
In the morning, an eagle swoops overhead.
In the afternoon a hawk.
A salamander scurries at foot.
A raccoon, straight out of a picture book, joins our picnic, helps himself to compost, stares back at our pointing, our oohs and awes, and the dogs, do nothing, no barks; they don’t even lift their heads.
Has someone changed the rules?
This Vermont Life 