Unraveled and the Birth of Joy

At ninety
the wicked stepmother
returns
bringing with her delusions
fueled on Fox News,
white bread
and mayonnaise
I can see it in her eyes
right before
she turns
unable to manage
her own fork
she attacks me with words
for being younger than her,
serving healthy food,
and for my refusing
to choke
on the color
of my ex-husband’s
new wife’s
brown skin
I hold onto my water bottle
for what else is there
to hold onto
when you want to wash
something other
than color off your skin
like a virus
she’d like to pass on
through generational channels
does she really imagine
peace is made
chewing with mouths open
excusing ourselves
in the Lord
she says it’s not just the skin
don’t you know
it’s their culture
and they should be used
to uncharitable remarks
by now,
anyhow
she adds that his mother
must be rolling over
in her grave
I say perhaps
perhaps that’s true
Mom
because after all
I don’t think racists
get to go to heaven
and I squirt her
with water
just the side of her face
don’t you know
because she tries to fling
her dinner plate
at me
of chicken salad
on baby spinach
with those little, tiny
mandarin oranges
that came in the can
with the pull back ring
but it’s too late
anyway
and it comes flying
at me
across my kitchen table

her own fork
she attacks me with words
for being younger than her,
serving healthy food,
and refusing to choke
on the skin color
of my ex-husband’s
new wife’s
brown skin
I hold onto my water bottle
tightly
for what else is there
to hold onto
and clutch
when  you want to scream
and wash something
other than color
from your skin
like a virus
passed unwittingly
from one generation
to the next
did she really think
we would eat
with our mouths open
our unkindness

be counsel to yourself
and take good measure
of good food
of good words
of sunshine
and rain

be counsel to yourself
and take good measure
of good laughter
of good song
of activity
and repose

none of this
is charity measured
but abundance itself
and sweet gratitude
for the self
and the other

for in the end
we are all the parent
we are all the voice
much like the God
who brought us here

and in the end
we are all the love
much like the joy
and potent wisdom
that keeps the world kind

Reluctant,
he slows down
like a well seasoned Friday
approaching
that event horizon

where time cannot touch us
we sit at the edge and wait
for time to also slow
for on this side
time cannot really stop

by the light of the moon
there’s a shack
or a house, or a hut, or a lake
it’s wherever the lovers meet
in their imagined reality

can they see them? I think not
can they hear them?
I say what for?
come with me, my friend, he says
quietly opening her door

can I think it, like a shore?
an idea written inside of a notebook
can I be it, like a book
an idea written inside of her head?

sweet ghost, you are mine I know
elusive in your transparentness

the universe danced
like a bout of rowdy lovemaking
yet also like a sacred, secret shared
pure
between father and daughter

the universe danced
as if to remind her
of when she danced
besides its still waters
long before the heavens were made

look, I can float the rain
he cried
and she delighted in it
for she was both in it,
and was it

much like the creatures
that played by her side
in that night of gravity upended
to remind her of love’s
incarnation

who am I to be gifted
so sweet
who am I
oh mystery complete
that I would find myself floating

inside the floating rain

she once met a man
who transformed his state

by material means
like a vehicle in wait

oh military,
industrial complex

she again met the man
now he’s transformed his look

not by inner reflection
or that of the book

that predicts his own
tragic destruction

for one can’t protect
a security idol

and one can’t reject
the knowledge one seeks

wisdom is each child
looking out of a window

not the theory 
that men can save millions

the question is not
is he good
is he bad

and the question is not
is she happy
or sad

the question has always been
whom do you trust?

and who would steal I
for material us?

There’s something special about old houses, whether it’s the nooks and crannies hidden beneath the stairs, the familiar sound of one’s tread on the floor, or a gigantic, flowering lilac bush, encroaching upon a porch with a swing where you sit in the summer time, drinking iced tea from a tumbler.

But the first old house I lived in was in West Point, NY, when I was a little girl, and my fondest memories of it are in winter.

Often I’d be curled up with a favorite book (I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia so many times, the books to my set cracked apart into separate chunks) and looking out the giant expanse of windows in the “sun” room, praying for snow.

Yes, I loved snow, and I prayed for it, because we lived in a valley often neglected for the peaks of the mountains in which it sat, peaks frequently graced and made resplendent in white.

But sometimes God complied with a little girl’s wish, and granted not just the black mountain bear or fox but me as well, some snow in which to play.

I haven’t thought of that old house as much, or been reminded of it as much as I have been since I’ve moved into my own little cottage, which is over a hundred years old.

Yes, it will be the oddest thing, not just the colonial structure of the current home, which reminds me of the one in my childhood, but the heaviness of a door, or the unusual twist in a cellar passage way. And it won’t be so much the public history, but the remembered, intuited, or imagined stories, that will kind of belong to a place, which has become a sacred sanctuary – set apart from the rest of the world.

So the other day at the cottage, after a snow storm in the present, I was walking my dogs, and the way the snow had accumulated upon the large evergreen bushes running alongside the house, had created a fluffy, white stretch of roof top (with meandering open spaces and tunnels beneath) which the dogs wanted to explore. This gave me a familiar, excited feeling, as if I was a child again.

It’s always the simplest things – the beauty of nature, the noticed patterns and symbolism that take me back home, or make me realize, with a spirit of gratitude, that I am home.

Suddenly I recalled playing with a childhood friend that I may not have remembered much, or even ever again, if not for this sudden rush of nostalgia, and the reminder of snow tunnels beneath shrubbery, having explored similar ones with this playmate, outside that old house I used to call home at West Point, NY.

Those were days of great joy, and I don’t recall wondering once, if my all-providing father fretted over the inevitable problems that must have been associated with older homes, of which this military housing consisted.

Back then, I didn’t see the elongated windows of the sunroom through which I manifested snow as “drafty”, and outside I didn’t see overgrown shrubbery, needing to be cut down come spring,  to regimented standard.

I just saw marvelous long, drippy icicles, bedecking windows and rooflines like garland, and mysterious igloo-type tunnels in which I could hide, beneath gnarled, ancient shrubbery so old – it created a sense of mystery. I saw outside-rooms created out of nature in which we could play house, or secret passage way, or create a story of our own making to which mother nature had already provided the fodder.

Who notices the most important things, adults or children, I wonder?

And when we find ourselves noticing odd or shall I say – pausing for beautifully mysterious things – in adulthood, or noticing how the present can be like a teaching echo of the past, is it then that we have really come of age, and read the patterns of our life correctly?

For I do not think it just coincidence that in a time when I am more healed or at peace, having given my own need for home and sanctuary precedence, that I recall a time in my childhood in which I had a father who took care of draft and danger, leaving me free to explore and create, while never leaving the perimeters of a safe haven.

For is God not a God who does just the same, as my father did then?

And is this world not just like a very old house?

Designed to make us recall, our even more permanent, and infinitely magical, home in heaven?