watercolor flowers & other pretty fading things

17. i am here, i am not leaving 4.29.24

i am not your fair-weather-friend; I am your hurricane-across-the-sea,
tornado-touching-down, everything's-on-fire-friend,
i am not going to leave, just because of a little water;
i am not made of tissue paper or flower petals, let me be your umbrella;
and i will hold the rain inside my palms, until the sun comes out -
i will let the doves build nests in my hair if it makes you smile;
i will weave my bones into a raft, until the tide is low enough to walk
i will let the storm brew into my chest as long as it takes
for the clouds to break, and the sun to shine again;
i will be here if you want to wait out the storm with me.

Spoiler

This is a little play on the phrase "fair weather friend" ... which I've been thinking about lately...

Lim & herb - thank you both so so much for the encouragement! Will write a longer comment for both of you soon!

18. goodbye april

my coping with napo not going exactly the way I wanted to this month poem :]
'this is okay too.'

Spoiler

PLAIN TEXT VERSION:

april has been telling you, 'this is okay too.'
while you worry about even garden-rows,
and rain-soaked hair, she has been planting
day-dreams and planning trips on sail-boats
this summer, excited to be alive, excited
that the sun is bright, excited that the days
are long enough to laugh, and short enough to miss,
that life is fast and slow and loud and quiet all at once
'we aren't going for perfect here, dear.'
she whispers when she notices you looking
disapprovingly once more at the out-of-tune sparrows,
and mis-matched wildflower fields;
and just as you open your mouth to disagree
with her levity you mistake for carelessness,
the sun sets, and she's gone again.

april makes you hold on to every unfinished edge
of spring and summer, because you never know
when seasons change, and maybe that's
what's so beautiful about it all.

19. flight patterns

i once caught a bird in my hand all at once
midflight she collided into my palm, and just as surprised as I was
she stared at me - unblinking black seed of an eye, seeming to ask
through accusing expression, 'how do you dare
interrupt the traverse of heaven's angels? - do you think
you are God, with your reaching arms, and heavy feet? - do you
pretend to know the way to the sun?' and just as suddenly
as i held her in my hand... i let her go, horrified
and dumb-struck, and nauseous at my gross-intrusion
into the feathered realm of the divine,
once my hand un-curled, she did not immediately leave -
almost as if to remind me, that she had never been truly bound
but only temporarily delayed - as she lept into the sky,
wings straining in half-ballet, half-
trapeze, half-faith, and half-bluff,
i felt the irresistible urge to join her,
to reach the clouds - then sky - then
if God would permit... i yearned to dare
to brush my fingers across the sun,
and if not for sheer-fear of drowning
i would of jumped into the sky then and there
and learned exactly how the sun feels -
but for now i am afraid - and so i just settle
for arm-stretches, and bird-calling,
and leaping towards the sun,
at least when no one's watching.

20. i want you to know there was more poetry this month than was written on the page

my dad said on the phone yesterday, 'you're the happiest
you've been in a long time.' and for the first time
in years, i realized, i'm not really heart-broken anymore.

22. garden of eden; 'this woman you gave me.'





TEXT: GARDEN OF EDEN

in / the / myth of / man (,)
who is / sacred (?)

23. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field

is it any surprise that after letting adam's sons
give the sole-account of the day in the garden
for four thousand years, that eventually
eve's daughters too, blamed themselves
for man's appetite, and satan's trick,
for the low-cut shirt, and the distracted boy,
'the woman you gave me,' ... 'she's done it again'
'and again' 'and again' 'and again'

24. preservation (2)

in 1964 my grandmother took a flower from her garden
and wedged it between two glass window panes
hoping to keep something pretty close-by for the winter
and to remind her that summer's coming soon -

for sixty years, those flowers have been keeping
a breath of sunshine, for the day when summer returns.

25. this is your inheritance; do not dare leave this world with field-rocks in your pockets, plant your heart in every field, until the whole earth is bound in the roots of your veins, and when they steal that - we will steal the sky.

1. the only remaining-record for my great great grandmother's life is a short court document that states; 'the land stolen will never be her own' - life is not in the practice of giving back what it takes, and land has a way of becoming blood, and human flesh has a way of dying before we learn these things or realize we can fly. it is enough for me to know she tried, i will not tie her feathers to bitterness, i will not try to steal away soil in my shoes, or my hands, or my pockets, i will plant my garden in her honor and whisper to every straining tomato plant and geranium flower, 'this too is yours.'

2. the land killed my great grandfather before he was old enough to be old; though his skin was already weathered down in grooves of worry-lines, dynamite powder, and coal dust; and i always wonder if they were able to clean his fingernails before they buried him for the last time. if i saw him somewhere today, i would take out my nail-file and a bar of soap and a basin of well-water, and i would wash his hands until the grooves ran smooth. i would show him pictures of his son's and grandson's wrinkled faces, i would tell him they lived. i think of him when the soil clings to my own hands, and i promise him i will not track in soil in my home, even when nostalgia threatens to bury me too.

3. my grandfather farmed his whole life, with his whole life. one sun-baked plot of land split clean to seven brothers. some years the harvest was good, some years the seeds became rocks and gravel, and his daughters wandered the field harvesting stones. in the end it wasn't the sun that overturned the land inside out, it was the flood-waters. i never take rain for granted because of him. every drop in my cup, every river-bed, every sweat-soaked brow, i hear him saying 'the rain's coming strong tonight' - and i nod and believe i too am a prophet, and i warn my unborn children to not keep the field-stones in their pockets, in case the flood comes, in case the ground breaks, in case the land is stolen away - we will be light on our feet, when it is time to leave this earth, we will fly.

26. most poems are lived...

fatherfig wrote:not all poems are written alliyah most are lived

cw: drowning

i once spent three hours,
sitting quietly beside a creek,
and considered drowning;
not (seriously), only (gently), only (half-dreamt), only (wondering-
in a question not quite fully formed -
what the bottom of the creek-bed looks like
from the other side of the water);
but then the thought passed,
and the river trickled on,
as it tends to do, as it (always) does,
as the birds sang, and the wildflowers waved,
as the breeze met my face and told me
(gently, half-dreamt, wondering) "you're not
so good at swimming dear - i advise you to sing
instead" and i listened; if only to appease this
woman who sounded so much like my mother;
if only to appease the small part of me
that believes i am always watched by grandmothers-
stretching across generations, shaking their heads
at my silly thoughts, and humming hymns, and pinching cheeks,
and if only to appease the God I know is coaxing the breeze
as She speaks, as a fishing line to keep me up
until life becomes poetry and poetry becomes lived.

Spoiler

author note: Please know this is not meant to take suicidal ideation lightly in any way, I hope it doesn't come across that way - only a little reflection on how sometimes in the moment of our darkest moments, we are forced to hold on to something very thin for a little hope, which ends up being a life-line; and maybe in hindsight is not so thin after-all. To me, poetry is a life-line, memory is, promises are, faith and prayer too. I am very well now; but this is just about thinking through past moments when things weren't so well. If you are not doing well and need someone to talk to - please consider reaching out to the national hotline. here.

27. if poems are lived, then he is poetry

my heart is stitched
in an array of frayed seams
that i optimistically say
have made me wiser
though the footnotes
will say, "reader, by wiser
she means only that she is
less likely to trust"
but he is strong-chord
and woven-rope;
he is fish-net,
and reaching vines,
that are holding me
and holding me together,
and for some reason
i believe every word he says
like this is steady stone
my home is built on,
like this is the creek
under my water-well,
like this is the promise
that the shore always
wishes to the sand,
saying, "i will be back,
and don't you see,
yes, I am already here"
like he is the answered
refrain to all the poetry
i did not dare write down
for fear of disappointment
like for the first time
everything in the world
is finally altogether whole.

28. time is as achingly patient as it is cruel,
and that is the horrible beautiful truth

every year i count back my stitches
like they are a sand-timer turned upside down
telling me how long it takes to heal
and hoping by now enough time has passed
for enough grains of sand to have fallen,
for the shore to swallow up the ocean.

29. i wrote these all in june, because april is no longer a month, but a state of the heart, a feathered wing caught in the air, and the exhale as we breathe together one more time

when we're not here
anymore
sometimes i wonder
where the poetry
will go; or
if like a dormant seed
it never dies only
sleeps, and waits,
and resurrects one day
when the clouds shift
and the sun turns
and the flower
emerges - brave
and beautifully alive
from the ground.

30. and this is the end; where the sun sets; where the flower fades; where somewhere on the severed edge of your fingernails and the space in the crease of your hands you know that there is something, in all of this that must be eternal

i like to write poetry backwards sometimes
pretending the direction of the sun has changed
i fly; from the sun into a hollow nest
my father's hands have made - and i tell him
why i left - "the sun was too bright;
and don't we belong to the stars?"
he forgives me for singing out of key
and i forgive him for making me believe
he had drowned or burned alive -
and we watch the sun turn
and the forest become ash
we watch as the world settles
until the seedlings emerge- new from the ground

my grandfather once told me that
you can only understand the truth
if you hear it from every side;
and so i turn his words in reverse
and assume he has always lied.

he once told me that the birds
are the only ones who have touched the sun
and lived to tell about it; but
that the only ones who would believe them
are the trees; because they were there
when the sun was born.

every once in a while, a seedling of truth
emerges - new from the ground, settles in;
and from the ash, a forest of understanding grows
the confession of all those no longer alive to lie -
i once held it against myself that i was so quick to believe
but is it my fault that the stories sounded like melodies?
and if we don't belong to the stars after all,
why, in the world, do we long for the sun so much?
i used to blame myself for that dark place in the sky
where the moon shines, and the sun disappears,
but now i trust every hollowed place
may be a bird nest in disguise
and maybe what he said about birds
is true after-all, from the other side.