For the Weekend Wordsmith, Champagne
Champagne For One
April 24, 2009
Do you remember
standing alone while all around
each welcomed each
to a new year with a kiss.
The champagne bubbling cheerfully
as you left it on the table
and quietly left.
Sunlight
March 14, 2009
A sudden burst of sunlight across the ice.
A dozen skaters radiate
out from their instructor, bright yellow
paper clutched in their frozen fingers.
You know that guy you see at the same table every time you go into that coffee shop. Yeah, that guy. You know the one. Do you ache to know what his story is? I do. And it's been almost ten years now. Always at the same table, with the newspaper. Always a little brusque, but courteous. And he always had a smile for my little girl.
Nodding Acquaintances
March 5, 2009
We nod at one another from across the room,
never-quite, almost, not-any-more acquaintances.
I think I know your name, but I'm not sure.
And you used to know my daughter's name.
Hardly a first-name basis, but close
enough for a Saturday morning coffee,
shared at separate tables, once a week
like clockwork.
The other regulars weren't there this morning,
and you did your crossword alone,
no one to argue politics with you today,
the sun full in your eyes at your regular table.
And I'm no longer a regular.
Too many sad memories to be augured
from the dregs of a double-mocha cappuccino.
Neither one of us quite got the world
we wished for. Our ideals sounded good,
but like that slice of Magnificent Seven ...
well, chocolate cake for breakfast
is never quite as good as it sounds in your head.
This week, I had to give my kids hard news. And then, just as they were reeling from that blow, I had to give my daughter more hard news.
Kids are inscrutable to me. I can't tell what's going on in behind their stoic expressions, or even behind their tears. When they say that everything's fine, does it mean that everything's fine, or that they don't have words for their feelings - feelings that, even at 37, I don't have words for. What can I offer but a safe place for them to feel what they feel? I have no answers to the hard questions they ask, and what few answers I might have, I can't always give.
We have handed our kids a hard life, and so every new thing that they encounter that hurts them makes us all the more aware of what a hard life we've handed them.
A few weeks ago, I took a photo of my son's torn pants, and it was the prompt on Weekend Wordsmith last week. It came together in the rambling words below. It's not great poetry. It's barely poetry at all - just prose with line breaks. But it's how I process thought and emotion.
Torn
March 3, 3009
I wish, like a million before me,
that I could mend for you
what I have ripped, stitch up
the frayed edges, put back together
the loose ends I have untied,
and those around me
that I had no part in tearing.
My needle is dulled,
my thread snapped,
my hands occupied in mending
my own tattered rags.
If I could put them aside
and repair this one rent
you know I would.
I see in your eyes that you know
I would.
Maybe that's enough.
It has to be.
Still, I look for that skein
with which we might patch
this wound.
Dialect
(Belatedly for Read Write.)
We have our own dialect
with words that mean other words,
phrases that mean paragraphs,
glances that mean
whole conversations.
A stranger would no doubt
feel lost in a foreign land,
while we play the curmudgeonly old couple
insisting on mumbling in the patois,
our guests listening in mute confusion.
