There to Fly
Spiral staircase to the lofted barn,
Mother retelling a yarn tale,
Sailing in a room with stabled bunk beds and swings.
Things hanging off the walls,
two small girls swinging from the high ceiling,
the peeling back of reality over a sea of imaginings.
Singing in the rain that stained the glass,
The passing of an afternoon too soon over.
Wet muted good byes, heavy sighs in mud puddles home.
The roaming sensation facing the dinner bell,
well it was a little bit of an escape.
To traipse up the curving stairs there,
down the wooden hall, to the room where those black bottomed swings
flew us out of the house, over the field,
high above the wanting to yield for anything,
bringing us closer than we ever knew to a bird sighted in flight.
Delights born in the early morn meetings,
sweet retreats that blend into two smiles
filed away forty years nearly.
Clearly April is turning into May,
and the way I am stretching my mind back to the beginnings,
the singing traits of long haired tweens
between a longed for scene once more, is for me to explore.
I go to comb my hair, brush out the snarls, the tangles, the angles of old age.
Clear a page to be nearer to the mirror of that moment spent soaring
Through imagined skies where truly we were there to fly.
Sculpting
I sculpted against her soft pale skin like the dough she kneaded in the tiny kitchen back then. Her arms were wrinkled patterns that pushed themselves into memorable designs of childhood. Could she see little me there, aware that she was the whole entirety of my universe in those quiet hours spent in her company?
There was a tree with three trunks that reached for the sky and there were four of us. Three older ones leaned their bodies against the bark while the youngest curled himself in the middle between tired Nikes and untied laces, licking the last bits of a creemee that came with the outdoors. And I wanted more.
More of Grandma and mom rocking in the redwood swing that Uncle made. Wanted the day to last longer than a sunsetting in the west and the kids fighting over the front seat on the way home. I wanted to roam the back yard of this suburban dream, where it seems the children of the land didn’t understand that we wanted to be a part of this scene. They were mean too. We hurled pine cones back and forth over the fenced in yard. It was hard to be hit with the cone,
The tone of the day turning when the others hurled their anger over our happy little bliss.
And I miss those thrills too. The girl with the curly hair spiking an evergreen missile at me still missing her mark. Sparks of a feud no one could attempt to guess why. Today I try.
Now the place is left with grass over a foundation, a stump of that magnificent tree that contained my whole life once, and a paved drive that others use for the adjacent store. And I guess I still want more.
I travel back in my mind to find myself sculpted again against my Grandma’s soft ways. Days with listening to her pot belly gurgle a song to only me. Her fingers brushing through my hair. The freeing way I pushed, I wiggled, I giggled into her. I remember her navy dress,
The mess of age marks on her hands I now understand as children come to me out by my fire a few streets down.
They come with the energy of pink hair and a loving stare. We curl beside a fire no longer retiring at sunset. We met the moon in the firelight, the children dancing, one attempting to build a tepee and I see little me beside their ways.
I stay by the crackle, the spitting flames, names of ones who have gone on my mind. Isabelle. Jean. Lori. Rob. Jimmy. Cecile. Linda. Theresa. Alice. Leon. Zen. Then there will still be more. I open the door to my memories to see these faces, these graces that I encountered while here.
I watch the children cartwheel, feel the moment they are in. Will one of them write forty years from this moment spent under the stars? Will they want to haunt their memory to see me in this moment spent loving them?
I understand the pattern, the yearning for the past. At last I stand, imagine the feel of a cartwheel, steal glances at the youth, the truth that I had my turn. I’ve earned each age mark, each spark in my eye of a blessing I met. I learn to linger now in this moment spent beneath a hundred suns done up in the night dazzle. The smoke drifts up and I lift myself into the hands of the children with pink streaks in their hair.
I am where I am supposed to be. Marshmallow fluff and enough. I fill myself on the bounty I see. Isabelle would perhaps find me well too. She knew me as I know these two here by the fire. And all that I desire is for them to sculpt themselves against my ways, my soft wrinkled skin holding them into the memories being made.
The Dance
We met through the whispers of conversations,
the fascinations of finding through the silent pauses.
Our fingers laced, then traced each other’s lines,
the fine language of believing
we were meant for this moment spent receiving
signs without speech. I reached out and tickled your arm
in a charming sense while you trailed your breath up to my neck.
I expected you to linger but we were pulled apart
and my heart broke with the snapping out of my daydreaming,
seeming to push flat against the wall.
I don’t know what happened at all
but a small voice moistened my ear
and then it was so clear that we were once again near to the other.
The surge of the crowd pulled us away
but you stayed like a lifeguard,
a hard wall pushing back and back
until the waving attack of people ebbed.
We met in the web of unhurried trappings,
stuck in the wrappings of one another beside the gym wall.
I held your hand again then
when the others were gone to the dance floor.
I wanted more. I wanted to explore
this the heartbeating, the repeating inside in a wild pulsation.
Conversation drifted as you first lifted
your own voice to mine.
We found the time, a connection
that brought us crushed together,
the storming surf pushed us to the middle of the floor.
Slow music began for a girl and boy
wishing woman and man
Holding, folding into each one,
hands done in the softness of the shallows
that pushed against our feet.
An island, two that stand, and a sweet retreat up a stairway
and all I thought was yes, this is then heaven.
Unannounced Dreams
Is it enough to believe,
To receive me
in the dreams that seem to come unannounced?
Pouncing like a perfect kitten within a homestead?
Where is it written instead of proclaimed
that I have to name what matters the most?
I certainly am not the fanatical host.
I play with my choices, the voices that come,
done with the burden of some time soon,
I acclaim I am risen this day before noon.
And the joyful pursuits as I strive for the truths
compare to the rare form of a masterful work
as I pursue my desire, I fire off my flame.
I will not be settled, nor named fettered to chains.
I am not only the pains that carve my insides,
I am tried and I’m true to reach for dream’s views.
Through the Window
Through the window
I know I see the trees
taking on new birthed leaves,
buds busting out in a colored song
as a plane zips by in a clouded line
I find like chalk dust leftover on a board.
I don’t want to erase this image,
this pleasure, this weather I horde,
that burns to be shared.
My face lifts to the dazzling sunshine
as my mind buries the burden of depression
and the compression of panic.
For I am sick of traveling beneath the blues
That ensues gray faded days,
the way the clock slowly winds
down the harsh season in calculated tickings.
I am picking myself an eternal view
Of daffodils and the still pane I see through
To the clarity of a realized me.
And oh the reflected joy I enjoy
As I peer through the clearness
Of happiness I see unmasked
In the task of simply being free.
Jodi Girouard 