I Never Asked

My third entry for Lexington Poetry Month.  Check out LexPoMo here.

I Never Asked

I never asked my mother
About her father.
The one who gave his DNA and
Left before she had memory.
I wonder how it felt being
Abandoned by kin,
Replaced with a second family that
Grew half-sibling strangers.
When she would see him on the street
In the small town they shared
Did they lock eyes, did they speak,
Did he know her?

At the age of three, she had a real
Father, a Daddy.
He swept her off her feet and
She fell head over heels.
On Sunday afternoons he brought her
Peanuts and read the funny papers out loud
As they sat on the front porch.
Finally, my grandmother let herself
Love him too.

She was loved completely and for the
Rest of her life she was his child as
Much as the siblings that followed.
They were a family – whole.

Still, did she miss the first one,
Did she forgive or forget,
Did she still hold hope for love?

I never asked.

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Crayons

My granddaughter and I spend a lot of time amongst the mess of crayons, paints, glue and markers. She speaks my language. We have no rules about what art should be except that it should come from within. There is no wrong way if it comes from your heart.

June is Lexington Poetry Month. Here is my second poem posted on lexpomo.com.

 

Crayons

She wields every color
Asparagus sky
Red-Violet trees
Pacific Blue sun
Wild Strawberry children
Each one considered
Each one embraced
Escaping across black lines

 

LexPoMo

It’s Lexington Poetry Month!  Go to lexpomo.com for a fresh batch of poems each day during the month of June. I am participating for the second time and I am blown away by these wonderful writers. Please visit the LexPoMo site and show them some love.

This is my contribution for today:

Split Open

Standing at the edge of ocean and sand
The heft of this world fades into the
Peace of feeling small.

I am split open by the single-mindedness of the sea.
Waves approach and retreat,
Filling and emptying as
The moon commands.

How do I put my life in its wake?
To accept gravity,
To breathe in and breathe out,
To take comfort in the moon?

Why LMNOP?

If my mother said it once, she said it 1,000 times, “You can’t get from A to Z without going through LMNOP!” She was usually chiding me for procrastinating, not practicing my piano or being impatient. And she was right. The schoolwork, piano playing and the growing up were all things I was eager for but I just didn’t have it in me to enjoy the in-between part. I wanted to get to Z. NOW! The in-between didn’t interest me.

Now that I am a wife, mother and grandmother, I relish the LMNOP.

The slow middle. The journey. The in-between .

So I’m going to take the photographs, write the stories, read the books, make the things, and appreciate the process. I am not in a hurry for Z. I am at home in the LMNOP.