Written 12/20/2016

They say tonight,
will be the darkest night
in five hundred years,
Two other stories
I read about recently
brought me Anxiety and Sorrow.
I think, they are all connected.

Yesterday I read the headline,
“River of Molten Lead found Under Alaska,
Thought to Help Regulate the Earth’s Magnetic Pull.”
I could not click through
to the whole story –
I felt panic
Dread.
I thought, “oh no.”
Now they’ll use that up too.
And what pull will we have left then?
I felt the apocalypse and for the first time ever
I didn’t chide myself for being melodramatic.

Today, I read a story about a stolen Cedar Tree
In Mobile, Alabama.
Taken from a community park
And dressed up in shiny baubles
To hide a score board
and improve the backdrop
for a scary, little, man.

I read the story this time,
I wanted to hear
about this tree
and it’s gnarly trunk
and those who came to visit it.
And it pained me to hear
of the regular park goers
heading off to work, and returning
with their dogs to find
only a shaven stump.

You know,
I never liked the story “The Giving Tree,”
always thought “that poor tree,”
that little boy just takes and takes
until there is nothing left
and that tree is just a stump too.
And I thought,
even as a child,
“What kind of story is this?”
This is not justice.
This is not kindness.
This is abuse!

And here is that story,
Come to life,
And here is that little boy
Grown in size.
And here is the corpse
of the tree, chopped and hauled away.

And what will a man like this
do to a river beneath Alaska
that could untilt the world
and send us into
the next
darkest night?

Yes, I think they are all connected.
These stories and more.
Yet I hope,
I hope tomorrow’s headline
Will tell me that it wasn’t cloudy
in Newgrange,
And the sunrise
shone through on time.

 

I wrote a poem. It was called, “The Smell of Cardboard J.” It had come out of a lesson my Sophomore English teacher, Ms. Bisbano had given. One that I now give to my students. For the first part, she showed us a series of images and we were to write down one sentence that came into our minds when we saw the image. Then we took those sentences and jumbled them around, cut them, played with them and created a poem out of them. That poem is in a folder at home. The next part, Ms. Bisbano handed out small pieces of cardboard, each of them labeled with a letter and each of them possessing a scent. Mine was labeled “J” and it smelled like Ponds cream and talcum powder. It smelled like my Gran, Kathleen Conway. She was, at the time, far away across the Atlantic Ocean in Ireland. My grandparents had, in fact, just moved back to Monivea from Gravesend, Kent in England to begin their retirement back home.

This smell that came from Cardboard “J” took me back to watching my Gran get ready for bed, and scooping out the Pond’s cream with three fingers, spreading it onto both hands in an effort to warm it up, then smoothing it over her face and neck. She would then take a folded tissue and begin wiping off the cream in long strips from the top of her forehead, down the side of her face, over her chin, and down her neck. Then the other side with a new, folded tissue. She would wipe her eyes next, right, then left. The last tissue would start in the corner of her eye, down the side of her nose and over her cheek, then the other. Her skin seemed clearer, glistening, soft. She has wrinkles in my memories, but I don’t think I ever really saw them at the time. After the had cleaned her face, she would take out her teeth and brush them in the sink, sometimes she would chuckle and say something to me to make me laugh. And our laughter produced more laughter, and her shoulders would move up and down with the rhythm of her joy. She always wore night dresses to bed – usually white with tiny flowers, pink and blue, and frills around the arms. And I would sit on the side of the tub and watch her at the sink, and it was wonderful. And with that smell, this poem came rushing out of me, and told the tale of Kathleen Conway – her strength, and joy, and faith, and heartbreak, and her love for me and mine for her, and it was perfect.

I had always liked writing since I was seven or eight, but here in my fourteenth year, with the production of “The Smell of Cardboard J,” I knew that I could write and would write. But now, the poem is gone. It is not in the folder with the image poem, it is not in any folder I possess. The poem is gone. All that remains in my mind is the name and memory. A few fragments of lines like “it smells of talc, and babies, and my grandmother….” and then it went on from there, I think.

And I do not know if it was as epic as I remember, but I believe it was. And maybe it is better that I can’t find it now, because what if it wasn’t? What if I read it today and thought, “Oh, I thought this was better.” No, I believe I would not think such things. But who knows. Can a poem really express the virtues and wonders of a person you have loved and still love even in their absence? I hope so. Perhaps the poem and my Gran are together. And she holds it close to her as though I had given her gold and not a page of torn out college ruled paper containing fifteen lines or so written with purple ink. So today, 40 year old me will attempt another poem for her. It may not be as good though. Who knows?

My hands remind me of her,
They are getting wrinkly now too.
There is a soft pouch
On the back of my hand
In between
and just below
My index and middle fingers.
She had these pouches too.
I remember pushing on them
They were soft,
And seemingly full of fluid.
As I pushed on one side
The other would rise,
I would trace her
protruding purple veins,
And smooth out her knuckles.
And she would let me.
And now, on my own hands,
I can do the same.
I got them from her.
And that is a comfort.

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* A reference to Alice Walker’s Poem, “How Poems Are Made, A Discredited View.”