Some of last year's poetry ©

Cleaning my desk and I found my journal. Time for a new one to start the new year. We walk around unwritten, here's some of what's in there.

I'm sure you've seen it--
the astronaut on a space walk,
tethered to the spacecraft by a cord,
moving around slowly,
above the earth, in space.
My dad died.
We were invisibly tethered my whole life.
Moving from place to place over time
we were always silently connected,
whether we wanted to be or not.
In the last ten years
he was alternately
terrible to me
and good to me.
He was abusive,
brilliant,
engaging,
and alcoholic.
Finally the dementia took hold
and he was a horrible monster.
The ravages of an unreflective life
came to roost.
Now that he's gone
I see
the astronaut's cord
tethered to the spacecraft,
slowly floating in space,
with no one
at the other end.

..
Some poetry while camping

I'm camping at Berry Pond,
the highest body of water in Massachusetts.
It's raining, hard, relentlessly,
There's thunder and lightning lighting up the sky.
I think my tent
is now the highest body of water in Massachusetts.

..
My eyes are closed.
I don't remember what
color my pants are.
..
It was a beautiful
day, just like today, sweets,
the day you were born.
..
I swear there's a rock
under my hip. Is the ground
really that hard?
..

I love graveyards. I found this on the headstone of Mary Clossey Bowen 1914 1965. It's part of William Butler Yeats' poem, Before the world was made.

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
..

Just to make it clear, this one's mine.

Too much, too many,
shaking my fist at the sky,
at God, again.
.
.
.