SNOW DAY

On a day they did not predict overnight precipitation,

Three inches covered everything outside the house.

I got up early and kept to my routine, unsuspecting -

Unconscious - on autopilot, my mind anywhere but here.

I opened the door to head out and FROZE (pause three beats...)

Surprised by SNOW – and that way it transforms everyTHING.

The view startled me awake from my sleep-walk.

I came to with a gasp in the land of the living – this living land:

There are no footprints yet, there has been no shovel or plow -

The road, the sidewalk, the cars in mounds  - all covered –

Bare trees stand out in black lines on the snow’s gentle light –

And the house across the invisible street now appears nearer.

With a guileless grin I can’t wipe off my face (and don’t want to)

I step out, crunching like a kid off from school, into the different day.

Court Date

 

On our 21^st wedding anniversary

I stood in the empty stone lobby of the courthouse – alone,

Reading the digital board that lists, like airport departures,

The cases to be decided today.

There we are - Martin vs. Martin.

We have signed all the requisite slips of paper.

They were served by that oddly fractious third party we had to hire,

Sworn to, and all submitted in duplicate months ago.

This one is cut and dried.

I have not seen you in five years.

It is longer still since we touched with affection or kindness.

But you remain familiar - I fight you and love you when I’m dreaming.

In the daylight, I awake to reality. You are distant. It is cut and dried.

The judge meets my eyes and rules this divorce absolute.

There are Milky Way minis in a paper cup on the plaintiff’s table.

I wonder if these are for me.

Perhaps people need chocolate when this happens?

I didn’t expect tears in this empty stone place.

But the word “absolute,” and you still in my dreams,

and the mundane humanity of candies in the courtroom

fall on me heavily.

I say thank you, ma'am, and go out of the court to find a tissue.

FEELING TOTALITY

(I don't think this is a poem.)

Maybe with more time I will feel the same as I did before I witnessed a total solar eclipse. But right now I feel different. I feel more content, more settled, more accepting of the whole. I feel more clear, more determined, more focused on the forward road.

I don’t feel the need to question why standing beneath the shadow of the moon, glimpsing the spark of the sun’s surface through a moon valley, and gazing at the ghostly coronal webs would have this effect. I hope I never do question this, and just let it change me.

I shouldn’t feel, (being a rational being), that the call-back I got for that job right before totality was a good omen, or that the solar-sized pimple that grew on my chin afterwards was caused by eclipse exposure. But I weave in all the strands of significance I can gather.

Did you stand in the path of totality? And are you reckoning with how it made you feel?

How did it make you feel?

Wounded

Wounded

It’s strange I guess, but I want to remember this wound.

Let time not heal all.

I gouge it deep with my own finger, feeling the wet flesh,

My raw nerves shoot and sting,

I will pick at the scab, when it scabs, scratch like mad,

Getting bits of it under my nails.

I will press on the scar, when it scars, making it ache,

And pull on the web of my insides.

This wound must serve me. To feel alive? To feel mortal?

I just want to remember this wound.

I Got Laid Off From Work Today

I have foundered!

Not that I was exactly sailing wildly in that job…

More like tug-boating along, motoring just to motor about

Further fouling the murky water with my petty efforts.

Perhaps that old tub needed that big hole in its bottom

To sink it and shock me - out of my busy-ness, into cold water,

To tread or go under, splashing and spitting.

Working atrophied muscles and feeling the capacity of my lungs,

Kicking free of the wreck’s debris, the cloudy water slowly clears,

I feel fear and waking, disbelief and too-realness.

Will I stretch my long limbs and swim like a sea creature?

Will a dolphin meet me and allow me to hold on while he races with the squid?

Will a white ship, triple-masted, timbers creaking, lower a life boat and pull me up to sail?

I can see so many possibilities!

I can also see drowning.



Lori Martin, 8/8/2017