Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Let Me Call You 'Weetheart


I find I can often be wrenched by love. I can pick up a stone from the beach and feel myself wholly in love with the tallow striations in a bit of agate, the blood in a polished shard of jasper. I can love the purple-blue ripeness of blueberries. I can love the thick slices of a red ripe tomato. I can love the silence of my house in the stillness of the very early morning. I can love the hands of my husband tearing fresh herbs to scent dinner.

There is a little mental exercise I have done since childhood. I make a list of the people in my life, my loved ones, and mentally tick off their whereabouts. I place them safely, one by one, where my brain knows or imagines them to be. All are safe within the bell jar of my mind.

When my daughter, Sarah-Beth, was eighteen months old, I went into her room one morning. There she lay, grinning at me through the bars of her crib. "Hi 'weetheart!", she said distinctly and unexpectedly. It was an echo of my own usual morning greeting, spoken before I had a chance to form the words. My body still retains the exact memory and impact of that ‘weetheart. A moment of gut-wrenching love that can never lessen or diffuse in time. It’s a powerful thing, a pouring, a zap of love; uncontained, spilling forth in wild, sweet jabs.

Today my Sarah-Beth is twenty-seven years old. We shared our after dinner coffee this evening, on the phone. The curves and arabesques of our beating hearts fed each others’ hunger, my 'weetheart and I.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Magpie Tales: The Lost Skaters' Sonnet


The Lost Skater's Sonnet

There is none more elusive than pale hued
January. Lost skaters' kin. None more
Beautiful. The wool and fur do sustain
Their silver wings over ice-blue domain.
These winter flights are such rare surprises
Of maiden joy, we feel them speak again.
They do not know they are graced to fashion
Voices from sepia and blood, to sing
That thin place in air, muted lyric’s length.
Half ghost, ephemeral spell we recall
Past music of such ethereal strength.
Our later time on earth does lend enthrall
To magic echoes, poised reliquary
Trio of recollected January.


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