28 March 2007

Gratitude and Collage and a Poe=m

Who Are You, Who Are You, Strange Human, Who?

A list of my day's gratitudes.
But it's not gonna happen right now.
Right now my brother is singing, "blogsicle, blogsicle, i want write my blog," so he's taking all the light and airy and spiritual element out of all this. Now he's talking about the new movie "Blades of Glory" with the strangely brilliant Will Ferrel and everyone's favorite weirdo loser Ben Stiller. "Doin Situps." "I'm gonna get you drunk, get you drunk with my lady hump." What? And now he's talking to Tala the dog in the kitchen while he makes pasta at midnight.
So. We'll have to save this deep, meaningful list for another time, another place.

A Picture from My Collage Journal















Now An Old Poem About My Mother
I wrote this for her in my signed copy of Connie May Fowler's Before Women Had Wings, riding in the car from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, watching the trees and sky go by, 10 years ago or more. I was still in the college then, so definitely more. Without, as they say, further adieu, here 'tis.


Mama My Bones

Mama My Bones
they are spun from yours

And grown.

Mama these eyes of mine,
they are yours, yours,
And I see what you have seen.
know the same stories, I know
The same rolling hills--

The words and the feel,
They shed from my skin
Like the lives of snakes—

This all ours to share,
All the years, all my years—
They are yours, too.

And I kneel to the earth
for the love of this.

Mama who lies
That I am prettier than she was,

Mama whose face
stopped a racing
train
dead in its Souherthern tracks.

We are falling oh
square and light
into the east ocean.

What am I now if not
a child anymore,

Where have I been
if not circling
One single, lovely space
Under the fluttering shelter
Of those bird-like wings
That have sprung
From your shoulders,
sudden as birth?

--April 1996

Deneument
So, some attempts at sacred gratitude, some songs about humps, a picture of one of my collages, and an old poem about my mama.