Poetry

A friend inspired me to dare putting my poetry on the blog. I've resisted 'cuz the blog seems too public and the poetry too private. But, here goes:

Night, finally, after a most stressful day,

With this and that gone wrong and something else

Left undone, messy even.

And I, with this busy brain of mine, struggle to find sleep.

And then, when I have nearly given up and gotten up

Leaving sheets, wrapped in tangles, sweaty,

Sleep finds me and pulls me, unsuspecting, into her strange embrace.

With twitching arms and little snorts of breath

I dream.

Not for me the dreams of grandeur, castles in the sky, No,

I become another, fully and completely, losing finally

That distant one so worry-ridden as to have given up

All connection to the most divine in me. I see

A most phantasmagorical bird, not just soaring, but sailing

As if the sky – the green and lilac sky – was in truth an ocean

Upon which all dreams ever dreamed had taken form, rising like some crazed Poseidon from froth and foam to sail

The lilac waves, drop deeply into green trough, so deep, and rise,

This time climbing, running really, up and up and up

A wild and craggy mountain with ice, it must be ice,

As pink as cotton candy but sharp, oh so sharp, and

Dangerous, it must be, while I – I cannot see myself. Am I

Goat or perhaps some other mountain creature – I bound and bounce

With no thought of falling; no, I lack no confidence, no

Ability to leap from crag to crag, until I fall - -

Suddenly, that clear pink ice whipping by my face while

Lace – lace? – lace blows ‘crossed my eyes, then aside, and I see reflected in the ice

Now turned a crazy shade of neon orange,

That I have morphed again, chameleon-like, into a small

Creature with round and bulging eyes. I’ve seen this

Little animal. I know I have. And, why, for what unearthly reason,

is it wearing a wedding gown? My gown?

Pulling out the veil with tiny near human arms and hands

To form wings with which she – for only women wear gowns –

Can glide smoothly, easily, dreamily even, down

To land in – mud. Ugly dirty-brown mud.

Not rich coffee colored earth. Mud. And deep. It sucks and pulls. I sink.

I. . . I have become me again!

As I struggle pulling lace up from the mud, feeling the

Fabric tear, reminding me of losses, marriages gone sour, lovers moving on,

the very fabric of my life it seems,

Muddied, torn, falling apart in my efforts to extricate it

And myself, or is it more truly from myself, ‘till I tear free and fly.

I AM that phantasmagorical bird. The ocean, that too is me.

I am wave and trough.

And understanding grabs me. Of course, I say, of course

I could bound from crag to icy crag. Or swim through that

Orange ice should I choose. Or even. . .

And I awake. Confused. These walls; this floor. Then, drifting back to sleep I search

Looking for the lilac waves the pink ice, knowing I have lost

Some necessary part of me.

A toss, kicking back the sheets, eyes nearly shut with the

Detritus of sleep.

Again I wake, truly now,

A most diminished me.