And, oh, Beloved

You did not tell me

Of the lilacs this year

The fragrance as you passed

Or whether there were many

The winter weary has shed

Its heavy white coat

Spring is seeping in

And you did not tell me

About the lilacs

This year …

June comes

Brings Asian Lillies

And Honeysuckle tea cups

The sparkle of fireflies

In warm dusk

Brings summertime

Fragrant Jasmine in the night

Through wispy linen curtains

Dancing to soft breezes

Old feelings

And new dreams

I lick my fingers

Close my eyes

Savor the sweet nectar

Of the blackberry

Let me never take for granted

The beauty of the moon

And the offerings of June

This first feels like Autumn morning,

A chill is rounding the front door stoop

swaddling new chrysanthemums

cradling plump orange pumkins that are waiting for trick-or-treaters

reminding me of harvest, of all those thanksgivings that have

come and gone and the words and the ghosts of the

people who’ve come and gone with them

A mist rises from the mossy warm earth

a gentle gust swirls fallen leaves around

making a chilly Autumn sound

I sit with steam from my coffee dancing around my face

glancing at dogwood and japanese maple trees,

black bark wet with a shower that must have come in the night

nuances from heaven, I think, how different are the wet, rainy fall days

everything bleak and still

from the sunny days with the light showing off the colored leaves

and a feeling that’s old and happy that I’ve never been able to put into words

maybe it’s just too sacred and some things are meant only for feeling

or maybe, as I have also suspected, the poet in me rests awhile, smiles sleepily at me

when I try to rouse her from a dream

even now I’m frustrated with her …

she won’t give me words I need to describe

this first feels like fall morning

but I sip the coffee and let her rest

maybe she’ll awaken one day

knowing she’s still with me is enough

Soft southern breezes dance

Linen curtains lift and fall

Fragrant jasmine smiles

Swirls past their partings

All is well and summer here

Sunlight sweetly sings

This late night beatitude

Freezing chills through panes that leak

My heart is frozen Mama

And all the world is sad and bleak

On this frigid, sleepless night

No doubt your arms would ease the pain

A voice to say all will be alright

Is lost and stilled and ne’er again

I’m without comfort, joy, and peace

I’ve lost my way somehow

I don’t know how to return to then

I’m prisoner to this wretched “now”

Oh to have the days of yore

The easy smiles, the laughter

I’d take not a moment again for granted

I don’t want this “ever after”

The photo is blurred and abstract

Yet the memory is clear and vivid

I relive it occasionally

When I allow myself to think of him and me

Us … the same person, he used to say…

A vintage dress I found

Giddy as a teenager at the discovery

And flowers he went looking for

When we realized I didn’t have a bouquet

I still see him cutting them …

Crossing back proudly to hand them to me

We later gave them to the sea

He’s gone from this life now

But we righted a mistake on that sunset beach

A long time after our parting

That awful fateful day many years before …

We tried as hard as time would allow

To recapture lost days and memories never made

I gaze upon this photo in feeling more than sight

What had fallen away from us was scattered around

And I knelt to pick up the pieces

Him beside me … desperate, happy, grateful, sad …

Grabbing anything that resembled

Something time had stolen

We were unaware that we were somehow aware

that time was running out … again …

For this one lovely day

I am more than thankful

And when I let myself feel those feelings again

The years just melt away

Like morning mist on a sunny day

And the fleeting scent of old perfume

First snow fell while I slept

In my mama’s bed

And it was colder this year

Some of the sparkle

Diminished because she wasn’t here

Mama left in summer

One day before the Autumnal Equinox

One day before her birthday

She left in the bed in which I sleep

She was wonderful and small

She died alone when no one was watching

Which was so often the case

(No one watched enough)

Someone so familiar

I maybe never knew at all

She loved winter and Christmas

And decorations and carols

None of this makes much sense

I’m only trying to say

She missed the first snow this year

And it’s left me shivering and  frozen

And dreading cold and carols

It’s four in the morning and cold in Montague, Massachusetts. I cannot sleep. My shaking fingers dial the cell phone. The city jail in Virginia. I dial this number too much.  The officers who answer sometime take pity and indicate, even if in code, that my son is alright. They think me mad, I know. They are not too far from being accurate. Parents of addicts who haven’t gone dead in the emotion department, those who haven’t shut down just yet, are a bit insane. It’s part of the gig. It was late and in the little “space of hell”, the no signal zone rounding the corner in Montague Center, I lost service.  I lost connection just as my son, in a room full of men, social rejects locked behind bars with him, was crying to me. “Mama, I don’t think I can make it much longer”, and “Mama, I seem to be going the other way.” As “Mama”, I know that means he’s losing it. As Mama, I’m the last woman standing. I’m his only cheerleader. I tell him he can make it, even when I’m unsure. Eli is my son. To the world, Eli is just a drug addict. The call was dropped at a most crucial time. I was smack in the middle of a pep talk when I heard the fucking beep that indicated that I had lost signal. I was disconnected from him again. I waited for the phone to ring again. It didn’t. Now in the wee hours of my 56th birthday, the first day of spring, I can only think of Eli. Did he think in my exhaustion and fear, I’d hung up on him? I have before. When I can’t give one more ounce of strength to him because I have none left myself, I disconnect and then damn myself for it. I damn myself for so much. Eli. All I can do is pray he knows and that the phone will ring when the sun finally shows up. I have to be there. These are the early morning ramblings of a mother lost in life, lost in space…lost in LOST…in time you may understand if you care to…it doesn’t, it can’t, make sense now. This is just the first of a thousand letters to my son…

Emmalee, you dance in my dreams,

I see your sweet eyes

they shame the sky

with their bright and beautiful

verdigris beams

I yearn for you always, I want you to know

I imagine your laughter; I hear it I’m sure,

like the tinkling of windchimes on a wind – vague, obscure –

lilting, melodic, dulcet and low

do not think I’m not there, for it is not so

just because you don’t see me right now

I wait longingly, for someday, somehow,

and in the eyes of my heart, I’m watching you grow

©Debra Goodman