Tuesday Poem: from The Water Series

The Sink

Luna visits the dying: house after house,

slowly yielding to tidal hunger,

all roof waver, and shingle warp,

like fish, someone caught and abandoned,

scales curled and lifted by the too hot sun,

smelling of woodrot, maggots and mildew,

windows gone cloudy and wall-eyed.

Doors darken from the waterline up.

One day, a whole section of wall

slides away and gulls hop in

for a once over. Then reeds push

through what steps were left intact.

A narrow dock holds fast to its

sodden pilings until it floats, like

Charon’s raft, off to the underworld.

Luna meditates on gradual decay;

what it leaves behind and what it takes away.

Tuesday Poem: From The Notebook

 

Cinderella's Daughter

Nights, when the servants were

deeply asleep, my mother

traded her lace for homespun,

her crown safely

back in its lock box,

my father abed  and dreaming,

adrift on the ship of state.

I watched her in secret

as she danced with the broom,

bent and crooned to the dustpan,

fondled the stiff little bristles

on the idle head of the scrub brush.

Work called to her, it was

her secret, her benediction,

kneeling in the ashes,

sweeping the hearth

cleaner than it sometimes

already was, scrubbing

the stones in the hallways

till they sang a hushed

song of gratitude

beneath our feet.

All of life's ugly voices

gradually silenced by her hands,

rosy from running water,

dancing over every surface,

making me a tapestry

that told the complicated

story of her entry into Paradise.

Tuesday Poem: previously published in Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women's Spirituality, ed. Marilyn Sewell 1987

Image from Apron Stringz blog by Calamity Jane

domestic poem

Nightfall I sink

into dishwash meditation :

steaming china prayer wheels

crystalline bells of a lost horizon

breathing slows

din and lull of running water from crockery mandalas

moist heat muscles soften

zen poems drip from silverware

air hums out a chanting

cleansing melody

washing the frantic stew of a day

down the drain along with the suds

those transient rainbow things

thin skin of the passing instant.