The words of the People linger

gnashed by teeth

never intended to speak the language of the place;

beveled by throats untrained in its subtleties;

slurred by tongues unused to the dance

of the rare syncopation;

buried in ears half deaf to the songs

of the People,

the words still survive the slaughter

and the enmity.

Misspelled,

the old names yet spill

across the maps

sketched in the aftermath.

The ordinary words

from the People of the before-time

still trickle onto documents

otherwise framed in a foreign speech.

The words of the People linger in the air,

on parchment and stone,

teasing the eyes and ears of the Others

who came to take,

to destroy,

to utterly change the place.

Playing across present and future

the words of the People

stir an unexpected burst of color

in the melody of the spoken thought…

an unspoken history.

 

#UnitedNationsinternationalmotherlanguage

 

 

#valentinesday

Each day I search for a gift of words to share—for Elena, a family friend inherited from my mother. Elena, aging toward one hundred, loves books of all kinds, but especially poetry.

Each morning, for she and I are both morning people, I call to share a poem with her. At least, I try. Sometimes all I have is an interesting quote from a book. Elena is eager for these short, but elegant words, though she always hopes to hear a poem I have written or one of my mother’s.

After I read to her, we share what the words have conjured for each of us. These conversations often wander into her past as a survivor in the Europe of WW2, or her years as a teacher of needle art, or the time she was an older student at UC Berkley in northern California.

These meanderings have often found their way into my poetry, which is her gift of words to me, shared in return.

 

#worldreadaloudday

My cousin came to stay because she had no choice. Child of divorce she came to us when her father’s job took him to far away Arabia, and her mother had no home yet to offer. She came with anger and frustrated dreams. But because of her coming I learned about the wonder of cocoa in the middle of the night.

Cocoa, made with sugar and Hershey powder, milk simmering on the stove; brown seal skimmed off the top; and a large marshmallow floating, melting like a soft warm lollipop slippery on the tongue, savored between sips of sweet, sweet cocoa. Cocoa with a sharp tang that does not come with the quick spoon-in mixes.

Cocoa and sitting at the kitchen table long after we should be asleep. Sitting together while everyone else is probably sound asleep. Sitting in the chilly cocoa-warm kitchen: Mommy, my cousin/for-always-sister, and me. Sitting while my mommy talked to my cousin/sister and helped her with her rage.

I had so much. To her, it was not fair, and in the middle of the night she would kick. Kick her sister that was not, kick at what she did not understand, and could not have, would never have. If she kicked hard enough, or long enough, I got mad because she would not let me sleep. Getting up, I stumbled down the hall into my parents’ room to complain. Then Mommy would come and take us to the kitchen and fix that cocoa.

Cocoa never meant so much when made at other times. Middle of the night cocoa always tasted richer, somehow sweeter when we sat around the kitchen table with the blank dark night looking in, and quiet stealing with creaks and whispery drafts through the house.

Curled on the hard kitchen chair, I sipped and relished that special cocoa and felt the love that made us warm and chased away the fear that night-time brings to children alone in the middle of the night. And then, with our cups reluctantly left in the sink behind, my cousin and I would snuggle down and be tucked in again.

I knew my cousin could not help it. The rage, the kicking in the night was not her fault. Mommy tried to explain, I think, either to me or her, or both. I did not mind very much, except I liked to sleep—I was rather hoggish about my sleep.

But if Mommy got up and made us cocoa and sat talking with us until it was finished, and sometimes, even after—on the edge of our shared bed until we started drifting off—then I did not really mind.  And my cousin always said she was sorry, and I said it was okay (secretly rather glad because I got to have that special cocoa once again), and we would go to sleep.

My cousin only stayed with us for a year or two, and after she left, I never had that special cocoa again.  She came to stay because she had no choice. But because of her coming, I had had my cocoa and the magic warm circle around the kitchen table in the middle of the night. I learned about the wonder of cocoa in the middle of the night, old-fashioned cocoa in the middle of the night with a fat fresh marshmallow melting was being loved, and that after all was all that really mattered.

 

 

#MentalWellnessMonth

#ARoomOfOne’sOwnDay

#January25

The drive through the my hometown steals the plaster and concrete of childhood leaving only a faint taste in the mind as brief and difficult to name as the scent of long dead fires blown on the wind miles from their source.

I recognize by name only the library downtown, and nearby the stores where my family used to shop, are now only a parking lot. The theater has become a grocery store, my ballet school a boarded-up no-name church.

I remember the person I was standing in the sun those long years ago. But only in the way I remember a character in a book I once read, the title of which I long ago forgot.

Most strange of all is this reverie of disappearing days from weekend corners briefly lit by summer’s light.

 

#January11

#WorldNoLongerNewYear’sDay