As a child we played

Musical Chairs.

Round and round the chairs

We went knowing

There was one too few

For all of us.

 

It was a game of chance

And mostly luck

So we giggled and we laughed

While no one always won

And the first one out

Was not always the same.

 

Round and round with music

Till the sudden silence

When the mad scramble began

To find an empty seat waiting

There just for you.

 

Yet someone lost every time

And one more chair was removed

Before the music started

Then once again we all chased

Each other round and round.

 

We grew older and the game

Remained, though the music changed

And the seats vanishing are

Our homes in a night,

Scholarships, and jobs,

Food and clothing

While the music plays on

Spinning webs of tension,

Filling the air with a pungency,

The flavor of anxiety so thick

It can be tasted.

 

Round and round we dance

To the music’s rhythm

Of off-and-on again

While we wish for bat ears

That we might catch the moment

Just before the music will stop:

 

We search the skies

Peer into the lightness

And the dark listening

With all our might

To hear that one sound,

Movement, change,

Signal, that will come before

The silence and the choice.

I drift

I dream

I remember…

      food

so sweet, so right,

so good

I eat very little now—

not hungry

 

     dresses

with ribbons and lace

and ruffles

Now all my dresses

are the same

easy-care plain

that never fits quite right

 

     people

that I played with

or danced with

or loved…once

Now there are faces

without names

or names that keep changing,

names that never seem right

and the faces not quite clear

but always reminding me—

 

     I laughed

I can remember laughing,

I laugh now, remembering.

 

     I cried, too…a little

I cry now

often

not knowing why

 

I drift

I dream

I remember

All of her life had come to stay in this one room

in her son-in-law’s house.

In sachet-fragrant dresser drawers

carefully lined with paper of all kinds,

each garment type was assigned its own special space

which did not vary, ever.

Satinate boxes organized hankies and hose.

All the hangers in her closet faced one way,

nothing hung from hooks.

Shoes faced the wall toe first in a row.

 

In the nightstand beside her bed

was the mentholated petroleum jelly

she used for colds, arthritis,

headaches and the bruises of old age.

Each morning she waked to see her painting,

hanging on the wall across from her.

It was her imitation of another’s work

that she had seen advertised in a throwaway magazine

and copied because it reminded her of home.

 

In the cedar chest, the memories were kept:

fur collars from winter cities,

letters from the Civil, First and Second World Wars,

old tintypes and photographs,

a braid of childhood hair, a wedding ring,

paintbrushes carefully preserved,

a Mother’s Day card drawn with odd-matched crayons,

a scrap of paper with a poem on it.

 

All of her life had come to stay in this one room,

but in her dreams she was far away

in the place of old friends

free from wishing and pain, free to play.

And so, in one sweet night dream, she simply chose to stay.

Oh, to ride the WIND with the WILD ones…

but they will never ask me

and I would not really go

for the wilderness they choose

does not wake my gypsy hunger—

I would choose to follow a northern gale

To find a dragon lair.

 

But dragons do not tempt

The WILD ones on the WIND.

They dare to track the bucking bronc

Or bull, or fly the many known terrors;

While I, with my WILD heart,

would rise on the WIND

astride a dragon, fierce and mighty—

Too quick for lasso, too brief for saddle,

Unknown, untamed—too WILD,

even for those who ride the WIND.

 

Still, I will not ever go,

Will not ever challenge the sky

Upon the mysterious and fabled reality,

No, I will merely stand and watch

As the WILD ones on the WIND split the air

With the fever of their leaving.

Here I sit: the lost, the abandoned one

Once again.  So many worlds

I have wandered, strange worlds.

Lured by an author, I entered the lives

Of persons I had never met,

While the author wove the tapestry

Which enfolded me

Into another world, another life.

I rode upon the characters’ laughter

With the buoyancy of a blown bubble

Floating upwards toward the sun.

I became the salt that flavored their tears.

I knew the taste of their mornings.

I knew their faces and their voices.

I knew where and why,

Though it was never mentioned,

An unseen chair lay broken.

So familiar was I with their world,

I heard the whispers

The author left unwritten.

In these places, I lived

For all the hours within the words.

Yet abruptly I am abandoned,

Shut out, cut off:

For every story ends.

 

Unbelieving, almost in shock,

I stare at the scene about me

Seeing what is at once too familiar

Which now I barely recognize.

My eyes search for the vanished images

From a moment before.

The scents surrounding me

Are all wrong,

No longer what they were

Only a moment before.

My ears seek again those unique sounds:

The author’s orchestra of the ordinary

Which was playing across my mind

Only a moment before.

My flesh rebels,

As if it would slough off

The present and the now

As a snake sheds

Its outgrown skin.

 

Here I sit:

Deep within my castle keep

Built of all the outer senses.

I am the lost,

The abandoned one,

Marooned upon reality

Which, for now, is a place

Not of my time

Not of my life.