Mosaic

Assignment: Write a metaphor

Tile by tile, day by day,

Some chosen, some god-wrought.
Love of loyal mate,
Delight of four children at play.
Petty hurts and wrenching deaths.
Joys and sorrows in all their breadth.
Would I change some, even one, if I could?
Probably not.

Haikus

wind begins to stir  

rustling of leaves picks up 

drop by drop, the rain

over distant hills

a train sounds a mournful cry

boding fills the air

Senyru:

elevator hums

on its way to the lobby

door opens, we spill out

Larceny

Assignment:  

        1.   Create a metaphor by completing the sentence:  You are ____________ to me .
AND 
                        2.  Create a simili by completing the sentence:  You are like a ____________ to me .

            1.  You are a thief to me, stealing away, life's essence..
            2.   You are like a thief to me, who, stealing, empties life. 

How it entered

No one knew

Nor exactly why or when 

But in recesses dark and deep

It hid.

Then what it did

Was steal memory away,

Leaving life in disarray.

Anna, Do You Remember Our Troll?

Assignment:  Create an image:  a negative and a positive

The positive:  Anna, just three; happy to be with me, in Squaw Valley Park.

The negative:  Anna, just three; frightened as she could be, because of me.

Anna, my sweet Anna,

Do you remember our troll 

Who lived under the bridge in the park

Where you and I spent happy hours 

When you were very young?

This morning, as early as eight at best,

When the sun still hugged horizon's crest 

Under a sky yet tinged with dark,

I walked through our special park

And thought of you.

I passed by the bridge we used to cross,

Remembering how you would scurry

As fast as your little legs could hurry

Lest the troll beneath, disturbed from sleep,

Should toss us into the waters of the creek.

I really thought that you knew

The story I had fabricated wasn't true.

But when you were older you said

You used to tremble with dread,

Thinking the troll real.

Today  a  closed-for-repairs sign

Bars the bridge we considered  yours and mine,

And the rickity bridge of our private lore,

Replaced by a newer, sturdier span,

Will be no more.

So forgive me, my sweet Anna.

I thought of you today

And of the hours we shared. 

I hadn't meant to make you scared.

Going Home

[An attempt at using sound and assonance in a poem, to tell a story and describe an emotion.]

Like a lament from distant hills,
ever closer it came,
louder and louder still,
until it was a whistle, shrieking and shrill,
piercing the quiet countryside air.

A young boy, freckled and fair,
stopped short upon hearing the cry.
Then across sunlit field he raced,
and by tracks already throbbing,
waited to watch the train go by.

As it thundered past, atop one of the cars,
an old and tattered hobo sat.
Upon spying the lad, he lifted arm on high,
waved his crumpled cap, and shouted over the din:
“Goin' home, boy! At last I'm goin' home again!”

Within the boy stirred a feeling undefined.
Yet far too young was he to know the woe
of being long and far away from home.
Nor yet had he lived enough of life to ken
the joy of going home again.

Growth - Lillian: In Memory

Assignment: Write poem – about a situation, or a person – that can be made into a metaphor.

It sprouted new branches every day,

Polluting once healthy soil with roots of decay.
Its tentacles, spindly fingers of malicious reign,
Pursuing their deadly deed,
Reached out and choked with lightening speed
The functions of her once fertile brain.

Daddy Comes Back

Poetry Assignment:  Remember a dream and describe a series of images from the dream 

The following dream came to me at least thirty-some years ago, but it is still vivid in my memory:

There is a greenish light emanating from my parents' bedroom.  I am in the hallway at the top of the steps leading up to their second floor.  

I peer into the bedroom, and see my dear father seated in the easy chair in their bedroom – the chair he used to sit in to say his night prayers.  (“The Lord knows I work hard and am tired at the end of the day,” he once explained to me when as a child I had asked him why he didn't kneel to say his prayers. “The Lord is just glad to hear from me,” he had said.  “He doesn't mind that I rest my weary bones while I talk to Him.”)

My father had been dead for several months at the time I had this dream, and in the dream, upon seeing him in his chair, I feel a lifting of the great weight that had been in my chest.  “Daddy, you're back!”  I say, and run into the room toward him.  

I see that his coloring is very gray.  He smiles at me, but it is a sad smile.  The weight in my chest comes back.

“Yes, I'm back,” he says, “but it's a mistake.  I am very, very tired!  I don't belong here anymore.”

Without any further word between us, I know he has to go back.

Looking Out From the Bell Tower at Ghirardelli Square

Through morning fog
White sails of a lone boat
Play peek-a-boo
San Francisco Harbor

Assignment: Write a poem to reflect some elements of sound...rhyme, assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc.

The harbor shimmers,
Painted with impressionist brush.
White sails of a solitary boat
Play me a game of hide and seek
Through a fog that half-hides, too
Alcatraz and its lighthouse from view.

Alcatraz in its day
Had another name -- The Rock.
No man ever escaped, they say.
Although thirty-six tried and died,
Drowned in the shark-infested
Currents of the bay.

To my right I see,
In the waters of the sea,
A three-masted sailing ship of old
Moored within the confines
Of old Hyde Street Pier.
A tangle of other vessels, too, are there.

Standing in the Tower room
Now at noon precisely timed,
I hear a whir r and look up to see
Fourteen heavy, cast bronze bells,
Their fourteen heavy hammers primed
To clang the midday knell.

Covering my ears to muffle the deafening din,
I am done with gazing over sea and scape,
And vow to leave to another day
Further sights of The City by the Bay
That grew from shantytown of tents
To the bustling beauty it is today.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Assignment: Examine of picture of you taken in your childhood.

When was it?

What were you doing?

Landscape?

My parents, in those Depression Years before I went to school, had concerns other than snapping pictures of me and my younger sister.  Only one snapshot of me as a toddler remains in my possession.  I have no idea who snapped it; probably one of my cousins, whose family shared a duplex with my family. 

The photo is black-and-white, of course, possibly taken with a box-camera.  In it, I am probably no more than three years old, standing alone in the middle of a field of weeds and flowers, holding one flower (daisy?, dandelion?) in my right hand.  Many scraggly-branched trees form a border far behind me.  I think the site is the upper part of the large back yard of the duplex we lived in.  

As in the Parry Studios photograph, my demeanor in this photo is pensive, too, but perhaps more somber -- actually, even rather belligerent.  Maybe I didn't like to have my likeness taken, or maybe the novelty of having my picture snapped was foreign and puzzeling to me.  In the shot, I display  a big head of very thick dark hair, cut short, with Buster Brown bangs across my forehead.  I am dressed in a white, short-sleeved, short-pants, one-piece play outfit.  Only my two baby-chubby thighs and knees show above the flowers and weeds.

When my husband first found this photo among our jumbled collection, he put it in a lime green frame he had bought purposely for it.  Around the border of the frame is printed "Mary, Mary quite contrary".   He thought the frame a most appropriate find.  It sits on the melodian in our far room, and our four offspring love it, especially the inscription on the frame.

Cryin' the Blues

Assignment:  Try writing a chant

Cry, baby, cry

Stick a finger in your eye

Life's a bitch and then you die.

And then you die

So go ahead, baby,

Cry.

Cry, baby, cry

Tell your mother it wasn't I

Life's a bitch and then you die

And then you die

So go ahead, baby

Cry.

C'est la vie, or so they say

Life's a bloody bitch that way

Then you die, sweet baby, you die

So cry me a big river, baby

Cry, cry, cry

Look, Mamma, It's Me!

Assignment:  “Finish the Sentence, then begin a poem using a simile/metaphor/analogy you have written.

Sentence:  You were my parents, by you were really......me.

      Look, Mamma, It’s Me!

The longer I live, the more I see

That the older I grow,

The less I am me.

And the less I am me, 

The more I am you.

Pity my poor daughters, too

Who don’t know it yet, you see

(Although you and I do....)

The older the two of them grow,

The more they’ll be me.  And you.

In Squaw Valley Park With Alex and Ben

Assignment: Write about a small joy

For sheer bliss
It gets no better than this:
Two grandsons,
Two swings.
Alex, ten,
Pumps his own.
I push five-year-old Ben.

The swings go up,
Go down,
And up and down again
While the boys,
Beatles fans, both,
Raise voices to the sky
As into the air they fly.

She's got a ticket to ride …
sings Alex
She's got a ticket to ri-i-ide ...
echoes Ben
And in tandem
To song's end,
They sing as they swing.

At the Gym

Assignment:  Try to write a chant

Posture perfect, tummy in

Raise your arms tall.

Inhale

Exhale

Let your arms fall.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me.

Left arm overhead

Bend to the left

Bend to the right

And pulse, pulse

With all your might.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me

Now as before

But on the other side

Bend right

Bend left

Stretch it wide.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me.

Weights in hand

Lift arms shoulder high

Then take them 

Out to the side

And open shoulders wide.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me

Hold a weight at each hip

Bend your knees

Then pulse and dip

Hold the squat

And pulse and dip.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me.

And so it goes 

We bend and stretch

Stretch and bend some more

Defying Old Age

Knocking at our door

Between Rest Stops

Assignment:  Sleep as Writing Inspiration 

She slipped off her shoes and stretched her legs as far in front of her as space on the passenger side permitted, then settled more comfortably against the seat back.  They had been on the road better than two hours and were approaching the Pennsylvania Turnpike on-ramp at Breezewood. 

“Want me to take over once we get to the next available rest stop?” she asked, knowing he would say no.  He always preferred to drive more than half the journey home from Washington before letting her take over while he in turn slept, usually snoring enough to wake, (or at least to shake)  the dead.  Certainly, she often imagined the car itself shook, but his snoring was a comforting sound – not at three o’clock in the morning in bed beside her perhaps, but she didn’t mind it in the car.  

He was fully awake now, though.  “No, thanks,” he said.  “Just relax and enjoy the scenery.”

Some scenery!  The day was winter-like and gray, although the outside temperature displayed just above the rear-view mirror registered forty-two degrees.  About normal for the end of November, she thought.

They didn’t talk much on their way home, and she appreciated this.  She allowed her mind to linger over one happy memory after another of the past weekend with their daughter.  She knew a smile played on her face, and glancing over to him, was pleased to see that he, too, was smiling to himself.  The tollbooths loomed, and he maneuvered the car toward the booth on the far left, anticipating the westerly direction they would take.  She heard a faint whir as the automatic window on his side slid down to open position, and out of the corner of her vision, saw him reach for the card the machine spit out at him, and remembered what their son Steve used to say when they were a young family traveling together.  

“Mum, that machine stuck its tongue out at me!”

The first few times Steve had pulled that joke, all six of them had laughed, and indeed she had continued to laugh politely for many more times, not wanting to hurt his feelings, but finally even she gave up and agreed with them when one or the other of his siblings would groan at him: 

“Shut up, Steve!”  

“Not funny anymore!”   

“Get a new line, that one’s old!”  

Now she and her husband were the ones who were old, and the family had scant  occasion to travel all together anymore.  The kids had their own families to travel with, and she was content to bask in memories of other times, which, from the distance of years, seemed to have been nothing other than fun times.

In the sparse woods that bordered the highway on either side, trees, bare of leaves, whizzed by her window, one after another at sixty-five miles per hour.  She yawned. Even in the gloom of dark November days, the Pennsylvania countryside was not unpleasant.  She loved it, and would never even consider retiring to warmer climes.  Neither would he.  After forty-seven years, they meshed very well together.  He was far-sighted, she, near-sighted.  Together, there was little need for glasses.  He could figure great sums in his head for her when, shopping in a foreign land, she would ask him, “How much is that in dollars?”  On her part, she could identify for him any number of songs when, hearing them over radio or television, he would ask her,  “What the hell is the name of that tune?  I know I know it, but I can’t remember.”   These golden years of theirs were, if not fourteen-carat, at least golden enough, and she wished that by some miracle, time for them could freeze here for about thirty years or so – here in this pleasant present, when all the worries and cares of their younger lives had narrowed down to just worrying and caring for each other.   But she knew, of course, their days were growing short.  She saw her face reflected in the car window and sighed and murmured half aloud, “the autumn of our lives.”   That was another area of balance between them -- he was right down the line, matter-of-fact, no bullshit; she tended toward the maudlin.

Something or someone moved between the trees far ahead to her right, but when she sat straighter and looked again, there was nothing.  Then again, a dark figure moved, 

wove in an out between tree trunks, seeming to float.  Then another, then another, and until soon there was a host of specters.  She discerned them more clearly now.  They were men – thin, almost shapeless men, wrapped in black capes that undulated around them as they skimmed the ground and kept pace with the car’s speed.  They turned their faces toward her and beckoned.  Their eyes were nothing but round black holes.  Unable to force a cry from her throat, she glanced quickly at her husband.  He turned toward her, and his eyes, too, were nothing but two black holes in his face.  Suddenly she was lifted from her seat and floated through the closed door.  The figures sailed to meet her, and in one brief moment before they gathered her in a huddle among them and enveloped her in their capes, she was able to look back and in horror see their car careen across the road, strike an on-coming bus, and pummel pell-mell down the opposite bank.

“The sign says the next rest-stop after the one coming up is twenty-six miles farther on.  Do you want to take over at this one or wait for the next?” she heard him ask. She rubbed her eyes, relieved that she and he were both still among the living. 

“This one coming up will be fine, dear,” she said.  “I’m well rested now.  I’ll take over.  God!  It’s great to be alive, isn’t it?”

He looked at her.  “You sure you’re awake enough?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” she said.  

She drove all the remainder of the way home, happy to let him sleep, slumped with his head at an awkward angle, snoring like a honking goose.  His neck’s going to be awful sore when he wakes up, she thought.

November 22, 1963

Assignment:  Write a poem about President Kennedy’s Assassination

Generations yet unborn that day
When death in Dallas struck,
No doubt will consider history in the same vein
As when Lincoln or McKinley were similarly slain,
But we knew it was a shinning knight they slew.

Gone in an instant’s explosion
Was his brain, spattered in Jackie’s lap.
Gone was his sparkle and wit.
Gone, too, were our dreams of hope.
To our dying days, we are destined to remember
That sad November, and the farewell to Camelot.

Like sacred ritual, we asked one another,

“Where were you when you heard?
Each of us had a story to tell,
And did we cry? Oh yes, we cried.
For most of the three following days
We sat numb before our TV screens,
And watched grim pageantry unfold,
Finally we folded our dreams and put them away.

My Special Place (In-class Writing Exercise)

My special place topped the third floor of the old red-brick house I lived in from the time I was six months to eight years.  It was the attic, but not in the sense of a storage place.  It had been divided into two enormous rooms -- one, the girls' bedroom (my cousin Anita's and mine) and one, the boys' bedroom, which Anita's brothers Larry and Joey shared.  It would be wonderful to be able to return to this place, to work in it, to dream, to think about lots of things.

I remember that at night I would wait for Anita to come up with me, for the narrow stairway that led to the attic was poorly lit, and if alone, I imagined it rampant with scary creatures of every kind.  Those few times when I had to climb the stairs at night alone, I carefully walked the entire way up sideways, with my back against the wall, so that no monster could sneak up on me from behind.  In the daytime, though, when Anita and Lawrence and Joe were in school, and Mamma and my Zia Maria were busy with their many chores, I would delight in going to my special place alone, to sit in the girls' bedroom on the hardwood floor, under the narrow little window, where I would play for hours with my paper dolls, or, better still, would act out exotic adventures I created in my head.  Then would the attic expand to all sorts of magical places outside my narrow little world!

In the late spring and summer months, the attic was almost unbearably hot, but that didn't stop me from seeking out its refuge.  Mamma would be upset to find me there.  

"You'll suffocate in this heat!" she warned.

But I loved it best then.  I liked feeling the drops of perspiration alongside my face.  I liked the martyrdom of bearing my suffering stoically, for throughout my childhood, I was unjustly labeled with the reputation of crying at the least bit of pain, and I resented it.

Were I somehow to go back now to my special place, I know long-buried memories would flow over me in great abundance, and I know I would be able to write without stop, thoughts and words spilling over each other, fighting for place on the page.

Hosanna!

Assignment: " Writer's Audience"

Dedication

Perhaps I should dedicate this sketch to Ray Gripp, in apology for having so rudely asked him what was so damn funny that day long ago, but I choose instead to dedicate it to Linda, who last Thanksgiving weekend sat and laughed with me over family stories from our past, as we invariably do when we get together, my four kids and I.  Each oft-told episode is so familiar that any one of us can repeat it by rote.  We seem to never tire, neither of the telling nor of the laughing.  It was a hectic time, their rearing, yet a fun time, and sometimes on a dreary Pittsburgh day, sunless and chilly, when their father and I seem to rattle around in a lonely house, I miss it terribly.

The following is one such episode from those dear days of some thirty years past.

 

HOSANNA!

What demon could have possessed me that Good Friday afternoon?  What dementia could have taken hold of me and made me think I could get away with taking all four of my lively little ones to the service? -- especially since the church bulletin of the Sunday previous had, in ominous bold type, warned us: 

"....once the "Passion of Our Lord" gets underway 

this coming Friday at noon, no one is to talk... 

nor leave... nor distract the devotion in any way

whatsoever.  Except for the prayers of the priest 

and the responses of the faithful, until the service

is concluded, reverent silence is to be strictly

maintained."

By eleven-thirty that morning, I had all four children scrubbed and nicely dressed and ready to be herded into my blue Oldsmobile station wagon.  It sported front and middle rows which faced forward and a third row that faced the back, and was so long that we referred to it as the Blue Monster.  The dents on rear and front bumpers showed that it was indeed a monster to park. 

"Why do we have to go?"  Tommy, the five-year-old, asked.  His play had been 

interrupted, and he was not happy.

Linda, seven years old and undisputed leader (then and now) of her siblings, said, "because we're supposed to suffer on Good Friday."  Was she being devout, or sassy?  To this day I can't decide, but the year was 1962 -- too soon for her to have been infected with the irreverence of the Sixties and Seventies.  

Stevie offered no protest.  He probably was unaware of our destination, nor did he seem to care.  He was a few months shy of  four, and in those days blithely inhabited a world all his own.  Annie, at two, was content to be carted along as usual.  The five of us were a package deal; daytime baby-sitters were not on my agenda.

Good Friday used to belie separation of Church and State.  It seems to me that most of the world such as I knew it catered to Christianity in those long-ago times.  Many businesses, including the local bank if I remember rightly, were closed from noon to three, and the churches were full.  This particular Good Friday was no exception, and by the time I had found a parking place large enough to contain the Blue Monster, St. Scholastica Church was already packed.  I had hoped to slip quietly into a back pew, where my brood would be as unobtrusive as possible, but Ray Gripp, who happened to be one of the ushers that day, was inside the entrance, and he insisted on finding the five of us seats together up front.  Grandly he led us to a spot four-pews-removed from the altar, and made its occupants scrunch over to make room for us.  So much for being unobtrusive!

The priest had no more than made his way to the altar when Annie began to fuss about not having enough space, so I took her onto my lap.  Tommy poked Stevie and hissed for him to move over.  Stevie opened his mouth in preparation of delivering his trademark, "Mommy, Tommy hit me!", but a look from me stopped him in mid-wail.  The organist, from the loft, filled the church with soft, lamenting music.

"Why are the statues all covered with purple rags?"  Tommy asked.  Even at five, his voice was man-size.

"Shhh!" Linda said.

Tommy persisted in a loud whisper, "Why are they, Mommy?"

"Tell you later," I said.

Annie wanted to play with my necklace.  I moved her hand away.  She turned her attention then to my large silver clip-on earrings and pulled one off.  It ricocheted on the kneeler before clattering to the floor tiles, and rolled under the pew in front of us.

"I'll get it!" helpful Tommy boomed, but I shook my head.

People were frowning at us.  I feared the priest, hearing us, would turn and scold us from the altar.  I perspired under my coat.  Stevie, looking up at the tiny lights that twinkled on the high ceiling, said, "Is that God looking down at us?"

Linda giggled.  

Annie reached for my other earring, and I deflected her hand away.  She started to whimper.  I rocked her gently in my lap.  Her whimper became a cry....then a howl.  Now people were shushing us.  I stopped perspiring and commenced to sweat, and tucking the now screaming Annie under my arm, rose and stepped out into the aisle, motioning the other three to follow me.  They stumbled over each other and we started our exit with what seemed to me to be thousands of angry eyes upon us.  In retrospect, the looks I was receiving were likely not angry, but sympathetic ones.  Some may have been looks of gratitude -- that it was I and not they disturbing the sanctity of the Lord's Passion.

The church door seemed miles away, but doggedly, I led my children ever toward it.

"But Mommy," Linda said as she trailed behind me, "we're not allowed to leave."

"Come on!" I said.

"But Mommy....."

"Linda!"

"Well, okay," she said, "but you told us no one was supposed to leave once it started."  

Stevie stopped to smile up at the lights one last time.  Tommy gave him a shove, and Stevie's howl was added to Annie's, which all the while had never seemed to stop long enough to allow her to breathe.

At last we reached the end of the aisle, and there, like a sentinal, was Ray.  He grinned broadly, and as he reached to open the door for us, I heard him chortle.  Suddenly rage gripped me, that having set out to do a holy deed, I was made to suffer such humiliation.  

"And just what do you think is so damn funny, Ray Gripp?" I asked, but it came out much louder than I had intended, and in horror I heard my words echo and echo again in the cavernous church.  For a split second I dared hope that I had only imagined the enormity of my voice's volume, but the many faces turned my way banished that hope.  I felt a good cry coming on.

At the sight of my tears, Annie stopped her bellowing.  Tommy took my hand and Linda put her arm around my waist.  Stevie, having slipped back into his private sphere again, turned his chubby little face up to Ray and smiled.  Ray, apparently unscathed by my rude remark, smiled in return.  "'Bye, young man," he said, and patted him on the head.

"Mommy!" Stevie shouted, "Mr. Gripp hit me for no reason!"

"I...." Ray started to say, but I held up my hand.

"It's all right, it's all right," I said weakly.  "I've got to get out of here!"  With that I hurried us outside.  Forlorn and spent, with three cherubs around me and one little one in my arms, 

I turned and watched as the great door of St. Scholastica's closed behind us.

Two nights later, all night long, it snowed.  As we rode down Delafield Road on our way to Mass that Sunday, we saw that someone had built a snowman in their yard and had placed an Easter bonnet on its head and had hung a purse on one of the sticks that served as arms.  My children were in snowsuits.  My new pink jacket and hat remained in the closet at home and  I wore the same old warm black coat I had worn all winter.  But Easter came all the same, and although at first I entered the church sheepishly, I soon was caught up in the joy and fervor of the day, and before long, I could laugh at what we came to call our "Good Friday Performance."