And I Suppose

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

 

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And I Suppose

Dead-headed blood-red geraniums lay in a weary heap
Someone deemed them past their peak
Guilty as charged
I re-adhered them
Bloom by spent and weary bloom

In my imagination lit up with wild hope of on second thought
Second chances defied nature’s laws
For blood-red geraniums who’ve been sentenced to the gallows

I suppose I followed some fool’s
Unwritten rules
Instead of following my own
Protocols of beauty

For a time

And I suppose I am a first rate fool
For once practicing
Deceptive rules of beauty

Explicitly implicit
Many may be found on the compost heap
Beside the geraniums past their prime, clipped and deemed unworthy

One more chip

Shipwrecked ships

I am a fool
Following the broken to a watery grave
Compelled by the cryptic stories they beheld

And for building my own defense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let Me Put It This Way

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

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Let Me Put It This Way

The fetal position was an option
Always
But so was one foot in front of the other
If you read this, say, 50 years from now
You should know
There were poets
Taking the pulse of grief

Of the world
Off the chart
Into unchartered red zones of grief

Weeping in unison drowns sorrow
Buoys the soul
Your shoulder a lifesaver
You shoulder a life and weep with those who weep
And write to tell about it

Catch your breath there is more to come
Save some tears for the next go round
And

Hope
Always

Love, everlasting
More

My tears speak French and Southern and pain
Fluent in make it stop
Last week and the week before that
And this
Drain the spirit and weaken the pulse
But joy
Transfusions of joy
Attend the anemic and weary world

Number two pencil, low on lead
Computer cartridge out of ink
Pens spent
The ebony ink  flowed its last drop
Words, written elude me
The timing could not be any worse
But can you hear my heart

Oral traditions of story telling would do well
To come back from the grave
Would you listen amid all the cries of pain
And tears of valid weeping
Lamentations of  Biblical proportion
Are on the rise

Would you hear the story of hope

I had to share my joy with pain
And pain with joy
My humanness binds me to your wounds
Humanity spans the globe
Crosses the Atlantic, The North, The South

The weary world hangs its collective head and cries
Sunken heads bent downward sink the spirit like the Titantic
Pain is our iceberg

And the spectrum of human emotion
Immeasurable, unfathomable
Mourning and grieving
Crying out, is it morning yet
Mercy, is it morning
Yet

And Jesus wept
And surely He is weeping still

Lord have mercy
I speak Southern and am becoming fluent in
Make it stop

Grace

 

 

 

 

What Will You Always Remember

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

What Will You Always Remember

There are no mahogany framed sepia photographs
Laced in chipped gold gilt, hanging by a thread of rust
Lining a narrow hallway by the newel post worn down
By palm and fist

No black and white, grey and tan or faded Kodak prints
With the look of Nashville filters on Instagram
We are not shown together much

Paired, twinning, con-joined or wrapped arm in arm
Serpentine limbs like Cherry Willow tree’s
Threaded through each other
In an overtly visible way

Not after those early years when
Nascent you
Held
Nascent me

But I will always remember
Tracing your blue-green bulging veins, pumping  crimson blood to the beat of  Onward Christian Soldier
(Or was it some other one penned by Wesley for the choir)
Running like rivulets down your pale underarm
The color of the underbelly of a flounder
Yours was smooth as the red velvet church pew in that
Methodist church
Where I did the tracing
You may have smelled of Jergens
And I may have smelled of intrigue

I closed my pre-mascara-heavy eyes
While your fingers played the piano up my arm
When your dangling digits like participles
Reached the bend
I was to tell you

Whisper that you were in the valley of the arm
While the preacher preached
And I wriggled in my seat

You may not recall at all
Perhaps you only remember the smell of Methodism
And the lingering scent of my wanting to know you more

 

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Ya’ll I Swear: The Lost Art Of Eavesdropping

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

 

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Ya’ll I Swear: The Lost Art Of Eavesdropping

The girl in our tiny little library said she had no friends
(Picture the children’s section of Barnes and Noble
’bout the same size)
So in my defense
(Don’t pity the library for its size
Looks are deceiving)
Earshot and all that
The man on his cell phone was eighty or ninety or just old
Some folks can’t understand
Some of the folks around here
This part of the world has its own language
Like it washed up on the shore
Walked into the hearts, bless ’em,  of the people who came and never left
Who made it home
Still do
I swear I come home sometimes and ask my husband to translate
I swear he knows the language of the souls around here
‘Cause really he’s a better listen than I am
Beauty never sounded so lyrical, sticky sweet like pralines on Market Street
(Except really the sweet potato pies they sell at the bake sale for the church at the Shell Gas station are sweeter so that’s a better comparison
And the Cow Tales are sweeter than that)
Ya’ll I swear I stare with my ears when I hear Geechee
Gullah sounds like it drips off the tongue
(Like honey, ’cause nothing drips like that, but it fast drips
So honey sped up)
Breathless, like there are not breaths or periods or punctuation
And it just drop-drips off the lips, like a honey freight train
The Wiki people say its unethical
But then they show a painting by Henri Adolphe Laissement
Of the Cardinals eavesdropping in the Vatican
So I’m confused because
How can I know their stories if I don’t listen
(Plus when you are pumping gas you don’t have anywhere to go and we don’t have the tv on the pump like they do in Mt. Pleasant)
The librarian told me the girl was just joking
(She, the girl, didn’t speak Gullah or Geechee
She just talked boring like me)
‘Cause after she left and I was still picking out a book from the teeny weeny library
I said I was sad for her
She kind of put my in my place, she was the head librarian so she was in the know,
And I looked really gullible when I said if the lonely girl was still here she could do the 10,000 piece jigsaw with you
Which I am, gullible and an over-feeler
But the man at the BP station where I was pumping gas
You know the one who was just plain old
Well he wasn’t speaking Geechee real strong
So I heard him ask what anemia was to the person on the phone
And I wondered why he didn’t know and why he didn’t Google it
But then I worried about his data plan
And how sick he really was
And I swear I wanted to go tell him ’cause I knew
Sometimes the weight of the world
The truth and the fiction
They get all heavy and jumbly
And I swear ya’ll I want to plug my ears and sing Mary Had A Little Lamb
But I’d miss the music
And the stories
The good ones, the true ones
And I swear ya’ll I don’t know what is more unethical
Listening and caring or not listening and not caring or listening and not caring
I have to go back to the library to return my books
I hope the girl who said she didn’t have any friends
Is there again
‘Cause I want to be her friend
But I don’t want to do a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle
‘Cause I don’t like that kind of puzzle

 

 

 

 

 

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