Tag: Family

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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Do You Know This Goodbye?

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

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Do You Know This Goodbye

My goodbyes are spinning round
Like our tuxedo wearing cat
Donning daily her puffed paws, slippering her in silence
White like the Southern cash-cow, cotton
Out of boredom, half-wittedness, and ingenuity
She chases her tail
Becomes a blue streak
Changed in the circling
What was the clear delineation of black and white
Marked by etched lines that move neither by force or fate
Is no more
When weary she will stop the cycle of circling back around

That G in goodbye, guttural in grief

Have you heard these goodbyes
The ones that echo, boomeranging back
Like the white-socked bermuda-wearing tourist throwing his voice down the depths of
The Canyon, grand gesture for show
Easily amused at hearing himself come back
Repeating every vowel and consonant
The “H” is still silent in herb
Hard to believe
“H” does not return, now audible, changed by the journey down to the depths
Just back
Landing on your ear canal on the return trip
Instead of lingering along the lines of your chapped dry lips, broken

I know these goodbyes
But I cannot speak of them again
Instead I will learn to sign
Read braille
Code them into Morse
Change the flag’s position on the pole, half-mast says
You’re gone
Anything but speak them from the depths of grief

Please just say hello
When it is time for you to go

Or close the door without a word
Silence holds your memory well

Who put the good in goodbye
One who never knew

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Quiescence

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

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Quiescence

The Earth plays her scales in a C minor chord
First string grey demands a solo
Cancels out Earth’s musical noise
Grey, the sound of dormancy
White noise
Dampens each note
Unuttered, silence
Muffled in the shadows of the shortened days
Cut off at the knees, the sun is tired
And so am I
Like a puppet show, the light plays in the snow
The tree limbs sign the words
So you and I
Mute and deaf to the language of the Winter quiet
May hear and see and know
Muted though they seem
The Earth still sings
A winsome winter song
A breaking bough, the percussion
The weight of white
Her breaking point
How beautiful the silence sounds
As the nothingness takes a bow

The Delicate Task (Plus One)

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

Orange Truck, puddles and clouds

On Your Leaving

If I were to write of your goodbye, it would sound something like this
(I dreamed of loss last night, stammered the haunting memory of the nightmare
Over coffee in the kitchen with your father, I spoke of a baby left behind in the snow)
And so in fact, it is nothing like that, but more of a chilly release of you into the cold
While I am still so warm
(And yet, the dream still haunts me)

In the knowing that you will change
And truly
I always loved you just the way you were

I am numbed by the pain of void
You were you
And I am me, plus you
Sounds so simple, perhaps it always was
You will forgive me I trust, for everything that occurred
Before your leaving came upon me
We were two, close to one
On occasion

I wept
But then you know that, I am sure
You have known me, well
In all the small goodbye’s that have been said
You quietly studied the lines on my face
Tear tracts tell good stories of what lies beneath

Please read between the lines
Knit together were we, not as womb and child
But by a deep love
The thread of which is unbreakable

In the Spring, when you return
Change will have visited me

Because you left
Me loving you
Just as you were
(Because the dream still haunts me)
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall
The snow is heavy on the trees where you are

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Honored to have a poem of mine,The Delicate Task, over at a beautiful new community of words, The Mudroom Blog (click here to go there). I would be honored if you would join me there to read this piece of poetry in its entirety:

The Delicate Task

I watched his hands, a gentle blend of weary

Each line, earned, every callous worn like a medal of honor

The request, brave and earnest

His response breathed through his fingertips, whispers waft and billow

Through the labor of his hands

His yes, a gift of patient, steady love

I look away, the chore asks for silence…..

(click here to continue reading The Delicate Task at The Mudroom)

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Joining Laura today for Playdates At The Wellspring

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