There are a million ways to remember Each one goes to war with forgetting How does the slow fading begin of the music you sang Forte Dolce Anthems of your life Each decade had its own When I remember I raise my fist Defiant In the face of fear of losing Knuckles dressed for battle A memory A shadow-dance The ones you made with your life The ones you made with your body Each season had its own I watched every move, every step, each glance And sigh My sigh echoes yours You gave me more of you than I remember Some days I am you here
Mystery stared back from those deep set eyes The ones that would soon know How difficult it can be to remember
There are a million ways to remember Today I swear I’m remembering each sacred part of you Every season has its season Mine is one of remembering
Can be read Stand with me In the shadows In the light Perhaps we’ve forgotten how to be an open book I wouldn’t speak for you Because I can’t
Once when I was young I fingered the rivers on my mother’s skin, stretched taut Followed the blue pathways on a thirty something’s hand Felt her age pulsing in her coursing veins I read age like the blind read a page My eyes partnered with my child-hands Teamed up to untangle her mysteries Heard her body tell the story of a half-life Plus some
As we sat on a pew that was ours for an hour on Sunday Nine/tenth’s of the law And all
In the pews of Methodism, souls lined up to hear Truth be told I could not hear hers Buried deep within her soul
Mink eyes on the face of a fashionable wrap Thrown over the shoulders of a worshipper Stared back at me Two pews up and to the left I thought of his sacrifice for status and beauty (The things of nightmares when you are ten) And I think of that still Her sacrifices too Draped in death
I found the mink eyes Meet my hazel eyes Frozen Motionless Dipped in death I looked elsewhere and then I looked back
Lips were red Injection-less Skin was powdered and rouged Nineteen sixty something And hairspray lingered in the air
Life lines Seek a safe place to preach the stories they have lived
Stand still at the lectern of life
And speak Face the music
Face it I cannot speak for you
Once, when I was young The stories could be read
By looking there Buried deep within the soul Clues lined up, from chin, to cheek to brow To help untangle The mystery of life lived Well I cannot speak for you
I long to read you as a book
Open To tell the stories that should be read In the lines on a face
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A mountain of grief
And a pile of shoes
Met me on the heels of momma’s death
Daddy went first
We went together
Grief shared, grief diminished
Big shoes
Nine or nine and a half
Ferragamo and Stuart Weitzman
Dignity sat at the end of those never-ending limbs
Boney feet, legs
Forgot how to walk
Toward the end
But taught me how to walk
To love
Legs, regal
Queenish and royal
Blue
Like veins
Tributaries, threads of her hands
Blood routes
We sat side by side on Sundays
Hushed on plush red velvet
Quiet as a church mouse, all but my tummy rumbling for lunch at the country club after church
Sweet smells of Methodism and old burnt-red hymnals linger still
I followed the sermon like a ten year old,
catching words and riding the tide of theology
I knew God was in that sanctuary (ten year old faith is strong like that)
The veins of her hands
Like a road map to life
I fingered her gold charms, reading each like a chapter book on a bracelet
Touching the pages
There, on her wrist, like a blind child reads braille
Dreaming of life and lunch
Now I walk out the loss, sift through memory,
find a way to remember
Slip into the slipper-style blue suede driving shoe
This is not a dress rehearsal, not dress-up
Though I am still a child, hers
Left, right
Both shoes
Misfit but sacred
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In Mother’s Shoes: Walking Out Grief firstappeared at The Kershaw County Fine Arts Center as part of a collaboration between myself and Laurie Brownell McIntosh. The exhibition included collaborative painting and poetry from both artists.
The Nursing Home Place Where Life Circles Round and People Cry
It has the word farm in its name making it sound like a rural utopia
Window frames hold mountainscapes in their crosshairs
Norman Rockwell comes to mind until I wake up
She screams like a child in the throes of night terrors
She cannot escape her past
We cannot escape her
We sit in a puddle of her past tears
She is gone but I can touch her
I would leave but the one I love lives here
The food has turned to mush
I remember the jars of baby food
Hers and mine
The circle of life comes to mind
She hated cliche more than I
But show me where the circle may be broken
And I will choose my words more carefully
The rocking and mumbling form the soundtrack of their lives
The hallmark of this place is The Hallmark Chanel
And you can’t measure the height of irony
All the happy endings, screen upon screen
Every love story that was ever written
Punctuated by Walmart commercials crossing the t’s
And January Toyotathon’s dotting the i’s
As every story is neatly sewn up
God get me out of here
For the love of her and all those to her left and right
I simply cannot leave
Weeping is my leaving
I lie when I tell her my tears are happy
She is confused by them
For the love of all that is decent I cannot lie, I cry
(And stretch the truth about the happy tears
There is a co-mingling, of truth and falsehoods)
Right along with the rest of those in the circle
When death stares you square in the face
Even the blue ridged mountains cannot console a grievous soul
Who came to visit
Refused to leave
Refuses to entertain the thought of entering this reality, as if she would have a choice
We can mute the boob tube
But not the continuous coming and going
Of givers of care
And diapers and sippy cups for octogenarians and nonagenarians
We leave with all the passion of a foxhole conversion
Committing to the next visit
Dragging our pain right out the heaving swinging door
Into the chill of the night
Free as a new parolee
Free to love from far away
Free to leave the circle of life and death
elizabeth w. marshall 