do....do....do

Like most people, I have a crazy schedule, with something every weekend between now and Thanksgiving, plus work, plus M traveling, plus MM's lessons and competitions, plus church and volunteer obligations, plus the drudgery of housework since I no longer have a housekeeper. Is staying so busy just a necessity of living well? Or is it possible that we use it to keep from thinking too much about what might have been? Sometimes I feel like I plaster a smile on my face and then run as fast as necessary to keep it in place. I was reflecting on this a few days ago and started a poem, below in a rough state.

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Epitaph

When life is less, and more, than you thought
How do you stay sane?
Do you turn aside, try not to notice?
Do you blind the seeing eye to all but what is?
Do you shackle your heart and gag your spirit,
Its cries a dull roar muffled under years of batting?
Do you let demands and obligations busy you so there is
No time for temptation,
No time for reflection,
No time for regret?
Does it require the self-discipline of ten men, or
Does the possibility of threats, of loss, press you into submission?
Do you imagine others so fragile you dare not upset them
with even wayward thoughts?
And in the end, what then?
“She made others happy.”

the thaw

Once upon a time, there was a writer who wrote because she had to and not because she was getting paid. She wrote for love, for free, for free-dom. Then she got lost. Life happened. A lot. The muse fell silent. Mid-life approached. Fears and anxieties and memories mounted and she nearly crumbled under the pressure. Then she turned 46 and her vision began to return. She opened the release valve, stopped taking herself so seriously, lightened up however she could, and poked around the edges of her own life. Amazed, she found she was still alive. The muse began to waken. Thoughts began forming, at first a trickle then a stream. Words began to unfold in her mind. And, at long last, a Poem emerged.

Hopefully the first of many....

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I Burned Them, All

I burned them, all
The cards, letters, pictures of you
Thoughts and memories caged in journal lines
I thought you would
Float away with the ash
As the pages crackled and blew through the suburban night, all
Those miles and years ago
Two verses remained
Treasured and spared and underestimated
Tucked safely away
With childhood notes and banal essays
Dead, I thought,
But dormant only
Until removed carelessly, complacently
From hiding
Falling to a fertile patch of soul
Setting root
Vining across my brain
With delicate tendrils
And heady blooms
Tall as clouds
I dare to climb
Giants may be there
Golden harps also
The siren call of ancient rhyme
Heart beats fast when air is thin
A softness falls against my face
Too hot for snow
Ah, cinders on a forgotten wind
Far down this creeping stalk
Another calls

(c) 4/19/2010  Cynthia Y. Carver-Futch