The View From Different Windows, Judy Colella [phonics readers txt] 📗

That Day

When the trees are etched hard

Against the pulled-tight cold-blue sheet of sky

On a hot midsummer morning;

When to exhale means to feel the painful loss of blossoms'

Killer-soft invitation;

Remember that on a day identical and still too recent

My heart was smeared across the ground like

Silent-screaming tar

By your choice to turn, to spin, to cyclone away from me.

On that day of excruciating clarity,

I was stripped of the ability to ever again enjoy

A day like that day.

Winter is now my home.

A Little Sanity

Little things - faces in letters,

Attitudes in numbers,

Miniscule crevices on the edge of a coin.

I look at these things, these little things,

To distract myself from the larger things,

The ferocities and atrocities of life.

As my mind slowly spins

Out of control and into the very, very tiny,

Very odd world of insignificant flaws

That nature, I really believe,

Put there to catch the side-view mirrors of our eyes

So we can survive a head-on life-collision,

I realize that if this is insanity,

If I am truly out of sync, out of touch,

Out of my mind,

Then I have found my own normalcy.

My own quiet beach in a dawn that parodies sunset.

My own little world.

How nice.

Find Me

 

Find me.

Please.

I’ve lost myself somewhere, nowhere,

Surrounded by shadows

And they point at me.

Accusingly.

They know where we are, so why don’t I?

 

Find me.

Please.

Search me out, seek my soul, my breath,

Before both are stolen

By these shades,

Blades.

They cut my essence, so how do I fight?

 

Find me.

Please.

I’m forgetting myself here, in this place

Surrounded by a vacuum

That pulls me inside out.

Shout.

Let me hear you so I can reach in your direction and away from this void.

 

Find me,

And tell me who I am.

Night Shift

 

Outside, a siren cries trouble.

Inside, all is quiet,

Save for the gentle breathing of my sleeping child,

Her soft mouth half-open in a pout

From her cheek pressing into the pillow.

 

I kiss her hair, breathing in her child-smell,

And smile my love.

I whisper to her how I feel,

And, still asleep,

She murmurs, "I love you, too."

 

Outside, the siren has faded,

Been replaced by a distant train roar, the sound

A bass counterpoint to the haunting one-note melody of its whistle.

Inside, inside me, all is quiet,

Save for her breathing and my own long sigh of contentment,

And now I, too,

Can finally sleep.

FOR THOSE WHO ARE APART

 

Poems for Those Who Have Been Separated by Emotion or Circumstance

 

 

ON A WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

 

As one day becomes another,

All become the same

Except this one.

 

As one memory fades into another,

They share the same old name

Except this one.

 

As one moment tells me I am alone,

The next confirms it, too,

Except this one.

 

As one thought is unforgiving,

So the next says, “Don’t be true”

Except this one.

 

This one thought,

This one moment,

This one memory,

This one day –

Our day –

Speaks of something special, something real,

Something that will never go away.

 

This day is ours.

This memory is sweet.

This moment is filled with you by my side,

And the thought that comes from all of that

Says, “Forgive – stay true”

For no better reason, time, memory, or fact

Than one: I love you.

 

 

REFLECTION A YEAR OUT

 

I remember the day when our love became a solid, unchangeable reality

That gave immediate birth to eternal commitment.

Do you?

 

I’ve counted each day since with the meter of gratitude

On an unstoppable clock, its sound of silent remembrance chiming out that day

When it passes.

Do you hear it, too?

 

I’m here, you’re there, and between us in the gap

Stand love and tenderness, reminding us to remember.

I do.

 

And I’ll never forget it, never stop loving you.

Will you?

 

 

PRISONER’S BIRTHDAY

 

I considered baking myself into a cake and having myself delivered to your cell,

But assuming I survived something like that, you might have to share me.

 

So I thought instead about folding myself into a really big card and having it mailed,

But even if I could pull that off, I might get damaged by the Warden’s letter-opener.

 

That left me with just one option –

A visit, this card, and us alone for a little while.

That made me smile.

 

 

TO A PRODIGAL SON

 

We all make mistakes –

You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last.

I’ve made plenty, and so has your mother.

No one’s exempt from that human ability

To screw things up royally.

 

But we are also capable of doing things right –

There are many things you’ve done

That were not a mistake:

Good things, right things, and you know what they are.

I, too, have done some things right.

 

The best thing, though,

The most right thing - and which I’ll

Never, ever consider a mistake -

Was having you.

 

 

FROM A PRODIGAL FATHER

 

I figure I should have communicated better with you over the years;

That if we’d somehow been more connected,

It would have made all the difference between where you are

And where you could be.

Maybe. I really don’t know.

Anyway, I’m communicating now, and mostly because

I think you need to know how much I miss you,

How much I love you,

How many times my stupid silence was an assumption

That you knew these things.

So if stubbornness, emotional stupidity and self-absorption were crimes,

I’d have been locked up instead of simply walking away from you and your mom.

Maybe they should be crimes. I really don’t know.

But what I do know, son, is

How much my heart aches because you’re there and I’m not allowed to see you;

How much emptiness surrounds me and hollows out my soul because you’re not here.

You’re my child¸my pride, my hope, my heart, things I knew but denied way back then.

Saying, “I love you” every day for the rest of my life

May not compensate for all the days that went past with those words unspoken,

But I think…I hope it’s a start.

Maybe.

So. I love you.

 

 

REASSURANCE

 

Please don’t fear, my darling, that I’ll give my heart away

Before you make it safely back to me.

That will never happen, and the reason why is this –

I just no longer have it here, you see.

 

I gave my heart away to you a long, long time ago,

And figured you would keep it safe and true.

So I’ll never give my heart away, because it isn’t here –

It’s where it should be: right there, love, with you.

 

 

 

GONE TO WAR

 

Looks like the same old block,

Same old cars, people, trash cans;

The sun, moon, and stars are the same,

And so are the clouds and the smog,

But somehow it’s all different

Because you’re not here.

I miss you with open desperation, my friend.

Please do whatever it takes

To keep yourself safe as you do dangerous things

For the sake of the rest of us,

So you can come back –

Until you do, nothing will be right.

 

 

WHEN YOU COME BACK TO ME (A Lonely Man’s Woes)

 

My underwear is pink.

Damn.

I have to go buy a new set of pots to replace the burned ones.

Damn, damn.

My favorite shirt has an iron-shaped scorch-mark on the back.

Damn, damn, damn.

It took me an hour to get the curtain out of the vacuum and fix the stupid rod

(After cleaning up broken glass…)

Damn, damn, damn, and damn!

 

Although I don’t know how you managed all the washing, cooking, ironing and cleaning

Every day,

What I absolutely cannot handle,

What I find infinitely worse than embarrassing undergarments,

Burned cookware,

Scorched clothing,

Or even a mechanical interior decorator that really sucks,

Is waking up every morning in a cold bed

And going through my days without you

Because I failed to appreciate your heart.

 

I miss you, and even though I can dream about you,

It’s far from the same as having you by my side.

Forgive me, my love, and be assured

That no matter what I might look like by the time you decide to give me another chance,

Under the badly-laundered outfit and weird–looking hair (please don’t ask),

Is the man who loves you more and more every day.

LOVE'S SEASONS

FLASHBACK

 I must not reflect too hard,

Yet to reflect not at all is beyond

What I can control.

I cannot avoid the backward glances,

The trances

That take me far away in memory

For moments at a time.

I am here still.

You need call my name only three or four times

To get my half-attention.

But please do call me.

These excursions leave me too weary

And cost too much.

 

 STEALTH-GUIDE

 Tell me