Kickstart This Poem

Somebody kickstart me please

And where did I put my keys

To the place I keep memories

where limits aren’t what they seem

and where I remember my dreams

where I wake to the glory of day

Instead, in my bed I delay

Somebody kickstart me please

Somebody point me the way

I live in a maze of hallways

My mansion has too many

Closed doors and dead ends,

Its rooms well defended

With padlocks and bars and

Painted-closed doors oh

Somebody point me the way

And tell me, what will it cost

to retrieve all the things I have lost

that are rightfully mine

and shouldn’t cost a dime

But I’ll pay what it takes anytime

For some drive and motivation

And faith in real salvation

Just tell me, what will it cost

Beneath the Christmas Branch

Beneath the Christmas branch
I linger on the eve of magic promised long ago
Still waiting for wonder to stun me into
waking from the dream of lack and fear,
I put in time until Santa is proved
or until I die, whichever arrives first

Will a burst of colour explode the sky
into faces and flowers, reflections of
Powers long thought lost, faeries flitting
between motes of light so bright
I dazzle eyed shrink back into my little self
on the shelf of a worldly world

Of material goods, the daily grinding me
down into the size I am, a safely
Matched set with all my others, mirrored people
fitting into the churchly steeples
One like another, like the next and the next,
I never fit that mold but grew cold trying.

Lying to myself, like parents lie
to children on this eve, wait, Santa will
Come if you are good, implying that
deviations from standards of behavior
will be punished by withholding magic,
a tragedy only if you believe

Me, I conceived a plan to stand on firm ground
of consensus reality, from the moment
I woke to see my mother’s guilty hand
stuffing the stocking at my bedstead instead
Of he who had been promised, oh the lies

stuffed my head like a winter cold
congealed into rules, laws, expectations of
lack of magic, the manifest realms made
Mundane by scientific formulae containing
no possibility of deviance or creativity

So when magic comes, it takes me by surprise,
and return it does, over and over, yet
Somehow seldom on this eve of eves,
such promised time laden with expectation

of specialness and sweets while replete we be
with savoury stuffings and fruit, yet
ever magic lingers elusive at the edge
until the moment we least expect it.

Xmas 2009

Miracle in the Parking Lot

Nothing makes you appreciate money more than not having any. Raising two boys on an income fixed at a level well below the basic needs of my family meant not having any was the norm for the last two weeks of every month. They were hungry boys, growing fast, and I liked to eat a bit myself.

On this day of days, I was desperate. What to do? We were out of everything: bread, cheese, pasta, condiments, anything the kids would eat, and my cheque wasn’t due for another week. I’d exhausted all the possibilities: I’d rolled up and spent the last of my collected coin stash and used every scrap and shred of food in the house. I didn’t know anyone I could borrow money from, and I was unwilling to get into a pattern of owing money I knew I couldn’t repay.

The ache in my chest swelled to bursting and I began to cry in pure thwarted need. I left the house and began walking in the direction of the grocery store. “God, fairies, whatever magic exists that cares and could help me, I really need it now. I don’t know where to turn. Please, my kids are hungry, help me.”

I repeated this prayer over and over like a litany, wandering aimlessly with my eyes to the ground, my tears mingling with rain that streamed from the deep gray belly of cloud that hung so close overhead I felt I could reach up and touch it, if it weren’t such a burdensome effort just maintaining an upright stance. Part of me wanted to give in, collapse to the ground, and let somebody else take care of my kids, somebody who could. I felt a horror of failure, beaten down by circumstances and my own painful inadequacy.

When I got to the grocery store, I stopped short. What was I doing here? I had no money to buy anything. I turned to walk through the parking lot, thinking to take the path that would lead to the beach on the other side. My cast-down eyes spotted a strange-looking scrap of paper flattened by the rain. Without hope or real curiosity, simply because my body seemed to want to, I walked over and picked it up.

It took a few heartbeats to recognize what I was holding, and when I did, my heart nearly stopped. It was a hundred dollar bill. I couldn’t have felt anymore stunned if it had been a million. Do these things really happen, my numb brain wondered? Who would drop a hundred-dollar bill in the parking lot?

An angel, maybe, or a helpful fairy. Perhaps my own desperate desire magicked the thing out of thin air. I didn’t care which. I only knew I had been saved, that my kids would eat.

When I walked home laden with everything from bread and cheese to toilet paper, I told my boys the story of the miracle in the parking lot. More than anything, more than the fact of finding the money or having enough food for the rest of the month, I was grateful for this evidence of real, practical magic in my sons’ lives. It made the stories of miracles and magic I loved to tell them seem more true and possible. A crack had opened in the grey clockwork universe that let shards of light, colour and mystery enter my world and the eyes and minds of my children.

It’s March 

word: havoc
question: What is grey and drab and all round yucky?

My least favourite month of the year has got to be March. There’s something about this time, despite the new growth shooting forth and the promise of spring that shows in the calendar if not in the air.

March plays havoc with my emotions. Every year, no matter where I live, March feels just the same. Where I grew up in the North, there was more snow in March than here in the sunny southland, but as soon as the calendar turns from February to March, the mercury inevitably drops precipitously, the sky greys over and the world feels heavier.

Today is Easter Sunday, and the calendar claims that spring has come at last, yet this cold, grey snow-spitting day denies that and replaces it with its own March agenda.

February was lovely. We had sun, the crocuses bloomed, the buds were bursting forth on the branches. And I suppose those things are still happening; I’ve seen daffodils recently. But the air feels clammy and cold, the sky is grey and the wind blows unforgivingly. The world holds tight to winter in March as though reluctant to surrender its grip to spring’s balmy breezes.

This is the month when I have less energy and ambition than any other time of year, which explains why this piece is so short. What else is there to say about March? Except that it is nearly over, and thank goodness for that.

It was a guy job, in fact, all the guys in town worked there, but in the seventies there were already a couple girls at the mill so I thought I’d give it a try. It appealed to my tomboy side, always strong in my girl heart. As a kid, I was the one who played outside making roads, towns and tree forts with the boys. When I did play with dolls, I put them through their paces outdoors, chopping off their hair and staging elaborate space-operas (including some disturbing scenes of torture).

Thrilled to be hired on at a job that paid so well and came with such a coolness factor, I invested in the required pair of steel-toed boots (hard to find in my size), donned jeans, plaid shirt and hardhat and strode off to work. I was assigned to pair with an older woman (in her forties, but she seemed quite old to me—older than my mother) piling one-by-fours. The lumber landed beside us via chute from the guys upstairs who cut it to size; we piled it neatly on pallets and strapped the finished loads for the forklift to haul away.

Once I got over the considerable aches and pains of the first few days, I loved it. The machinery broke down regularly, so whenever we fell behind we were assured of a chance to catch up. We paced ourselves, worked hard and steadily and were able to rest during some of the breakdowns once we caught up. The first two weeks I worked day shift: then I rotated to afternoons, 4pm until midnight, which meant going to parties late in work boots, covered with sawdust and sleepy most of the time.

One day, one of the men approached us, a dark, heavyset Portuguese man that I didn’t know well. He said in a heavily-accented voice, “Girls, you shouldn’t work so hard. You work too hard!” He kept looking around as though worried that someone would see him. At our puzzled stares, he only repeated, “Please, don’t work so hard, it’s not good.” Then he anxiously hurried away.

We quirked our eyebrows at him, shrugged, laughed and went back to work. Obviously, the guy was threatened by our ability to do the job so well. It made us proud and motivated us to work even harder.

A few days after that, the foreman sauntered over to us. He hooked his thumbs in his vest, smiled toothily and said, “Girls, you’re doing very well. So well, in fact, I’m going to have to lay you off. The job’s too easy. I figure one man should be able to handle it.”

So. That was that. There was no possible argument to that logic, not in the seventies in the North. In a daze of helpless rage, I packed up my steel-toed boots, turned in my hard hat and went home. I took a job as a waitress down at the Chinese restaurant, trying to decipher the lesson I’d learned. Working too hard was wrong? Success was failure? Only if you were a woman, it seemed, and I added it to my every-growing list of all the ways it sucked to be female.

They hired Gordie from down the road, a burly young guy, to do our job. A few days after they hired him, they had to hire someone to help him, but we weren’t called back. I was crushed, but it was worse for the other woman, who had worked there for years with a family to support. I was just a kid, and I tormented myself with the fantasy that I had caused her to lose her job.

The only positive result from that fiasco was that it compelled me to return to school and graduate. I hated waitressing, but I might be at the sawmill today if I hadn’t been laid off.

Woman of a certain age and shape seeks soul mate

Must be willing to surrender everything to the one you love (me), to adopt my particular form as your physical ideal and to be my ardent admirer in all areas. The sound of my voice must thrill you and the scent of my body intoxicate you. I will become your drug.

I expect to occupy the center of your attention at all times, and while I am absent, you should spend your free time devising new ways to please me. You will be expected to pay frequent sincere compliments without being asked. It is essential that you know exactly what I am thinking at all times to ensure that you do not say anything that might hurt, shock or antagonize me. You must learn to consider my feelings and well-being to be a sacred trust which it is your task to nurture with the utmost care and tenderness.

I am unique, and I know exactly what I want. You will be expected to know what that is at all times, to serve me without question or complaint and to worship me as your Queen. I will not reciprocate the worship (though I will occasionally caress your flesh and feed you enough crumbs of affection to keep you enslaved) because living in a patriarchal society has put me off Kings. Women must rule! – beginning at home, of course.

Once I have practiced my domination technique on you and gotten it right, I will move on to conquer patriarchy and grind the former world masters under my cleats. I expect you to follow faithfully at my heels, for I shall require someone to keep me supplied with excellent coffee, chocolate and back rubs.

As a reward (if you behave impeccably in all ways), you will be allowed to retain your testicles intact. More or less.

Anyone who sews knows
material, its many moods,
its medley of makes
Shimmering silk, sleek satin,
Lush velvet, tough denim

I would rather caress
than converse about cloth,
I would rather admire
than try to define
its warp, weft, selvage

Textiles have no translation,
being innocent of subtext
I stroke silk and velvet
My skin finds comfort
in its blind, braille world

No one knew that the one who gave the mirror was a wicked fairy. The fairy had used her own magic mirror to foresee the future and was forewarned that the princess would grow into beauty and magical power to rival her own. Her overweening pride and jealousy could not allow such a future, and so she gave to the little girl a trick magic mirror. The trick was that the young princess would grow up with no image of herself that was not born of how some other person saw her.

Since no two people ever saw her the same, and since the older she grew, the more divergent became others’ images of her, her self-image soon became fragmented and weak. On one day, she might look into the mirror and see a beautiful, poised, proud princess. On another day, she might see a frightened helpless child, a spoiled sulky brat or a sly manipulative seductress.

These conflicting images frightened and confused her, and she began to keep to her rooms as much as possible. Because the mirror encouraged her to believe that she herself changed to cause the differing images she saw, she began to think of herself as an uncontrolled shapeshifter. The magical influence of the mirror combined with her own innate magical abilities caused others to notice her changes as well; she became known for her ever-shifting countenance, so that by the time she was nearly grown she had no face that was truly her own.

One day, while pacing in her rooms, alternately gazing into the mirror and avoiding looking at it, she was startled by a small voice that seemed to have no source but the shadows in the darkest corner of the room.

“You must break the mirror,” the voice whispered.

“What! Break the mirror? Oh, that I must never do!” she gasped, whirling about in a futile attempt to see who had thus addressed her. “Who are you, to advise me so ill?”

“I am your shadow,” the voice hissed. “I tell you now, you must break the mirror.”

“Shadow? Nonsense; I have no shadow!”

This was true. The princess had gazed so much into her mirror that her shadow had slipped away from her to blend with the greater shadows in the castle.

“You had a shadow once, and it was me,” the shadow whispered in dry, rustling tones.

“I think not, for I am a princess and my mirror has assured me that princesses do not have shadows.”

“Every living thing, lest it be utterly transparent, has a true and ordained shadow of its very own. I am yours and I am telling you, you must break the mirror. You will never know your true self until you do.”

“If you are my shadow,” the princess demanded, “then prove it to me. Come now and attach yourself to my feet like a proper shadow.”

Slowly, like flowing oil, a small patch of darkness detached itself from the dark recesses and moved toward princess’ feet.

As it neared, the princess became frightened, and danced nervously about to prevent it touch her. The shadow whispered, “Hold still.”

“I will not,” the princess quavered. “I have changed my mind. I believe you. Don’t touch me.”

“Too late,” the voice rasped. It struck and stuck like glue to the soles of her feet, and nothing she did would detach it. Wherever she moved, the shadow moved also. After a time of futile leaping, twisting, rolling about and desperately rubbing her feet on the carpet, the princess collapsed on her bed, weeping bitter tears.

From beneath her on the bed, its rustling voice terrifyingly close to her ear, the shadow whispered triumphantly, “Too late, too late, too late. We are wed now and can never again be separated. I am your true and only shadow, and you must learn to live with me.

“And I tell you again, for the last time: you must break the mirror!”

“No!” shrieked the princess; but the shadow exerted itself to lift her from the bed toward the great mirror on the wall. To her horror, she could not stop herself raising it high and dropping it onto the stone floor, where it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

In each fragment could be seen reflected a different face. In some she was old and in others she was young; in some she was ugly and in others she was beautiful; in all of them she was screaming.

In response to her cries a dozen of her housemaids and ladies-in-waiting swarmed into the room. When they spied what had happened, the maids busied themselves to sweep the silvered shards into a gilded wastebin. The princess kept the wastebin by her bed, but gaze into its depths though she might, nevermore did she see any single image, only a kaleidoscope of clashing reflections.

Her shadow stayed, of course, bothering her with its endless whispers. “Each of the images is false, but all together they are true,” it rustled in pleased tones. “Your true self cannot be shown by a single image but is a gestalt of all the images seen together.”

“Oh, be quiet or be gone!” she snapped. “This is all your fault! If it weren’t for you, I should still possess my beloved mirror.” With a tearful sigh, she turned her eyes from the golden wastebin.

“You grieve for the mirror,” the shadow rustled. “Why? Did it make you happy?”

“No,” she admitted, “I don’t suppose I can ever have been happy, for I was always so frightened of what others thought. But my mirror was my only friend, a better friend than you. It spoke to me often, as you do now, but so much more sweetly. I miss it terribly.”

“You will recover, and when you do, you will be grateful the damnable thing is gone,” the shadow hissed. “For though it appeared to be a blessing, it was an evil, and it has stolen your life from you. I should know, for myself it stole first of all.”

“And you, I suppose, are my life?” the princess jeered. “What are you, but a spot of darkness on the floor and a nasty nagging voice in my head? I believe I was fortunate to lose you and unlucky to have you back.”

“We shall see,” the shadow replied.

I know that I have been deeply touched and influenced by more people than I can easily remember; teachers, lovers, friends, family, but it’s very difficult to pluck three names from that past morass of mixed-up events, things and human interactions. I often feel sad about that; I feel I’ve lost something precious. I look forward to the day (often spoken of) when people get older and past memories become clearer. Does that actually happen? I want to remember everything and everybody!

Most of my past is a kaleidoscope, a moving collage of faces, feelings and snippets of conversation and action all swirling about and it becomes clear that the number of people who have touched me deeply and influenced my choices is great indeed. I’ve moved around a lot and experienced much in nearly fifty years of life and I haven’t lived under glass. I’ve been touched and I’ve touched others and everyone I’ve met has influenced me in one way or other.

There is, however, a certain class of people whose faces will forever remain in sharp relief; whose emergence into existence changed me more deeply than anything ever could have up to that point, and who continue to affect me profoundly, changing my life over and over. I speak of my children, conveniently (for the purposes of this exercise) numbered three.

My first child came when I was very young, younger than my years. Then, I wanted a child the way a child wants a toy: babies are so cute and all my friends had one, even my younger sister had a baby. A baby would give me something fun to do, I felt, I’d always have someone to play with and I’d be guaranteed someone who would want me around.

When that little person opened her eyes to the light, she opened my eyes and heart as well. Like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day. She was beautiful and precious beyond what I could have imagined, and I fell madly in love with her. She, not her father, taught me what real love was. Even now, I feel a thrill at the memory of those early days with my sweet new baby.

When I became pregnant a second time, I feared for the new baby who I believed was bound to be less beloved than his beautiful older sister, queen of my heart.  I couldn’t imagine loving anybody in the world the way I did her, but Nature (a Mother herself) provided, and when that little boy’s eyes met mine, my heart again swelled to accommodate all the new love that I had given birth to that day. I felt an entirely new space in my heart open up, one that had never existed before. A miracle!

It was unimaginable that it would happen again because my third child was an accidental conception. I did not want to have another baby. My oldest was not yet two and the second only nine months old when I conceived. It was unfair! Baby, go away, I cried! I planned an abortion, feeling strong and justified in my decision. However, once again Mother Nature intervened with the help of the strong-hearted being in my womb.

Between the time I made an appointment to have the inconvenient pregnancy removed and when I actually saw the doctor (who ended up delivering the child), I had an experience which changed my life and perspective forever. A rippling sensation flowed through my body like cool water trickling pleasurably down from my head through my heart and into my womb.  For the first time, I recognized the person inside me. He was forced to assert his presence and identity to me sooner than the other two. I invited them in; this baby had to tug at my sleeve, introduce himself and request admittance.

“Hi, this is me,” he whispered, and I immediately knew who he was, a warm, familiar and beloved presence. All thought of abortion vanished, and I gained an understanding of what I can only call magic—the truth of the spirit—that what was growing inside me was more than simply tissue. This was not something I would impose on other women, for I was, and remain firmly pro-choice, but my own choice was made then and there.

These three people each grew  in their own ways to become loving, responsible and impressive adults who continue to profoundly affect all those who know them. I am proud to have been able to introduce them to life, and I am grateful for my own mother who did the same for me. So thanks, Mom.

The point of Swedish Dodgeball was to hit people with the ball. If they were hit, they were out, and then they’d go back behind the other team’s line and join in trying to hit whoever was left. In that game, I was magic. Untouchable. By the end of the game, it always came down to me and whoever was left on the other team.

My secret, of course, was fear of being whacked with the ball. They used a regular volleyball, which wasn’t nearly soft enough for me. Nerf dodgeball I could have handled. The girls shrieked ‘ouch’ and the boys made stoic grunting sounds when they were hit. It was a sadistic sport. I don’t remember ever actually being hit (though I suppose I must have been), but I do remember going to almost supernatural lengths to avoid the ball.

More advanced version of the game involved multiple balls, so in addition to being incredibly coordinated you had to have eyes in the back of your head. I could do that. Fear of pain will spur a body to feats of magic. I’ve always had a low pain threshold; I allowed myself to become pregnant only by dint of conveniently forgetting (until the eighth month) that pain was (gulp) centrally involved, then spending the last month in terror listening to ubiquitous tales from other women relating their own childbearing agonies in salacious, play-by-play detail.

But I am speaking of sports. My only other brief spasm of sports-related activity was as an adult. I played ladies’ rec softball for a single season. I got better fast; in fact, I won the trophy for ‘most improved player’ but that doesn’t mean I got good. It just shows how really, really pathetic I was at the beginning.

Nothing could have induced me to play a second season, though. Way too much pain. I couldn’t handle a game that involved actually trying to make physical contact with the ball; not a big soft squishy ball, either, but a hard round missile that left purpling bruises all over my body. I could never quite catch those bouncing low grounders..

By the end of my first and last season playing softball, my legs weren’t fit to be seen in shorts. I looked like I’d been mugged by a midget. If the point of the game had been to avoid the ball, I could’ve been a star, but as it was, I was middling pathetic, flinching away instead of chasing after the ball, and then getting hit in the legs anyway.

Softball was a masochistic game all around. Everything resulted in pain. Sprinting at top speed from a standing start, whacking a hard ball with a hard wooden bat and screeching to sudden bone-jarring stops all resulted in various agonies in hips, shoulders and other wrenchable joints. And for what? The rewards were never clear to me, while the punishments were obvious. Even the best players hurt after a game. It was a joke.

My other problem with softball, aside from the pain thing, was I could never get the hang of how to throw the ball properly. Naturally, I threw ‘like a girl’. I couldn’t figure that out. Why didn’t boys throw like that? Was there a “Secret Order of Balls (S.O.B.)” in which boys were initiated into proper throwing techniques and warned, on pain of expulsion from the brotherhood, never to reveal the sacred mysteries to a female?

Not being much of a conspiracy theorist, I eventually decided it must be a matter of anatomy. Boys’ arms were jointed differently than girls. The occasional girl or woman who could throw the ball properly must have had some boy genes somewhere. Then there were boys like my brother who also threw like girls. Well, clearly they lacked the ball-throwing boy gene.

Now, I’m told it’s a simple matter of technique: how you ‘cock your elbow’ (hmm). I’ve been assured that I could easily be taught to throw a ball much farther than I ever dreamed possible. Even if it’s true, frankly, I’m not interested. There’s still the pain problem, and the question ‘why bother?’ has never been adequately answered.