jenifercartland - Tumblr blog

[jenifercartland]

On watching waves swish forward and back

What is worth noticing, my friend,are the waves that stand out,that trip up against the others.The regularity of current,old moon pulling, hypnotizes.But don't let it loll you into missingall those unique wavesthat find a way to stand out,against all expectations.Sometimes, they are pushed by an unexpected wall or reef.Sometimes, they play with a mermaid's tail.And sometimes, they are just…

[jenifercartland]

Vacations with my father

We always expected that in two short weeks a whole year could unwind so that we were left surprisedand still tell storiesof when on the sailboat your voice broke furiousthrough the windas we stumbled over the bow,and we all sat then at dinnerfrightened, exhausted trying to find our humor.

[jenifercartland]

Photo of my mother at age 6

Miniature umbrella shadows face,you shivered on the fieldsome time in the fuzzy past and are shuffled together now in a pile on my desk,Rhyme, reason vanished,and irrelevant, since one moment later you may have been transformed by lightening or thunder or life.Yet we drag around our pastin an every-lengthening caboose, forever needling throughour hopes for today.What is the method for unleashing…

[jenifercartland]

What love could learn from fungus

How to amble acrosswide swaths of earthwith an ever-willing thrill,how to spew spores of joyevery time someone tried to uproot you,how to settle into a problemlong after everyone else has walked away,how to blossom best on rainy days,how to feast on tiny bits no one else could endure,how to survive in air, sea, mountain, tundra,how to master each pretension,meant to hem you in.

[jenifercartland]

Counting

six catseight handsso we measure twelve feetthe length of our livesand all things we collect

[jenifercartland]

As dawn opens

The storm has blown throughafter rolling over us for two days. It has left a soft bitterness to be savored tenderly and then releasedas we can.

[jenifercartland]

Hospice

I witness a tree unleafand my heart is softened knowing it will releaf next spring.But there is no softening watching you unleaf,no such imagined spring to keep me companyin the heart of winter,no such certainty in time frame,no such pattern in your fall,no part a burden to shareeven with youin this loneliest time.

[jenifercartland]

The first time I saw moonlight

It was in the cloudsin bright patches against black sky.And as my eyes followed it,the sloped branches of the pine lit upand cast a shadow on the dried grass.How could I have lived so long,awoken so many nightsand not understood what the poets say --that moonlight makes them howl,brings clarity when they least expect it,often in a pounding moan?

[jenifercartland]

Waiting for rain

Leaves begin to shiveras if the rain has come already.The branches toss -- worried,varied, attentive,trying to anticipate --nothing, no rain yet.A timeless hush now falls while the wind turns its attention elsewhere, and we indeed hold our breath with the trees,wait upon waitfor the rain to pour downand wash us all.

[jenifercartland]

Learning to heal

It is there when I wake up,that deep ache in the narrow of my shoulders from changing a flat tire that night in the rain, angry at him, at myself.Most days, it is buried so deepit is not perceptible. But today, the pain is in every moving breath. This is the last of what he left me,when he finally marched out to his other war.In the decades since,in the meandering of life’s bountiful…

[jenifercartland]

November, 1994

Looking into the window, I see a murky reflectionof the face I have studied with curiosity these long years.It surprises me by its freshness, the wire mesh running across the pane draws smooth all crooked lines. Am I as young, unfettered, as my reflection tells me?But I see only a portion, that lit my small lamp here.The rest is dark, unknown.Only time will reveal, only brighter light will…

[jenifercartland]

The rain has come

At long last, a celebration pours from the sky and cool air floats over our home.All flowers, each tree, every blade of grasssighs in relief and joyas if a hunger march has just endedon their last breath.Blue jays, titmice, crows, even hawks, stay out to play, winds and all.And this evening, after the water has softenedthe hard cracks of the soil, drooping branches will be coaxed back to life.…

[jenifercartland]

Prayers from my mother

All the Marys in the world can not save me from myself. So it seems. I hear my mother shouting,One step at a time! Don't run in the house!or some such admonitionagainst gracelessness,and all the Marys chorus heras if female chaos is the only cardinal sin worth fretting over.Each night, I pray for grace,and each day, they chant the same.One step at a time! Don't run in the house!But at this late…

[jenifercartland]

The outcrop

Lonely windbreathes across the edge of land.Its inhale,its exhalesighs as it slides over the curves of boulders.The only words day upon dayare the wind skimming, curling,whispering its truthsto its old friend.

[jenifercartland]

The tree dreams perhaps

How do you bear ityear after year —no ability to run away,only to accept or deny, but never to act? The weather pours down upon yousometimes kind and nourishing,sometimes fierce and unyielding. Today the snow stiffens the coat of frozen rain from yesterday. Your branches hang pendulous down your sides,each needle holding its own strand of snow-ice. I am uncertainwhether to admire your new garment…

[jenifercartland]

The rain comes when it will

Waiting for the rain takes patience in this time of life.When I was a child it rained oftensometimes in such torrents that we ran into the garageand climbed on garbage cansto watch it like the last three minutes of the NBA finals — long, punctuated, shouts, pauses.We crashed the lids in imitationand celebration.But now it seems to drip and fuss,as if the flowers and trees,had just better get used…

[jenifercartland]

What the snow shows

When it snowsyou notice the trees that have fallenall year round.Leaning on others,they come into view, heavily arched,tipped or brokenwith just a slideof white drawn along their edge separating themfrom the rest.It is as though the woods have become a cemetery voices tenderin regretat not having noticed each losssooner.