Mag 91 -- Ms. Brooks' students do Poetry Day

She was really pissed, in spite of this strange feeling of long-desired weightlessness, and she wanted to make it clear to her class that she did not appreciate the prank. This was unacceptable. Moving their chairs out into a dewy pasture at the crack of dawn on a foggy day was over-the-top, and the activity would not go unpunished once she had them all back inside the school.

Their voices were muted. She could not at all decide from which direction they came. Her irritation was of a sort she could not recall feeling before: this crankiness was accompanied by a deep sadness and sense of loss. She tried to grab the clearest voice from a puff of fog in the air, then wondered what made her do that. All she had to do was call out quite firmly for the students to come out from their hiding places and return to their seats immediately. It was Poetry Day, damnit, and she was anxious to hear them read their selections even if they weren't anxious to share.
 
In her calmest tone, she demanded they come to class. Then she raised her voice. Then she screamed and her screams sounded like whispers in her own ears which did not feel like ears chilled by fog, but like shells tumbling on the bottom of the sea. She clawed at the fog hoping for better vision of her escaped students, and stomped her feet to feel more grounded but no attempt at control worked.

Rudy suddenly came to mind.....in her mind's eye, which was as focused—no, more focused—than were her big brown eyes now welling with tears. Rudy, the shyest boy she ever could imagine teaching, was her biggest challenge and her highest joy in this, her first year as a teacher. He had sobbed in fear of the assignment after class the day she had told the students to select any poem they liked to read aloud to the class the next week. Just last week. It seemed like long ago. But Rudy's voice was becoming clearer as she recalled soothing him and assuring him that she trusted he would pick a fine poem and would read it beautifully.

She cupped her seashell ear into the fog puff that brought Rudy's words. He was sounding brave and strong, telling what a great teacher Ms. Brooks was (He's talking about me!, she thought) and how rotten it was that she drowned, and how she deserved everyone to read their poems in front of the substitute teacher the best they could. And he would go first. He would read the poem he liked best and hope that she could hear him.

In the surreality of the moment she stood motionless, staring with her mind's eye in the direction of Rudy's voice as he read his poem:

Photography Extraordinary -by Lewis Carroll

The Milk-and-Water School
Alas! she would not hear my prayer!
Yet it were rash to tear my hair;
Disfigured, I should be less fair.

She was unwise, I may say blind;
Once she was lovingly inclined;
Some circumstance has changed her mind.

The Strong-Minded or Matter-of-Fact School
Well! so my offer was no go!
She might do worse, I told her so;
She was a fool to answer "No".

However, things are as they stood;
Nor would I have her if I could,
For there are plenty more as good.

The Spasmodic or German School
Firebrands and Daggers! hope hath fled!
To atoms dash the doubly dead!
My brain is fire--my heart is lead!

Her soul is flint, and what am I?
Scorch'd by her fierce, relentless eye,
Nothingness is my destiny!

Visit Magpie Tales to read other Mag 91s inspired by the photo prompt above.

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Chiaroscuro: a poem

Chiaroscuro

The point of it all may be
just this — in the end:

Shadows fold
like memories and
stretch like dreams;
Full of emptiness like
the hollows that once
housed eyes;
Roaring with silence
like a symphony of bells
without clappers;
Carrying the incense
of our seasons in
their smoky, colorless
modesty;
Freed of woe and suffering —
Freed even of joy; and
Needing nothing forever
except light.

                 MLydiaM ~ November 2011








St. Francis of Assisi in His Tomb, Francisco de Zurbarán, ca.1630/34



This is my nearly-too-late piece for Poetics at dVerse, where this week we are asked in a brilliantly-written prompt by Victoria to Play with Color.

I adore chiaroscuro, so selected the following from her commentary as my inspiration for the approach I took in composing my poem this week: Renaissance painters employed chiaroscuro, significant contrasts of light and dark, to add intensity and passion to their work.



Note: Discussion of the painting here.

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Last kiss

My cousin Ann emailed on Saturday to let me know that Dave had passed away. Although I had talked with her and Davey (using his kid name to distinguish from his father) just last week when they called to tell me about Dave's imminent death, the news from Ann came as a shock. I remember, fondly I do, Ann’s first husband, Dave. I knew them as newlyweds and young parents when I was a tween and a teen. In last week's phone conversation, Davey said that he and his dad had been having breakfast together on weekends. In January Davey called Dave to arrange breakfast and Dave said he wasn’t feeling well. The ill feeling prevailed for some weeks and he went to the doctor to see if his diabetes meds were messing him up. They did an MRI and he was immediately diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer and given two months or less to live. Dave had been under Hospice care and had reconciled himself to the concept of his death. He told Davey and Margy, his son and daughter, that he’d had a great life and had done nearly everything he wanted to do: skied many western mountains, been to Germany, had a business, had a wonderful family.

I enjoyed my conversation with Davey and it actually dredged up a memory from one of the last nights of my mother's life that I hadn’t shared with anyone before then. It is this:

There was such a flurry of caregiving activity around Mama that I know I was guilty of exhaustion and had built a protective shield around me. Each night those last weeks we’d get her ready for bed, play music for her, talk some, kiss her on the cheek and tell her we loved her, then shut out the lights. It was all done ceremoniously and lovingly, but I believe that I must have seemed robotic to her. I think it was three nights before she died, maybe four, I had taken care of all the ablutions with Mike and he went into the other bathroom to get ready for bed. She was sitting on the side of her (rented hospital) bed and I was about to help her get under the covers, kiss her cheek, tuck her in. Before I could, however, she gently patted the bed beside her and quietly asked me to sit down. I did. Then she asked me to kiss her, really kiss her, goodnight – and she leaned toward me. We kissed on the lips, tenderly. Afterward she whispered, There, that was a real goodnight kiss between a mother and a daughter. She made her own ceremony of it.

I have since thought about the ways, the necessary ways, that children separate themselves from their parents. Kisses on the lips seem to be one of the first. Mike’s grandmother wanted to kiss both of us on the lips after our final lunches with her in Portland. I’d already had the experience with Mama so wasn’t surprised when it happened. Not being a parent I don’t think I understand how the memory of little lips on mine could be something I’d miss all the way to the end of my life, and would want once more before it was all over.