Growing apart: a poem

Growing apart

What was the sun to us then?
Certainly not a danger.
More like a daytime mother, wrapping us
in the warmth of our country yard,
where blankets, spread over pungent
meadow grass, smelled distinctly of
tanning oil, lemoned water, sweat,
and one large creek-wading spaniel.

Or like a most seductive babysitter,
promising rewards for patience, for
goodness, for goodness sake,
forsaking all others.

Even a little like the father we dreamed about
beaming and strong,
unaware that we were growing up
as sagebrush does;
and also growing away
from that desert spot
as sagebrush does not.

Growing
                              apart

came after many trips around the sun.
   
Sagebrush does that.
No longer chooses to be loosely rooted
near one that shared its growth,
near one that appears too similar
to be noticed
for its differences.

After random tumbling on native soil
and in the winds on high;
after catching up, then feeling
snagged and burned and burning,

There is nothing new under the sun to us now
except this new sun is a danger, and
we are too different
to notice our similarities in
forsaking each other.

                               MLydiaM ~ November 2011



Submitted for Poetics at dVerse Poets. This week we are asked by Sheila Moore (in a post that is so beautiful it is much more a gift than a poetry prompt) to consider Changes: "What changes, big or small, have you experienced in life? Write a poem about one of them and share it with us . . ."

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Reading blogs, books, my sister's mind

Two Sisters by William Bouguereau (French 1825-1905)



I'm having this problem with posting and it is that I love reading other blogs! The blogosphere is new to me since creating mine, as I'd only read a few blogs in the past. But now I visit my bookmarked favorites daily and those visits lead me to other suggested blogs, and on and on I travel.

This is cutting into my reading in bed because I'm so tired by the time I get there that I can only stay awake for a few pages. At this rate it will take me an embarrassing amount of time to complete Reading Lolita in Tehran. My younger sister, Nel, sent it to me last month and wants it back when I'm finished. Because it is an amazing and compelling read it's not one I would be speed-reading anyway. But for the next week I am going to try to limit my nighttime blog reading, get to bed at a decent hour (I've felt sleep-deprived lately -- a dangerous condition for my psyche), and enjoy this book.

Vladimir Nabokov's memoir Speak, Memory is one of my favorite books, one I've re-read many times. Last Christmas I sent a copy to Nel, and she wrote afterward that it was ironic to receive it since she had asked her husband for Reading Lolita in Tehran as a gift. Those are the kind of touchstones that grace our sisterhood, although we live 2400 miles apart and haven't seen one another since 2001. We're not phone people so we've talked on the phone only twice since our mother died in 2000. I write and email more frequently than she does because she has two sons and is self-employed. Still, we are close in our own way.