Self Portrait with Georgia on My Mind
And no, not the state, though the state
of the state is cause to fret,
no, O’Keeffe, I say, and we
are painting red poppies. We
are sliding crimson beyond the edges
of our canvases and we
are learning to scribble
outside the lines and critics
be damned.
Deep into my sixties I
seek the wisdom of women
who shed convention,
became more than them-
selves, shining. I lift
my brush, a pencil, dust
vine charcoal across my paper,
my shirt, sometimes even
my cheek, crouch toward
sidewalks to chalk messages,
become a message I know
others can’t read,
leave my marks
anyway, every-
where.
Growing up Townie
i. Spring
In a few days I’ll be a few days
closer to the grave, vintage, I’m
a Smith Corona, sticking keys
on J or L, clack-tapping like
kitten heels on concrete paths we
paced outside the ivied walls,
no diamonds in the rough, not even
cubic zirconium, no, just the paste
stones on rings we flashed as if
these signified engagement in a world
we could not comprehend let alone
enter, oak doors, lead mullioned windows,
rooms dark, tomblike, smelling of cherry
pipe, young men wearing the brocaded
yoke of entitlement. In May
there was too, an almost cloying
perfume of magnolia which clung
to our hungers, to our gauzy skirts.
We stood outside, mannequins, until
a few of us sawed our ways out of display
cases good girls were nailed into. We
climbed the loft stairs that led to safe
silence over your parents’ garage,
carried mason jars of purloined vodka.
Somehow we never tumbled
down to where our parents sat and wove
theories about how they surely knew
what they surely didn’t know. So long
ago; the past is a vast and shifting landscape,
a nice place to visit,
as long as you don’t try to make
claim, stay, plant a flag
and insist on living there.
ii. Summer at the Shore
I count backwards, scratch
subtraction problems into
margins of thought as I roll
under, try to recall the sound
of my mother.
How the surf tossed us at least
once each summer, head over
heels, agitated as if
in the heavy soil cycle and we
could not open our eyes
against the saline sting.
It’s hard sometimes to swirl
in the dark, not knowing
which way is down—you can’t
release your tucked knees, can’t
bring your feet to—not exactly
solid ground—the shifting sand
bottom pitting constantly but
at least a something and finally
you come face to sky, air.
iii. Autumn: City
Saturday: a burst of bloom and eighty degrees. On Monday, your friend Sarah says it
felt like such a great lesson in impermanence, Sunday, gray, the cold storm. Think of
the magnolia petals, how, in your home town, they opened like fireworks and scattered
on the rain slicked pavement as if in one fluid movement every spring. Life’s like that,
Sarah says, the chill closing back in over the grit-city neighborhood of your late life,
where you are home.
Believer
I don’t believe in God, my friend says, but she
means the Catholic school god of boundaries and
virginity shoved down the rolled-over, hiked-up
uniform skirts of her youth. She says her husband
and she went to church on 9-11—Thee 9-11—would
you believe it, because I needed comfort and the fucking
priest at BVM went and likened the souls of the dead
to the innocents murdered—yep he said murdered—
every week in abortion clinics. I mean, pardon the pun
but Jesus Christ on a jet ski, do you believe the nerve?
And that’s not God, I wanted to say, that’s an asshole
priest, but I’m an unschooled Jewish girl reared
in a WASP town and what do I know? Today
I know nothing’s as it should be, snow closing schools,
courts, Philadelphia’s streets on a morning that should
find itself well into spring, magnolias already budded
and likely to freeze before they can flower now, snow
coating my Easter roses and hyacinth shoots beyond
bloom. It’s a quiet snow, this one, not the raging wind-
blown Nor’easter of last week that uprooted oaks
and maples already leafing and tossed them like
so many red, green, blue Pick-Up Sticks across highways
and side streets we navigated, our young grandsons
in the car—precious cargo. Oh the majesty and
the torture, terror, of that drive, how we sang silly
ditties and handed out cookies and smiled as if
we had everything in our control. We got home.
Everyone’s safely tucked inside their own houses
as new snow falls quietly, steadily, lays deep banks
onto pavement just after crews finish hauling debris
from city and suburban streets. We are lucky
or maybe blessed, and yesterday sun shone
through the glazed windows of my favorite yoga studio
and coated the wide planked oak floor like popcorn
butter poured generously and the teacher smiled, said
Welcome to the calm between storms as I took my seat,
inhaled deeply and let my breath out with a sigh. I
took breath after miraculous, clean breath and stretched
like a satisfied lap cat into that sunny calm between.