MY WRITING SPACE, IN THIS MOMENT
scattered furniture
what used to be here, now there
drop cloths and paint fumes
jazz notes billowing
rollers, brushes, straight edges –
that man God gave me
© Marie Elena Good, 2021
pictured words
a simple pairing of pictures and poetry
Tag: Love
February 28, 2021
February 14, 2021
NO WORDS FOR MY LOVE
My love for you is deep,
yet my words steep in
tepid water.
No flavor; nothing to savor.
They begin, but fade,
delayed by … what?
A depth I can’t reach,
though I beseech them.
A well with no bucket.
A spell I can’t cast.
My tone, a droning bore.
I wish my words would
soar
surprise
rise
revel
to the level of love.
© Marie Elena Good, 2021
January 3, 2021
A PLEA TO MY GOD
It’s time to unveil
a new year. Inhale fresh air,
and care for what’s there.
Let my voice take wing
to sing in the key of peace.
May mercy increase
where now there are chains.
Where cold-heartedness remains,
may warmth fill my veins.
Let love with no caps
gush compassion, not rationed
in morsels or scraps.
Make me teachable
and easily reachable
when You wish to speak.
Please help me seek You.
In new ways through this new year,
help me feel You near.
© Marie Elena Good, 2021
September 27, 2020
HANDS I USED TO HOLD
I grasped Mom’s finger –
stared into her loving eyes –
my first breath of air.
As a child, always
held her hand to cross the street
and for bedtime prayer.
Sometimes as a teen
I would grasp her hand as we
walked on Naples’ beach.
Elderly, and soon
to pass, she gripped my hands as
though to save herself
as sensation of
falling overtook her, and
she needed grounding.
An honor to hold
dying hands of one who held
my hands in her womb.
© Marie Elena Good, 2020
September 20, 2020
Two Sisters in Three Chapters
Chapter 1. Rain.
The day I was born,
it rained hard on my sister …
submerging her soul.
Chapter 2. Wombs.
Her first pregnancy’s
uniqueness dimmed, when I found
myself pregnant, too.
Pregnant together
again. A son for me. A
tragic loss for her.
Simultaneous
third pregnancies perhaps seemed
a cruel joke, to her.
Chapter 3. Lost and Found.
In thirty-five days,
we lost Mom and Dad, and found
a common heartache.
In thirty-five days,
we lost Mom and Dad, and found
shared grief is shared love.
In thirty-five days,
we lost Mom and Dad, and found
a needed sister.
© Marie Elena Good, 2020
August 23, 2020
FLOURISHING
Sow seeds of love –
for their blooms
are beautiful,
and guaranteed
to reseed.
© Marie Elena Good, 2010
August 16, 2020
Home is where I watch the Buckeyes with Dad
As August slips into the back side,
and daylight is squeezed
into fewer hours,
I miss the distant sound
of drum cadence,
bringing in a new season.
In just a couple weeks,
Dad and I would have had
our decades-long ritual
of gathering in front of the T.V.
and saying (as though it is a surprise),
“Can you believe it is already
the first game of the season?
Didn’t the season just end?”
It didn’t matter whose home we
were in,
until it did.
Those final years, he became too frail,
and it became harder,
and then impossible,
to get Mom out the door.
So we would haul food to their place,
and hope Dad could stay awake
and out of the bathroom
for most of the game.
We hoped he could enjoy it
a fraction of what he used to.
The lamp that was part of each home
Mom and Dad called theirs
now lights my front window
as I write poems
about football
and marching bands
and drum cadence
and Mom
and Dad.
Because poems
and their light
are all that remain.
© Marie Elena Good, 2020
June 21, 2020
YESTERDAYS (Father’s Day 2020 Sonnet for my Dad)
Just one more chance to hear your drum set swing,
And feel the pride well up inside my core.
And I believe I’d give most anything
To watch as you conduct a band once more.
To hear you call Mom Sweet Pea one more time,
And see the love for her in aging eyes
That cleaved to days of youth, well past their prime,
Embracing the enchantment love implies.
From time to time, I feel as though you’re near.
I sometimes hear your words play through my mind.
Oh how I’d love to linger for a year
While you are here, and death is left behind.
Though we may try to hold what fades away,
Our yesterdays were never meant to stay.
© Marie Elena Good, 2020
May 10, 2020
DEAR MOM,
DEAR MOM,
I wonder if you smiled after tucking me in at night, as I yelled, “I love you and I like you,” until I heard you reach the bottom of the stairs.
When I was in high school, you and I would often walk Naples’ beach. I told you how much I enjoyed our beach walks. You told me I would get a boyfriend, and would no longer choose to walk the beach with you. I got that boyfriend, and spent a great deal of my waking hours with him.
I wonder if you smiled each time I asked you to walk the beach with me.
Even through my teen years, you made sure you were home when I got home from school. You didn’t want me coming home to an empty house. You stopped whatever you were doing, and took time to talk. Even then, I understood the blessing of that.
I wonder if you smiled whenever you remembered me telling you I appreciated coming home to you.
I believe early Alzheimer’s began to separate you from yourself. I think you recognized that, and feared eventual separation from all of us. Perhaps that’s why you began saying, “I love you. You know that.” You wanted to make sure your love for us was so deeply rooted that there was little risk of it getting lost somewhere in a possible future of unknowingness. You know that. That little phrase attached to I love you was part of who you were. Yes, we knew that. You were kind, and good. You loved well.
I wonder if you smiled somewhere inside when I whispered, “I love you and I like you,” in those final days when you were growing less responsive.
© Marie Elena Good, 2020
April 21, 2020
MASK MAKER, MASK MAKER
Photo courtesy of Pixabay’s Pasja1000
Mask Maker, Mask Maker,
Make me a mask.
Ward off my cough.
That’s all I ask.
Mask Maker, Mask Maker,
Nothing too posh.
Just make me a modest mask.
Mask Maker, Mask Maker,
Put folks at ease
as they pass by,
and I must sneeze.
Your mission, see,
is to render for me
a smidgeon of PPE.
Then drop it
off over yonder.
Leave quickly,
and leave nothing else, please,
for me. Well, I wouldn’t holler
if TP’s included (I’m ill at ease).
Mask Maker, Mask Maker,
Thanks for the mask!
My husband’s at peace,
no longer repeats
day after day, “Sharing isn’t condoned,”
now that I have one
of my own.
© Marie Elena Good, 2020
