We are like the turtle you rescued from the road
Only to be placed in a small tank
With not enough water
And he’s not eating

I keep telling you he needs to go free
But the small child protests
So he’s still in that tank
With not enough water
And he’s not eating

I dreamt I was setting him free
But found myself in my childhood house
And my father returned from the store
With grapes and mixed greens
Which the turtle crisply munched
Then he rested his head contently
And I petted him like a puppy
I awoke and there he is
Much smaller than in my dream
Still in that tank
With not enough water
And he hasn’t eaten

Do I set him free?
Do I go to the store and buy grapes and mixed greens?
It was so good to talk to my dad last night
When he asked, How’s the family? I said, We’re fine
But here we are
Still in this small tank
With not enough water
Hungering for something more

It will come with its rustling green
And zinging cicadas
Its sound of tires on gravel through open windows
It will come with its late day glow
As light from the drooping sun
refracts through a zillion minuscule droplets
In the afternoon haze
Will it not come?
It will come with the creak of beach chairs
Opening up
Its sparkling specs of sand stuck between toes
It will come with waves of crashing on my shore
But what will its tide bring in?
It will come with the smell of ozone
Rising from raindrops reaching hot blacktop
Like tears reaching scorching tongues
It will come with its rich irriguous earth
That dries into parched hands
Is it not now hiding in spring’s soil?
I’m also busy about sowing seeds
Anticipating its arrival
Do you think I’m not?
I’m planting
Resilience
Independence
Determination
I plan to water them diligently

There was the mourning dove when we lived in our old house.
I don’t recall where we found her, but she had an injured leg.
We took her in, feeding her mush of ground seeds until she recovered enough to limp around the concrete floor in the big mudroom, pecking seeds on her own.
She would wait by the door to get out and follow me to the small yard with its lattice fence.
Peering out the gap, one day she hopped through as I hung clothes on the line.
Once on the other side she looked back and thanked me, then flew off.

There was the robin not long after we moved to this house,
Found while taking a walk, not quite a fledgling yet.
Perhaps he had fallen or been pushed from the nest.
We carried him home and made him a comfortable box, feeding him cat food from tweezers.
As his feathers filled in, his cute homeliness evolved into rust-throated grace.
He first flew from his box to the dining room bench to look out the window.
Later we brought him outside where he adeptly found treasures of worms underground, flying to the low branches, but always returning to us.
He learned to fly to your finger when you whistled and we even brought him on our summer camping trip.
By that time he could fly to the utmost branches at the campsite but always returned at your whistle.
Not too long after, back home from our trip, he flew away.
You whistled but he didn’t return.

There was also the starling, sometime between the dove and the robin
He was dull with emerging hints of radiance in his feathers.
He was recovering well but then we left his box in the room with the air conditioner.
The coldness did him in.
Why did we leave him in there?
Maybe we could have successfully rehabilitated him if we didn’t leave him alone in that cold room.
I just remember him gasping for breath in my palm,
By then it was too late.

We shouted and looked
For hidden treasure filled eggs
While lost to ourselves

Mama, I thought you were sharing with me.
Oh thanks, thank you for sharing.
Eats while humming.
I take a bite
Brother comes in: Hey whatchyou doin’ big girl!
me: Are you coming to Easter tomorrow?
Yeah
Swallows bite, stops humming
Yells brother’s name 5 times in a row until he laughs and answers what?
I got a splinter in my finger
Outside – Yesterday!
Mama
Mama
Mama
Yes
I got a splinter outside (repeats 2 more times)
Yes?
I got the splinter outside
Yesterday
Yes, I know
Was it yesterday or the day before?
Continues audibly munching waffles while singing the word “hi” at different pitches, descending gradually into lower range.
Continues contently humming.

in response to Glo/NaPoWriMo Day Twenty prompt to write a poem grounded in language as it is spoken.

Always bubbling
Childhood dreams emerge
Floating gently
Heavenward.
Iridescent jewel-knitted
Luminous memories now offer
Prayerful quiet repose
Subtly tingling
Under vernally woven xyloid yearnings.

*Ziphozonke is sometimes used as a Zulu name. It literally means “all the gifts”. I also like this definition of the term from the Urban Dictionary.

In response to Glo/NaPoWriMo Day Nineteen prompt to write an abecedarian poem – a poem using words in alphabetical order.

I have 5 “Ziphozonke” in my life who are truly the fulfillment of my vernally woven xyloid yearnings. The youngest, pictured above, commands her presence as vibrantly in my photo stream as she does in the real world. The other four, now grown, command a deep hidden presence in my heart. I’ll have to dig a little further back to find some pictures that capture those luminous memories of childhood for these 4. They are all the gifts!!

I rode home in an airplane next to death one night.
I sat on the window seat and he on the aisle – an empty seat between us
I was flying from Tampa, from a hospital room where my cousin lay dying,
cancer cells eating her.
his hair was dark and greasy and I can’t remember his face.
I think he ordered a
drink. I try to forget.
All I recall is how cold
I felt, how, bent drawn
spine so cold
(I try to forget – I practice forgetting daily)

In response to Na/GloPoWriMo Day Eighteen prompt, which gave examples of poems that “take elusive, overwhelming feelings, and place them into the physical world, in part through their focus on things we can see and hear and touch.” and challenged us to “write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail. ”  This song from Rising Appalachia is so worth listening through – the words of the poetic elegy in the middle of the track are haunting and hit my core.