For half of her life, my daughter has liked to make clothes. At age four she made her first dress by cutting several old dresses into strips and then stapling them back together, adding a few pom poms for good measure. I shared this story with Erin, owner of sewBoise and recipient of Idaho Business Review’s Accomplished Under 40 Award. She told me she learned to sew from her grandmothers.
The Stranger: Erin
The Word: Curve
The poem I wrote:
“Reading my children the 1001 Nights”
With stories I weigh
them down like bags
of sand in their bicycle baskets.
Without such weight
I fear they will kiss me
and scatter to the wind,
too light to know
how grownups love, imperfectly,
and what happens at birth
and the red fact
of blood: and the curve
of life toward death,
and so these children
walk their heavy
boots and hold fast
to earth, each step deliberate,
leaving garden after garden
with my blessing.
The Challenge: Do you have a poem in you on this word? Write one here.
May 3, 2019 at 9:25 pm
Pregnant
Me: elbows, opinions
You: nine months of midnight kicks, hiccups
make me laugh in a new way
Us: Sweet child, you soften my angles into curves
Create a pillow in my body and soul
With a space carved out, just right for you.
Grow, baby, grow.
May 4, 2019 at 4:57 am
The Say Hey Kid (For Willie Mays)
He played and stayed
and played and stayed too long
and played,
stumbling where he used to glide.
Why, Willie, why?
“I’ll play every day if I get the call
to send a curveball screaming
I’ll steal second base with a dusty smile face. After all,
What are legs for? and fine ash bats? and brown/orange caps?”
Glove in hand, he takes a stance.
Fans wander off …but players play…
Say Hey, Willie
Say Hey
May 5, 2019 at 1:48 pm
Around the Bend
What are you going to do when life throws you a curve?
Here we go loop de lieu? Your instinct is to swerve?
Somewhere over the rainbow, beyond the arc of time and space,
There’s a realm that we can know where all is in and out of place.
It’s the demesne of fantasy. Imagination rules its locus
In magical ambiguity; Reality, in and out of focus.
If I’m not around and it seems I’ve disappeared,
It’s there I might be found in the dominion of the weird.
I can access perfect syzygy as infinity, psyche, and milieu
Align with joyous incongruity. The preposterous bids adieu.
It’s not a place to stay but a place for some relief,
A place to be amused/amazed, laugh and cry in disbelief.
It can be your inner sanctum, though it may be fraught with dangers,
You can triumph or succumb; love and fear won’t be as strangers.
It will engage your rapt attention but the temptation may be strong
If you give into declension, psychosis sings its song.
If you listen as the voices say, Reality is overrated,
You may find your sanity is the cost for what you’ve traded.
But It’s still the best place for a vacay, so take the cosmic cruise.
Use your mind to gainsay if that is what you choose.
How are you to travel? There are so many portals.
Stories, myths, and shadows unravel dreams of the immortals.
You can fly a spaceship or wish upon a star,
Meditate, an acid trip, cross a bridge too far.
Listen to some music, watch a movie or TV
You’re the one who chooses it, how to egress Reality.
Where are you going to go when life pushes you around?
Around the bend, make it so? See what might be found?
Somewhere over the rainbow, beyond the arc of time and space,
There’s a realm that we can know where all is in and out of place.
May 7, 2019 at 6:29 pm
Influence
A rainbow has no feet—at least
It leaves no footprints and so
I do not know it ever ends.
(Join the circle: I will listen.)
Who can plot the curve of kindness?
(In the circle, we all listen.)
Turn your chin and you describe
An arc as you present your other
Cheek: Where did this begin?
(Yes, welcome to the ring.)
What gentle act when you were rude
Gave you the thought of turning, so?
A ring is a turn without an end,
Or a beginning. Where will this arc end?
Can you know what curve you’re on,
Where it’s been and where it’s going?
(Join hands now, and connect.)
Look, it’s rainbow weather. Do you see?
May 9, 2019 at 5:28 am
What the Heck
For so long
she’d been on the straight and narrow –
Carefully keeping to the right of
the double yellow lines.
Solid success for the most part.
Now, at 60, the road ahead
has a distinct –
not to be ignored curve.
What the heck – live a beautiful life –
Why wait until the proper moment?
Despite her hesitation,
she presses on
and meets the curve with aplomb –
speeding full on
into her golden years –
Her head thrown back
as gales of laughter and
her perfect life
are tossed about as the wind
completely ignores the solid lines
meant to contain the coloring of her days.