Fortune for the Day – “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” – Mother Teresa
Good morning, my dear friends and readers. I hope that you are well today. New readers, Sundays are dedicated to poetry here at Adulting-Second Half. Please share your poems in the Comments. Soul Sunday, has quickly become my most popular, “read” day on the blog. That tells me that poetry moves many souls, in many ways. Share your poems, friends. When you share your poems, I think that you share your most intimate, less “crafted” self. And that is the greatest gift that you can give to yourself and to the world.
Here is my poem for the day:
Cleaning Out the Garage
There’s a heap of our family life,
Unceremoniously dumped on the curb of the drive.
A litany of sports played by the kids,
starting with small plastic bats, moving on to helmets.
Helmets for everything – bike riding, lacrosse, softball.
Old suitcases, cracked and weathered with age and wear,
But once the housers of our treasures and trinkets as they witnessed,
The grand adventures of our chaotic family vacations.
The suitcases are piled on top of the piles and piles and piles of rags.
Rags, that once started out as the nice, fresh, new towels,
Only to brought out for guests, but after years of use,
Relegated to the rag pile in the garage, best used to wipe down cars.
No one has taken the electric scooter yet,
The in-line skates are past their prime.
The bike baskets are charming, but faded and crumbly.
It takes a great deal of fortitude to clean out the garage.
Most especially, emotional fortitude.
A small piece of my heart is faintly beating,
Underneath the heap of our family life, lying by the road.
Nicely done!
I can see everything just as you’ve described it.
Reminds me I need to start my Spring Cleaning.
It is a cleansing feeling!
Indiana
A muddy
squishy Spring
r
a
ins…se
e
ping
from the rusty
downspout
to a barrel
below
to collect
today
and help the sweet corn
g
r
o
w…up green and tall
in the kitchen garden
out back.
It grows
like the weeds grew
around the weathered red barn.
(just like them kids did)
So fast…you hardly noticed
till they’s grown
and gone.
There’s lines in the
chipped white paint
up the door-frame
And Mother’s
hieroglyphs besides them.
which looks a lot like names and inches
but really says
LOVE
(…look closer…)
The purple crocus
are up…and the yellow daffodils sway
in the breezy March wind
And the World smells like
damp dirt and earthworms
in Indiana in Spring.
Summer here
is lazy.
With red and white
Herefords
laying in a clump beneath
a large burr oak
in the field.
Tails swishing maddeningly u in
at the flies b zz g
e
v e yw h
r
er e
And tiny sugar ants
parade along the kitchen counters
(the…ants…go…marching…one…by….one)
and heaven only knows how they manage
to get in the honey jar
but they
do.
“And just look at them beans, will ya.”
Cicadas drone
from the tree tops
till Grandpa done turn’t his
Miracle Ear
completely off
And them kids
race down gravel backroads
drifting on the curves
and a rooster tail of dust
hangs air like was NASCAR.
in the it
“I reckon h’its time to oil tha front
again”
Uncle Jim
agrees…before spittin’ Mail Pouch
at an Army green
grasshopper.
(who was mindin’ his own damned business)
And a watermelon
cracked…green…red and luscious
in a farmhouse a mile down the road
but you can smell it
like it was settin’
right here on this
old concrete
well cap.
Like whiffin’ bacon
or hotcakes and maple syrup
or fried chicken
in the Indiana Summer air.
The air is heavy with corn pollen
‘maters and green beans
filling every available
inch of counterspace
and Lord no…we don’t need
anymore zucchini,
Betty.
And from his chair
Grandpa silently nods and adds
“ever”
And suddenly
just when you get so hot
that your fixin’ tah melt
like your cousin Joe’s orange
Push-Up
did all over his nice clean bibs.
Fall Arrives.
Just like some old Gypsy woman
sauntering in
outrageous
wearin’ velvet and silk
red and gold and orange
jes’ swishin’ round her feet.
And the sky is so blue
if you painted it that way
why,
it wouldn’t look real.
They’d think you was makin’ stuff up
(…they would…)
And the combines chugging
from dawn to dusk
and even later
still
thanks to
Mr. Johnny Deere
(and headlights)
And red graintrucks
piled so high with corn
and beans
and after the rain the blower
done run all night.
And there’s bean suppers
and chili cook-offs
and the fish fry
‘ cause Fall in Indiana means
Eatin’: A Sportin’ Event.
And the hayfields is
brung in by sweatin’ men and boys
and you kin tell the new’uns
by their short sleeves an
itchy arms.
“Bet they won’t do THAT again”
snorts Uncle Leroy
(…here Son…have a glass of sweet tea…)
And Uncle Ed just shakes his head.
Grandma always said he had ears
that stood out from his head
just like the doors on Bob’s ’57 Chevy.
And the whole fambly takes hands
around the table
and gives Thanks
(to the Lawd that is)
for another year
for another good crop
for all this fine food
but mostly for each other.
And a chill begins to sneak into the evenings
and the sunset is spectacular in reds and golds
bit of rainbow
set on either side of the sun
And Bobby Ray says them are called sun-dawgs
but Mr. Reed
who taught us
Science down at the school
says they are ice crystals
way up high…reflectin’ the sun
an he should know
bein’
college educated and all
Pretty soon
them ice crystals ain’t up so high
anymore, though.
They are
f
a
l
li
ng
and piling
right up around
the trees and the barn
drifting across the county roads until they
just disappear.
in a pile of snow.
And the whole world smells like woodsmoke
and bread baking
and Grandpa’s pipe
As we drag in
the
fir tree
that we cut
for the holidays
and
the
house smells just like
pine tree
and cookies baking
and peppermint
and Grandma peeling oranges.
and it’s
Christmas in Indiana.
Carla, that is your best, most creative poem, yet! I love the use of letters to represent rain and ice cycles – very, very descriptive and beautiful!