Discovery

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Discovery - book excerpt

There's something in the day

You were invisible so learned to be obedient

Invisible and cute

Learned to agree and get along

Not like your sister or your

brothers no don't go there

Too painful; brother in ant heaven

Stung to death.

Too painful; yet did you

envy him at last? Your family

very smart

Family—and you, they did not know,

Were even smarter, you of college doctorate IQ but no;

"Stupid," they said. You said,

"Stupid me."

Love was very strange, elusive

Mostly all your life

Talked a story, tested men

Not enough it seems.

Old men like your father

Where you learned how they should be

Thought "we loved each other"

So of course accept so very little

Strange clever girl.

You who are generous, proud and loving

You've worked hard all your life

It was demanded of you; detail

picked like tweezers at a splinter

Endlessly the detail like a trail of fireflies

Avoiding the stream of stars above

Or nature's meadows,

See only detail and avoid the

bigger picture, oh my friend, because

It was so hurtful it will harm you it will pain

And you will be forgotten, given up,

Thrown away, and anyway

Look up amazed because there is a world out there

Full of stars and you are, oh my friend,

You are the sun.

That's the bigger picture. You are learning

Quickly with your intellect and heart

Christian soul so different from the other Christians

I have known,

and still the insects glow invisible to me

But you are--do you see it?

You are bigger than the world

A Jupiter, work hard

and damn the pain and little voices jealous

Of your progress, don't let love

Lie to you again and frighten you

Or hold you captive

Perhaps you, grown visible, they who knew you better

Discover they, like your mother,

Should have told you just how beautiful

You are.

Oh, little star

You nova, each baby dream so difficult and far

But death was never the solution

It might have made you totally invisible

At last they would have won; you lost

Or perhaps in new meadows then new starts

That might have been oblivion

Or fire bird bursting from the ash

How weary its new incarnation

endlessly how weary you

the endless wearing down of soul

No wonder you

Honored the invisible

Less painful than a rebirth as a star.

Or was it? Surely

biting stinging life still freedom's joy

Love's poultice through the placid fire of history

Reveals the education of a world

that heals while burning look around us

O my friend, you shine and sparkle!

Glow while those with petty mean persuasion

Prickle, sting and bite yet glorious

This day.

The Good Wife

The rebellious girl never left

The obedient mother

Like Shirley Valentine struck out

On oceans of fantasy but

making it to shore was

difficult and she resisted

the pull of the daughter's tide.

Too much she thinks she could

drive to Paris in her Thunderbird

with the top down and pretends

If one works hard and

keeps the house clean and

doesn't drink in front of neighbors

doesn't smoke or swear

And goes to church and

then the rebellious girl

the obedient mother

Will be rewarded perhaps with

Roses on her birthday

and she can…

She who deserves love

Will get it and that is what it is

For that is what

she craves most of all

But after that

come the questions

Bewilderment

Where have I gone wrong?

What has led to this?

And she traces the obtuse trails

While her friend says,

Would you like some cheese with that?

She who is the insecure and beautiful

most of all coming into a new decade

Her fingers don't understand

the internet

And the internet

The relationships of this century

Do not understand

The good mother and good wife.

The lack of understanding

is puzzling and hurts.

Where has she gone wrong?

The world has let her down

The rules have changed.

There is, however, after all

The top down on the Thunderbird

Winds of freedom beckoning

and Paris this year

Maybe next year

Greece.