Long before craftsmen
sought walnut, cherry and oak
for cribbage boards and magazine racks

Daddy set a match to the unusable cuts
from logs he sawed into planks
and two by fours.

Massive configurations
of bark and knotted scraps
lined the ditch bank.

Massive conflagrations,
my father’s inferno,
burned well into the night.

For years, I avowed the actions
of a six-year-old daughter
who feared the flames

would devour and destroy him.
I tossed the contents
of that little red can onto the pyre,

holding firm in my belief
it held only water
At sixty-one,

is it safe now to confess
I only wanted to see
the fire dance?

Words hurled
onto pages of pristine white,
not unlike chunks
foisted upon a receptacle of
cold gleaming porcelain
late at night,
sick with fever
and nauseous purgings
of what preys upon my brain.

A vomiting of ideas,
stream-spewed consciousness
raw and unfiltered…

Oh, wretch that I am!
How to heave a tidy
sanitized version
from the dregs of my mind
simply because
you say that I must?

So   often, who I am speaks to me.
So  often, who I want to become, becomes clear.
So often, the angry voices begin to still.
Soften, self, and embrace the possibilities.

Day dawned dreary
skies grey and void
my pack, heavy
my motivation, waning.

Press on, I must.
No other options
if you don’t count death,
or obsolescence.

Onward, my mantra
however disheartening.
My stomach filled
with meager portions
and sleep supplied
within stringent parameters.

Scarcely enough to sustain…

Struck down as I was
with the numbing hardship
of the onslaught,
I feared reward
was no longer viable
but that did not prevent
hope from creeping in,
from coloring the blackness with
pastels and birdsong,
luscious shades of creamy
dreamfulness,
choirs of joyful redemption,
teal trumpets and scarlet saxophones.

Truly, that is the only thing
that kept me going.