The Answer Was Writing Poetry
My Dad and me
Since thirty-one I’ve lived in kinship with poetry, feeling myself vibrate within when I discover certain lines. This love didn’t begin with the required reading of my English classes that in fact caused me to judge my difficulty (or inability) to intellectually analyze poetry. It was born in creative writing workshops where I discovered that I carried hidden elements of poetry that were willing, with the right opportunity, to appear on paper.
As if you are seated at my small, round, wooden kitchen table where a red hibiscus lies on a yellow place mat, and I’ve passed a glass plate with peaches and grapes, inviting you to eat, I offer poem excerpts to taste from A Flower for God.
“Gladys Buswell Titcomb”
You wished your hair weren’t thin—
it was fine as talcum.
You marked Bible verses with ribbon,
grosgrain ironed by your thumb.
“My Father’s Tomatoes”
Roots reached into compost:
past Easter eggshells,
morning coffee grounds,
peach skins, and lettuce dung.
“August”
Hidden cicadas buzz
like the back doorbell
under the thumb
of a neighbor’s child.
“Santa Fe Wedding Dress”
What I want is to be perfect in love,
looking away from angry words
that touch me no more than rain
falling on the other side of the street
in Tucson.
“The Way the Day Begins”
Your eyes are open flowers
determined to see the new day
on the small, square face
of the clock.
My realization is, “Beyond using our intellect to interpret others’ poetry, we may want to question our heart for an unknown poem there, needing to become words.”