—Poetry by Eileen Patterson, Cudahy, WI
—Public Domain Photos
THE DREAM
Voices spill out from the crack of the door.
Father and Mother are laughing. She stands
over him, her arm around his shoulder, he grips
his coffee mug and looks up at her.
Quietly I watch. I don’t want to disturb
the chemistry, the delicate miracle that is
happening. The laughter.
I look for the story of our life.
Voices spill out from the crack of the door.
Father and Mother are laughing. She stands
over him, her arm around his shoulder, he grips
his coffee mug and looks up at her.
Quietly I watch. I don’t want to disturb
the chemistry, the delicate miracle that is
happening. The laughter.
I look for the story of our life.
The why of it.
I crawl back to the beginning.
My siblings greet me. They look frightened
as if they were already born and lived a lifetime.
as if they were already born and lived a lifetime.
THE FOURTH CHILD
I was fourth out of his bag of tricks, born with an arctic
sorrow that made every step I took guarded like a cat,
as if I was frozen in ice trying to break free.
At the age of 5, I brood cautiously into the camera
asking with dark grieving eyes,
“What is it you want of me?”
“I want you to love me,” Daddy will say.
And I did, all those years after he left us,
I loved him like a dangerous secret.
I was fourth out of his bag of tricks, born with an arctic
sorrow that made every step I took guarded like a cat,
as if I was frozen in ice trying to break free.
At the age of 5, I brood cautiously into the camera
asking with dark grieving eyes,
“What is it you want of me?”
“I want you to love me,” Daddy will say.
And I did, all those years after he left us,
I loved him like a dangerous secret.
DREAM II: The Funeral
I drifted down the aisle, smoke from the burning
candles walked up the high ceiling, The nuns sang
Ave Maria. Saints confined in stain-glass windows
peered down and envied everyone’s freedom.
Ghosts of old women in black sat in pews
like well-behaved children.
The casket is empty except for Father’s shadow.
Jesus hangs heavy on the cross.
I ask Him where Father is.
"Jesus?" I say. He closes his hard plaster eyes in disappointment.
There were many people. He had a good showing.
I asked one man if he could tell me stories of Father.
His breath dank with beer said,
"I can but I may not want too,"
his trembling hands hid his face.
At the end one man said,
"Robert loved Frances, that was the one sure thing you could say about that man."
I felt proud Mother was loved.
On the ceiling, dark secrets dangle like bright stars.
In the physical world there was no cathedral.
He was buried at Woods National Cemetery
Section A, site 889.
There were six mourners, the five of us and his sister.
The taps were played. There were no tears. The monsters
in our bodies shook when the guns saluted him
and left him in that cold January ground.
I drifted down the aisle, smoke from the burning
candles walked up the high ceiling, The nuns sang
Ave Maria. Saints confined in stain-glass windows
peered down and envied everyone’s freedom.
Ghosts of old women in black sat in pews
like well-behaved children.
The casket is empty except for Father’s shadow.
Jesus hangs heavy on the cross.
I ask Him where Father is.
"Jesus?" I say. He closes his hard plaster eyes in disappointment.
There were many people. He had a good showing.
I asked one man if he could tell me stories of Father.
His breath dank with beer said,
"I can but I may not want too,"
his trembling hands hid his face.
At the end one man said,
"Robert loved Frances, that was the one sure thing you could say about that man."
I felt proud Mother was loved.
On the ceiling, dark secrets dangle like bright stars.
In the physical world there was no cathedral.
He was buried at Woods National Cemetery
Section A, site 889.
There were six mourners, the five of us and his sister.
The taps were played. There were no tears. The monsters
in our bodies shook when the guns saluted him
and left him in that cold January ground.
THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED
The air was so still and intense we fought for breath,
gray rain clouds hung in the sky like heavy cancerous
breasts. Then the sky broke and thick sheets of rain fell
to the ground.
After the rain, fog moved through our block, swirling around
lampposts, moving in between twisted branches of trees,
wetting our skin.
Everything was heavy and gray.
Mother moved as if she wanted time to stop.
Every second the clock ticked forward was time moving
away from their beginning and toward a future without him.
Mother thought, this is how it feels when the world ends.
She wanted to walk through it, to the end of the world where
she was done and she could read the last page of her life story.
Then the sun came again with its blistering stare and jolted
Mother back from the edge. Back into life, our lives.
Even though she yearned for the fog. For his world.
The air was so still and intense we fought for breath,
gray rain clouds hung in the sky like heavy cancerous
breasts. Then the sky broke and thick sheets of rain fell
to the ground.
After the rain, fog moved through our block, swirling around
lampposts, moving in between twisted branches of trees,
wetting our skin.
Everything was heavy and gray.
Mother moved as if she wanted time to stop.
Every second the clock ticked forward was time moving
away from their beginning and toward a future without him.
Mother thought, this is how it feels when the world ends.
She wanted to walk through it, to the end of the world where
she was done and she could read the last page of her life story.
Then the sun came again with its blistering stare and jolted
Mother back from the edge. Back into life, our lives.
Even though she yearned for the fog. For his world.
THE DAY HE DIED
Father rejected healing hands that tended
his body. They were cold smiling strangers.
He dismissed the white coats and the dry lips
of the holy men. No words of confession could change
the past,
The last breath was in the morning.
Darkness covered the room. Shadows
Danced on the floor, others stood against the wall,
Still and quiet, waiting.
Down the hall voices whispered, loneliness
was brutal in that dark room.
“Frances”, he breathed her out for the last time.
MOTHER’S HANDKERCHIEF
Perspiration poured down her face, neck, and arms.
She tucked a handkerchief inside the top of her dress.
She took it out and shook it until it uncurled.
It looked like a flag of surrender.
Her god-awful life burned from the inside.
The dreams and desires raged inside her,
there was nothing left but ash.
_______________________
Today’s LittleNip:
I was born by myself but carry the spirit and blood of my father, mother and my ancestors. So I am really never alone. My identity is through that line.
—Ziggy Marley
_______________________
Eileen Patterson lives in Cudahy, Wisconsin. She enjoys reading and walks. She has read her poetry at the local library along with her fellow poets, The Southshore Poets, who meet every 3rd Thursday of the month. She is currently working on a group of poems about her parents. Welcome to the Kitchen, Eileen, and don’t be a stranger!
_______________________
—Medusa, wishing fathers everywhere a happy, or at least contented, Father’s Day!
Perspiration poured down her face, neck, and arms.
She tucked a handkerchief inside the top of her dress.
She took it out and shook it until it uncurled.
It looked like a flag of surrender.
Her god-awful life burned from the inside.
The dreams and desires raged inside her,
there was nothing left but ash.
_______________________
Today’s LittleNip:
I was born by myself but carry the spirit and blood of my father, mother and my ancestors. So I am really never alone. My identity is through that line.
—Ziggy Marley
_______________________
Eileen Patterson lives in Cudahy, Wisconsin. She enjoys reading and walks. She has read her poetry at the local library along with her fellow poets, The Southshore Poets, who meet every 3rd Thursday of the month. She is currently working on a group of poems about her parents. Welcome to the Kitchen, Eileen, and don’t be a stranger!
_______________________
—Medusa, wishing fathers everywhere a happy, or at least contented, Father’s Day!
For upcoming poetry events in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
in the links at the top of this page.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
in the links at the top of this page.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
