Tags
aging woman, Andrews poem, Colorado life, disability, fatalism, foaling season, insomnia, perseverance
The last time I walked
I took a grey mare out to grass too green to bear
I played in the twilight with a Golden dog,
on my strong, Western woman’s legs,
sure of foot and carefully inching sideways
down to the slope to the creek, unrolling the training lead
while she plunged in, overjoyed,
her tail a semaphor in the rain of light
.
The last time I took action on a dream
was to buy a grey mare huge with foal
lugging redolent mash– flaked corn, grain, molasses
down to the corral where she stood in dangerous beauty,
waiting for me, eyes round and dark
with gratitude.
.
The last time I loved was in the stillness of candlelight
and breathlessness
fingers brushing my nipples
unfastening silk strings
hands running down my thighs
I was strong and flexible in my joy
the taking into my body of an errant golden boy
lost in the same ways
in the aftermath holding his head against me.
.
And the last time I yearned as deeply
as one may yearn
there was a seahorse floating in the watery night
of my womb
whose name I dared not speak,
a becoming of someone else high up in my belly,
belly I rubbed with strawberry-scented oil
at daybreak,
.
A tiny and uncommon thing
that slipped from me in a small knot of blood
a dream gone back to grass
a personhood absorbed by night
known so briefly,
like the kiss of a far existence
a fluttering away into thin air.
ii
The last time I made a record
of an uncommon life
is this time, of an index of illuminations
before daybreak, in late July
in a house gone to ruin
moths in the window sills, in the cool
silences of morning
.
Brought awake by the imperatives
of language, mind burning in
the crumbling house of a body,
launching myself in my walker
out through the bedroom door
turning down the sibilance of the radio
.
To hear the swell within
of, you could say
the lyrical nature of living on
in spite of a surgical failure
to weld my bones together:
.
In making myself try
to walk again however I could
the weight of daily life curved my leg like a scythe,
until like anything going from water to land
I became other than I had been, a tilted person
one leg shorter than the other, a rudder
attached to a once lovely woman.
.
I go out for a drive, throwing my walker
into the back of my car
to see the mare down the way that has come to her feet
newborn paint filly sitting up in amazed languor
emerald field populated
with similitude and otherness,
Each mare now with an undaunted foal,
dancing into life.
Jenne’ Andrews
Summer 2009
Your words tug at my heart and leave me stunned by the beauty. The poem is amazing and I’m grateful you shared it here!
Gerry
Thanks so very much, Gerry. Are you in our group on SW and if so, will you share? xxxj
Jenne,
I’m touched and moved by your words, their lyricism, the beauty and gracefulness of voice given space.
~M
Thanks M– will be catching up. Hope all’s well w/ you….. bet it’s beautiful out your way!xj
A beautiful poem. You make it look so easy.
Thank you. Without you, I doubt I would soldier on, as I hope you know. x xj