Category: Memory

• On reading “Hearing a Flute on a Spring Night in Luoyang by Li Bai (Li Po)”

  Thinking of my old home and garden, I break into a hundred thousand shards of mirror, not quite identifiable, but not yet lost. They lay there blinking partial, shifting images as the moon paces above in its forgetting path. Shall I piece them together? Is it time? Is it possible? I am sunk. If I…

  Jenifer

  January 19, 2015

  Aging, Childhood, Dying, Family, Fantasy, Meditation, Memory, Muse, Pentwater

  poetry

• Jackson Heights, 1982

  i It is time to write to you, I realize looking up from a book as my husband tells me we are running late. But you are long gone, familiarly gone. Is it a defense mechanism to say that we never should have been friends, me with my Cloisters and flannel pjs, you with your…

  Jenifer

  January 6, 2015

  Aging, Chicago, Dying, Friendship, Memory, Poem sampler

  poetry

• My window at night, more

  Slow moving, a partial dream unwinding in its own way, we slow down, we slow it down, make sure we see — look, here, now, it passes — open it, to understand, to isolate the exact point, and how, the smooth releasing shifts into jarred, frayed, jagged. We go in there, at that point, slow…

  Jenifer

  December 27, 2014

  Art, Meditation, Memory, Muse, My window at night, Yoga

  poetry

• Book of changes, ii

  The after-silence opened early that December morning (sometimes it comes as a surprise and sometimes expected, they say). We stepped into it on your last gasp (ready or not, dreaming or not) and as you were dropped into the ground (the splash of water, the frosty breath). We stood shaped (sent forth, novel, unprotected, planned,…

  Jenifer

  December 3, 2014

  Aging, Childhood, Dying, Family, Memory

  poetry

• Book of changes, i

  The sun was bright today, but not enough to keep the lanterns lit tonight. Bare tree branches in tangled knots streak the black blue sky, scraping the air as they sway. If I had thought to prepare, it would not strike so hard that we will spend months waiting for a new set of leaves…

  Jenifer

  November 11, 2014

  Aging, Dying, Memory, Nature, Public, Seasons, Veteran’s Day

  poetry

• Bunkhouse mornings

  The forest floor crackles, catching dribbles from above. A breeze shifts, fresh spray showers the twigs and dried leaves. I can smell that rain and those damp, quieting mornings, cool moss under my feet. The blue jay’s harsh, long cawk, intrusive. Why did they not swoop down on us? The breeze builds through high branches,…

  Jenifer

  October 28, 2014

  Childhood, Garden, Meditation, Memory, Muse, Nature, Pentwater

  poetry