
Mica L. Editing
TM

Poetry
Reading Poetry to the Dead
I once saw a witch
reading poetry in a graveyard.
She struck me as odd,
dressed in plum,
a rose against the gray
that hugged the sky.
I almost missed her
with her legs
tucked neatly beneath her,
resting back against a headstone
as she read the work aloud.
I would have wandered
on my way
had I not heard Walt Whitman
and stopped to listen
to his wisdom in the witch’s
cool, purple, voice.
I could hear the sound of rain-
drops bouncing off of stone in her tone.
When she paused I dared to wonder,
“Why do you read aloud
when there is no one here to listen?”
“There is always someone listening,”
she said
as if she’d been prepared for the question.
I gestured about the empty rows of stone
silence. A challenge she accepted gracefully.
“Take the crows, for instance,” she nodded
towards the feathered thing, perched
a few plots away.
“I’m sure they tire of the crying
after a while.
I like to give them new words to learn.”
I chuckled at the thought but
the beast did seem intent. Knowing,
blue, gaze trained on the witch. It waited
for her to begin again.
“And there’s always the mourners,”
she added. “Many of them
can’t help themselves. They come
and twiddle their thumbs,
unsure of what to say to their loved ones.
So I read them a passage or two.”
“Does it help?” I asked.
She sighed.
“It seems to do the trick.
Poetry untangles
knots inside of us,
we don’t always know are there.”
“I guess, if nothing else,” I offered,
“you can always read to the dead.”
She smiled a warm, red smile,
“Now you’re getting it.”
I felt pleased, like a schoolboy,
rewarded with a sweet
for guessing the right answer.
I’m sure I would have blushed
if I were able.
I imagined the spirits,
with their translucent ears
listening
as strings of words filled their heads,
lining the insides like cotton.
A wasted comfort on a corpse, but
so be it.
I sensed I’d learned
all I needed when the witch
raised her book to read again.
I turned and took the wind
back to my own plot of dirt
beside the crypt of the old poet.
He nodded as I lay
against my headstone and spoke
for the first time in a century
as far as I knew.
“She’s right, you know,”
The poet professed,
Gazing down the hill in her direction.
“Nothing brings the dead joy
quite like poetry.
And there is always someone listening.”
Owl Mug
Last night I broke
my mother’s favorite mug
while putting away the dishes.
It clunked
against the counter and suddenly
it was in pieces about my hands.
I felt a bit like that mug,
immediately shattered
as I took in the sight.
The panic
hit my stomach first and sped
up my heartbeat, spread
to my hands to make
them shake. I thought
“I have to fix this now!”
NOW!!
before she gets home and sees
the mess I am.
I ran for the store,
3 stores looking for
glue, crazy glue
Gorilla Glue,
whatever was strongest.
I needed to keep it together.
The clerk was concerned
and I didn’t have time
to explain my shortness of breath.
I scrambled
to put the pieces together
but they don’t quite
fit right,
chunks are missing,
chips off the rim,
the handle is crooked.
My vision went white.
The front door unsticks itself
and swings inward.
Up the stairs, she marches
with her bouncing curls to see
how I have failed her.
She only shrugs
and hugs me,
and I remember.
She was never the one
I feared.
She was not the one
who shouted
when I couldn’t pick
my broken pieces up.
We’ve begun to speak again,
you and I,
on better terms and you want me
to forgive you.
But how can I when I still
flinch
whenever someone shouts
or breaks a dish,
when it all still affects me so?
I don’t have it
in my power
to forgive you yet.
Not while I’m still bleeding.
That sentiment
isn’t mine to give,
and it’s not fair
to the little girl inside me
to force it from her.
I’m twenty-something now but I can’t
disregard
her suffering and the growth
she’s made despite it.
I’m much stronger now,
and wiser too,
the combination trauma
often creates,
and I know
what I deserve now.
And finally
I have the self-respect
to achieve it.
I deserve to let the bruises
heal completely
Before I risk my skin
for more.
Of Sun and Storms
I am learning
To have love for the world.
When it is cold,
when it is biting,
when New England winds force
my chin to my chest, I think:
I love you.
When storm clouds speak of
dystopian ash,
tip the world on its axis and turn it
a riotous living snowglobe,
I sigh:
There is nowhere else I’d rather be.
I have accepted that I
am not always warm,
mild or welcoming,
that I have been bitter enough
to split knuckles with my cold,
that I have been dark and windswept and
scared
to feel anything as soft as sunlight. How
can I demand different from forces
far beyond my control.
I have always had a tenderness
for rainy days, when the mist
bends light between
crystalline clouds,
sending whole fields back in time,
a sepia-toned photograph
of some forgotten memory.
Though, for many years I revolted
against rough weather, wished
for warmth and blue-skied
stillness, I saw
my fondness for your ferocity
was always there.
Oh, goddess, oh mother,
of sun and of storms
of mystery and life,
you have accepted all of my weather.
And now, I understand
your insistence on storms.
And it is in loving you, in all
your unpredictable essence,
that I have learned to have love
for my own untamed atmosphere.
And it feels
like coming home.