Remembering Winter

Winter, my old friend...

I see you beyond the hill

Autumn's last leaf swept away

My shoulders shake with chill

Are my bones just getting old?

They say you're on the way.

Even the clouds have lost their fluff

They seem so flat, so grey.

Yet, I recall a winter past

When cold couldn't halt my play

And the crunch of snow beneath my boots

Brought smiles to my day.

As snowballs landed at my feet

Thrown by admiring boys

Placing me on center stage

I can hear their swishing noise.

As days grow short and cold winds blow

I glance at the orange sun

Remembering so long ago

When winter just meant fun! 

© Shelly Sitzer, 2019

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Gloves

I am a frustrated compulsive shopper.

Without regard for the announced Christmas sale,

I buy a pile of colorful gloves to soothe myself.

Gray woolen gloves,

blue dress gloves,

green leather gloves,

red rubber gloves,

clear surgical gloves,

white wedding gloves,

and a couple of mittens.

I lost my gray gloves in my American history class, 

when I grasped that Cherokee has not always been a brand name,

but women and children sent away in winter with their bare hands.

I lost my blue dress gloves when my boyfriend married my best friend.

They honeymooned in Paris and adopted an abandoned child.

I lost my green leather gloves in a hospice

where my dying father told me that he didn’t love me.

I lost my red rubber gloves in my new boyfriend’s kitchen

when it became clear that he treasured me as a cook.

I lost my clear surgical gloves in the operating room 

when I decided to stop hurting dogs.

I kept my white wedding gloves 

because my granddaughter loves to play with them,

and I gave her the mittens to keep her hands warm

because this is the only thing 

I can do to make her happy on this cold day.

© Helen Kanevsky, 2018

ANTORINI luxury gloves,
from Wikimedia Commons

SIMPLE (MANGO)

In Lagos I felt this world for the very first time

Under a wide-eyed Ikoyi sun, my heart, mind and soul came to life

The mangoes were always in season

I was a boy, and nothing more. 

My mind was open… 

The gate was never locked

So my dreams wandered free

Some days, they walked with me

On others, they dashed off in every direction, hoping to tempt me into new games of discovery 

Nothing was real

Yet it all was

I wasn’t yet good at pretending to be myself

I was a boy; nothing more.

I drifted through life as would a paintbrush

Aimless, simple.

On the days the rains fell,

The drops crash-landing like millions of miniscule musical meteorites

I picked them up, held them in my bristles

And carried them with me

Even now, they color the movements I make

Blooms of hibiscus shone around our home

Like little red stars that had lost their way and settled amongst the greenery

My house, in those days, was a city

The walls hummed with energy

It was my palace

I ruled it with a playful hand

My fingers spoke a language they never had to learn

The surfaces of this city of mine lived to make conversation with them

They had a heavy vibration

Curiosity oozed from my very pores 

This world needed explaining and mine was the intrepid mind to do this

When I explored my city, lizards hurdled gravel like mountains

Scaled walls

Watched my antics

Told stories of them

Wanted to join in the fun.

All of this happened. 

I lived it in my very bones.

I was a boy, and nothing more.

Ignorant of my own smallness, I knew things then that I would never know again

Like how to travel to other worlds, borne by the songs of my grandmother

And how to live life to the beat of the simple things within it

These hands and feet of mine were still learning to fly

The day would come when they would be taught to do so

Until that time, they were content to look to the sky

There was poetry in every motion and joint of my body

I was a boy and nothing more

Dobra was the first girl I ever tried to impress

Her thick, inky plaits resembled shiny rope

They glistened.

We were the same size.

She had a certain bigness about her.

I didn’t yet know of the thing called art.

It fueled me all the same.

It flowed through me like a breeze through leaves.

Like a breeze through hair.

A breath of energy reminding me to move, to breathe.

It was my air.

It is my air.

My muscles didn’t mind

The mango tree in front of our house was magic

I was never to climb it

The jewels it dropped tasted of laughter

When I drank up their juice, the sunlight sang through my bones

This too happened.

More times than I could ever count.

But fewer times than I’d like to think.

My dad was the biggest man I ever knew

I could never scare him

Alexis lived outside. 

She and I, we liked the same food.

Hers was the first friendship I ever knew

Her scent was that of unclaimed mornings

Even now it still clings to me

My city is an enormous vessel

A great pyramid that is the home of my childhood

Memories were laid to rest in that tomb

They took with them things from these plains, reminders of what was.

Ties to what they had left behind

Alexis also.

Memories.

So hard, yet with soft edges.

A full moon, on a cloudy night.

Simple.

© Axel Cooper, 2017

Mango
Photo by Asit K. Ghosh
from Wikimedia Commons

Paradelle for the Rio Grande

I walk down to the river each visit home. 

I walk down to the river each visit home. 

Always thinking of the flow of life.

Always thinking of the flow of life. 

I visit each flow home thinking always of 

Of life to the river walk down the 

Following the path of the Rio Grande. 

Following the path of the Rio Grande. 

Where we once played amongst the cattails. 

Where we once played amongst the cattails. 

Cattails of the Rio Grande played once. 

Where we, following the path amongst the 

I remember once swimming there.

I remember once swimming there.

The current strong, the mud rich water. 

The current strong, the mud rich water. 

Remember I the water mud current. 

Once rich swimming there strong the. 

I visit swimming the life current. 

Cattails of the Rio Grande of home I remember. 

Where we played, always thinking of following. 

The water once amongst the rich. 

Each flow there strong. 

The mud walk down the river path the to. 

© Anne Cressin, 2013 

Santa Elena Canyon rises above the Rio Grande
Photo by Blair Pittman, EPA
from the National Archives and Records Administration