"WAITING"
Leaf dreanched branch
slapping window
"Sh-h-h-h-h-h..." Sister Wind whispers.
Light Dancers tattoo patterns.
Humid shiver hovers
between warm and cool,
awaiting the first fat rain drop,
or rumble of thunder to come.
I sit, listening,
legs folded.
Three Siamese cats keep watch,
four decades behind me.
Savor the air.
Envisioning a time,
when I am only this.
Ambition brought no comfort.
"RAT-a-tat-TAT!" I startle.
The branch is "...s-s-slap-SLAP-slapping,"
flash of light
the storm begins.
"SEEK NOT"
The hills of Vermont provide a harsh lullabye.
I stand upon five generations of bones.
The others: crazy, dead, or gone.
I stand alone.
Seek no softness here. There is none.
"SO?" I read Dante, Flaubert, Cervantes and Voltaire.
"So what?" I spoke English unlike my father?
I chopped wood, killed chickens,
shoveled shit and stripped shingles.
Seek no sweetness here. There is none.
No room for exotic perversities, this is an unforgiving land.
I mirror the stoic ancestory of the people who I am.
There is no room for weakness
in the teaching of my culture.
Seek no softness here. There is none.
You take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Erica Jong