Pearl in the Glass Globe

Far in past now

 Real

Upstairs

Up the carpeted staircase

The glass

With bubbles

An oyster

Protecting a pearl

Long fingered wisdom

Minds floating free

Stories from under the sea

Quietly whispered

In my toweling Dress

I become the Storyteller

Gateway to the magic

And dreaming

Grey, my pearl in glass

A shadow  

The deep secrets

of my small, trapped piece of the sea.

Every Day

I forget you

I forget the winter mornings in the playroom

I forget the tractor tyres that became spaceships

I forget the house of rocks by the sea

I forget you

Every day

I no longer see you

I no longer see the cuts and swollen face

I no longer see the horror of your eyes

I no longer see the vacant drip by your bed

I no longer see you

Every day

I hold you

I hold your desperate dreams and screams

I hold our walks and trusted conversations

I hold you bony shoulders that held too much

I hold your heart

Every day

I cannot

Forget you.

Ladder to the Moon

The gnome asked the old fairy

How he could repay her kindness

And she replied

That she wanted

A slice of the moon

For herself

I am lost in thought

In the pages

Watching th red pointed hats

the short bellied men

Make a ladder

To reach the moon

All the creatures start to climb

To reach the moon

I wait

Holding my breath

Anticipating

A slice of the moon

The sky is too large

The moon is too high

And the gnome, the fairy

All the animals

Climb down to the ground

Only close enough

To watch.

Sleep my children

Where is the dreamland

The fairytale of our cushioned sleep

It has left me,

Open it

My children are asking

I have a new light

There are golden dusts

There are lakes and oceans

And new journeys

There was a nursery

And a little girl with me

And now is a new country

Without the old

Where we join hands with only

What I can bend to give them

I give them our worlds of dolls,

Between the sea and the sand

And they gather

What I found and lost

To give.

Homeward

I am in the passage of the farm house

And our house

 I am eighteen

And you have gone

There were roses for you

But you are in a hotel room

I go to a foreign country

To the Kremlin, to the trains of Tolstoy

Others want to go home

I am too scared

 The state that never belonged to me

But how do I see you again

I break away, the tears come

In the land of the Bolshevik Revolution

Trying to call home, it is me in this room

No one

Back in the ward

I do not want

To go home

Let me stay in the land of cold ice war

I don’t want to wear this bravery anymore.

The Mirror of a Sister

What creation

Now I see to devastation

Not torn

Slowly

But ripped

Year

after  year

I was a shadow by your bed

Never trusting

Looking for a home

You stayed

Bruised from the

Slamming against the wall

I was there

I saw the drip when you took it out

Not knowing if you

Maybe wanted it to stay out

But it was too long ago

You are on a beach now

Free

I am left with torn hands

And no regrets

And my own little girls

Who look like we did

All I can do

Is look for some marks

left

In the empty walls.

Burden

The soldier is gone

Perhaps I tried too hard

And the noise

Constant little hands

Cannot stand

Cannot make them proud

The broken reflection I once saw

Is now my own

The silent room

Is now mine

Where can I call?

To find safety

Tree of relief

Mother’s breast

Now I am the mother

Wanting to walk through

Away from the pulling

Calling, begging  the silence

to a place where

No one calls my name