lester

connected meanderings
2006-05-31 12:30:09 (UTC)

Poem about a conversation

Memory Day Conversation

Reunion
We meet by pre-arrangement – after a time not talking –
At Border’s Books on Memory Day: why few words? For me
Chinese travel –
Even some Chinese characters learned – and you’d studied
last courses for your degree.

Family – Yours

We spoke of China – I newly grasped your father’d studied
in Beijing
For several years; later he’d advanced in government to
ambassadorial level.
Now promoting business, he fosters warmth and friendship
with the Chinese.

We mentioned other things, my mother’s age sparking
Memories of your mother’s mother, devout, devoted to you,
able
To pray at her life’s very end. She pulled you near as she
passed on – she going free,

But for the eleven-year old girl, the loss and ending
Caused troubled dreams and fear for her mom; became more
clinging. Still,
how special – I not you suggested this – to be there as
that wondrous soul gained peace.

Peace was hardly yours from that Chinese expert of a
father, stalking
Your nights and beating your mom – dominant, demeaning,
family life unstable.
Other people noted it, strove to help – secrets pushed the
membrane, sought release.

And with years of counseling, with fits and starts,
painfully learning,
You gained mastery o’er that brittle dominance so hard to
bear, hate-filled.
And then – you’d practiced a month – you said what you had
to say; and you sprang free!

Now ten years later (with much added therapy work) you
tell that you’re now thinking
Of loss for years of a relationship gone. You feel
a ‘should-have-been’ tale.
You yearn for daughter-bond with him, with his person, as
in his warmth to the Chinese.

So now we sit at Border’s, chairs angled, looking
intently, speaking.
I feel I unknowing played a new dramatic role (I’d learned
a bit of Chinese after all –
Some characters learned –I’d showed you today my work-book
on that symbology).

Puzzle

It means we’re friends – this not therapy – you sense what
you’re seeking.
I wonder: what is it for me? Warmth –not lovers we, but we
connect, un-neutral.
And I reflect, I recall, you’re age 30 now, a telling age
from my own story, my history.

Family – Mine

They conceived me on their wedding day, June 1, Mother so
expanding
In their first flush of joyful future glory. But if
optimism first reigned tall,
She knew soon enough decision gates had closed, had
closed, making her less free

Than for what she’d yearned; on honeymoon return they’d
been hoping
For a summer job in Chicago, and even a life there
perhaps; he applied all
‘Round – but no luck at all, at all. There, some time
before, she’d studied art to see

If she could compete with those from far-flung places, and
learning
That she could, indeed she could, she wished to live where
art might rule
O’er farm-origins and their limits; but her ambition
ebbed, leaving only memory

Because economics ruled; no Chicago-work, money
disappearing,
They returned to teaching life for him – then I was born –
and learned great early love
From a motivated mom and dad. I read from age 3 or 4, from
playing round his knee.

And then they bought a farm, and she when thirty-turning,
At a nexus-point of life, taught me first grade from our
home turned school,
And then, frustration more and more expressed, taught many
other things to me:

‘Eject oneself from this mean life, do achieving’.
‘Learn, gain degrees, obtain tickets away from the cruel
‘Fate we suffered’. And now no simple love came again to
me, freely came to me,

At least from her; well, maybe now, sitting beside her,
she swinging
Swinging on her porch, older now, those tensioned times
long gone, she able
To revel in her later art career, decades of doing well
though never as well as she

Had wished, never Grandma Moses fame, but yet achieving
A satisfying amount. Mark this though, I sense she took
little pleasure – if any at all
In what I – her son – have done – or is – and I, I feel
poorly, not yet myself set free.

My Drama

Over life, I’ve felt myself persistently ambitious, hard-
working,
But then receding, defeated, somehow bleeding. My own
therapy focused on these falls.
Has therapy worked? Something’s up. Does this drama maybe
explain some mystery?

And do you, my friend, see a role unknowing played in how
you may be helping me?




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