The New Year Approaches

As the year draws to a close, an accident.
The champagne spilled, her laptop compromised.
How many moments just like these, she thinks,
have been encountered in a lifetime? Momentary
things gone wrong, and yet, assurance that not
everything is lost. The memories of all that really
matters is intact. The people who still care, although
the names may change from year to year, are there.
No data missing, no relationships that mattered
in the last twelve months will matter less, perhaps
a few, of late, have faded but that wasn't anything
that she would or could have changed. The champagne
sopped up with a towel, she is hopeful that the year
ahead will bring some changes for the better. Still
she weeps for what she's lost, for difficulties she'd have
rather helped her loved ones to avoid but they would
not. She hears the sound of fireworks in the distance
and she prays that next year will be better, that a year
from now, she'll toast the turning of the calendar with
company,'
and hope,
and love.




(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Ghosts of Thanksgiving

They represent, collectively, 800 turkeys carved or more,

Norman Rockwell's famous
"Freedom from Want" painting

2000 pies, a treasure trove of casseroles, a semi load of

sweet ice tea, hot rolls with butter by the barrel. 

Sixty years, around, of holidays made special 

for their families and friends. Or not. Some have the look 

of scoundrels still. Old age does not erase past hurts,

but listening to now cracked and feeble voices try to

stay on key for Silent Night, I hope that there are people

who will visit those who gave them many memories 

in younger years, who set a table with the candles 

and good china, worked for hours on a meal because that's 

what you do. Or what you did once long ago.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

On the Eve of Mama's Birthday

I thought it was another of the multitude of things:
the particles of drama, quarks of quirks that make this
place a challenge I can tolerate with promised grace
but without much left over by the end of day. As tempting
as it is to smooth the wrinkles of my words and make it sound
as if my present state of mind is overblown, I am
too honest, I'm afraid. And yet tonight I realize
that nothing of the normal nastiness may be to blame
at all. Perhaps it is, instead, the fact that in the morning,
I will wake up to the first of Mama's birthdays in my life
that will not have her voice, her breath, her joy.

I hadn't really planned on that.

The rest is ordinary stress I recognize as Life, at least
for now. Although I often do not know my place or what
my role should be at any given minute, I adjust
(and fairly quickly, since I get such frequent practice).

But how do I adjust to nothing

when the something, when the someone,

was so dear?


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Bridge

Like a bridge that's built to give a little

under stress, allow for weather and for weight,

I wonder how much more this little heart

can take today. The heaviness. Concerns,

catastrophes that build, one sitting nicely on

the one below. You know at some point it

will topple over, you just hope you're not

there underneath the load, that something,

someone will have grabbed your hand and

pulled (at least) a moment sooner, and offered

you a hug, a touch, a glass of wine, some oxygen,

a pillow to prop up your head, a foot rub,

pleasant music, candles maybe, something

nice to eat, a smile, a poem, warm cloth

to wash the dirt away, a bandage for that scrape,

the promise that there's someone on the earth

that cares and understands that little heart

with so much love to give it hurts.

(c) Ellen Gillette 2018

Paranoid

We've become so paranoid.
Hysteria must fill the void left by
those other quantities like trust or decency.
A friend has asked for volunteers
to send a book, just one, the premise
being that if lots of folks agree,
eventually each one will get a steady
stream of favorite titles in the mail.
I bit. And friends of mine did too,
and then the steady stream of something
else: It's just a scam. A fraud! A chain mail
gizmo that snopes or someone else 
has denigrated. Who cares if the
Canadian whose name I wrote upon the
extra copy of a Ferrol Sams book I always
buy when seen at secondhand stores (it's
good) just gets that book, not all the
ones she hoped for. She will spend
some pleasant days while reading
all about sweet Porter Osborne, whom
I truly love. But I digress, the point to make
is not my book, but how suspicious we
are (and need to be, I'm sad to say).
Not every compliment or situation is
fodder for MeToo or what Matters
at the moment. To me, hysteria dilutes
legitimate offenses, while all the wannabes
and coattail hangers on attract attention
and enrage the armchair quarterbacks
who lack imagination to consider that
sometimes, cigars are just cigars,
that things are said and done most often
by mistake or stupid chance or choice.
Conspiracies exist, no doubt, but looking
for them under every headline or event
distracts us from reality, detracts from
stories of the victims we must never
get so weary of, that we close our ears.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Meltdown 2018

I didn't have the meltdown as I stood there at his grave,

my shadow falling on the marker with his name

much like my shadow must have fallen

through an open doorway countless nights

when some slight noise alerted me to check the crib,

or later, just to see the childrens' shapes in bed and know

that they were safe. 

The tears did not appear beneath the wind chime 

that I couldn't reach to (hopefully) repair at home.

The tubes were guarded by a frog, some wasps, and as I

batted them away, a groundsman came to see what was

the matter. We worked together, Juan and I, and

got it down for me to take, but I could tell that he was

clearly moved that he could help a mother

at her baby's grave, and on this special day as well.

We both agreed that I would see him once again,

but longing for that far-off day (or not) did not precede

the so-familiar ache that warns my surface will be breached,

the pain about to make its way 

into the light.

At Daddy's place, I listened as they answered crossword questions,

knowing I could tell him what today was, knowing if I did that

likely in a minute, he would slip back into the  fog

where he resides, where loved ones aren't in sight

but close, and coming back, perhaps, at any time.

But as I left him, walking to the car and driving off,

a woman called who needed me to scan some documents.

My signature last week went through in portrait and she

needed landscape for the files and with so many clients 

in her care she really can't be bothered. Would I email right away 

so they can process the insurance?

That's when I lost it. 

I could hold it all together, seamlessly transitioning

from task to task, from exercise to kitchen and from getting

dressed to errands, all without a sense of stress,  until 

she called and one more thing was asked of me.

Poor lady. I could tell that she felt terrible.

But not, I think, as terrible as me. 

You see, that's what a meltdown does. 

You know they'll come, they just don't come on cue. You 

might be talking to someone about a birthday, say the words sixteen 

or son or accident or stand in line for deli meat, or see 

that one of his old friends is getting married 

and you're happy, really happy,

but you're also not. 

For just a minute, meltdowns let you wallow in the loss, 

reminding you that grief is never done, that it's

a process, and a fire that may cool down at times to

ashes and to embers, but also where the breath of God 

may blow it into flames at any time.

Reminding you that it's okay.

Make no apology for feeling.

What you feel is really not the loss at all:

It's love.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Brief Ode to Summer

July whizzed by
it's over now and
school will start too soon.
The stars were only briefly
in a line, my planet barely
rubbing shoulders with the moon.
Some people came and went
and others died but one day
I was naked on a dune.
The summer's almost over
and I love the fall but
this?
Today?
Inopportune.
I need more time
to sweat and dodge the rain
that's typical of afternoon.
I need another August,
longer, please, with fewer knives.
More spoons.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Ink and Blood

Loui Jover is an Australian
artist who uses printed paper
for his backgrounds.
https://www.saatchiart.com/louijover

The day the music died, it didn't really die at all.
High above the frozen earth, a plane went mad and
plunged into a cornfield. Three musicians and their pilot
perished but their songs are sung and listened to today,
just shy of sixty years into the future
from that fatal wintry night.

It feels like that today, a heaviness, the silence
that can be so loud. Like something more
has happened than the facts themselves.

The facts are bad enough. Five people dead.

The day Death visited the newsroom, aiming bullets
just as quickly as the targets used to type their
stories (stories that will live far longer, like the music,
than they would have guessed) the aftershocks
were felt by thousands more. Scattered 'round the world
are newsrooms bleeding words and punctuation,
all the air knocked out, and even far removed,
the very thought of ink and blood combined
gives old reporters long retired a heaviness of heart.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018.

For some reason Don McLean's song "American Pie" came to mind, this day after the Maryland shootings at the Capital Gazette, especially the line about the day the music died, February 3, 1959 - Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and pilot Roger Peterson died in a plane crash. Their music lives on, and the friends and families of the Maryland victims will keep their memories alive. But so sad, especially for my journalist friends.

You Didn't Know

I wanted you to buy it,
take a risk, make a bid
propelling me to stardom (of a sort),
showing willingness to pay
far more than it was worth
as symbol of the way you feel.
I painted it for you.
Does every artist paint that way,
to please themselves
or someone else? Maybe every artist
has a You. It must be true, the Muse,
the motivating factor no one realizes
is behind each painting, sculpture,
play. Or poem, if you please.


(C) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Recently taking part in a fundraiser, with artists' work auctioned off, it occurred to me that artists may have a person in mind, always.

Unfortunately Sweet

The afternoon is warm and breezy.
Fallen leaves skip stiffly across the driveway
as I read a little Billy Collins on the bench
we put together weeks ago, the boys and I.

A car alarm cries sadly in the distance
as if no one with a clicker has the energy
to turn it off, or maybe they're asleep
or glued to Channel 5 for updates down in Broward.

On Facebook everyone is angry,
posting memes, assigning blame,
frustrated by the stubborn shining of the sun
upon a day with so much sorrow.

Unanswered questions for the boy, for politicians,
for the culture we've allowed in which
the answer is in pulling out a gun, no longer able
to accept the fact that others are not hurting

like we hurt inside and so we try to change
the ratio, increase the pain around us so
it doesn't feel as though we bear more than our
share. We don't all pull a trigger, though.

Sometimes we use our words. Sometimes we use
our silence, or a finger pointed at The Ones
we want to blame. I doubt that any of it matters,
not today at least, to anyone who grieves a loss

for real, not just collective grief, that shroud we
put on when it happened, or because it happened
in our state, or in America. I mean the grief of
families at the morgue or picking up the backpacks

left behind, the car keys from the pockets, or the iPhones
with a final text still frozen on the screen, the
horror they endure today while we sit on our benches
reading poetry, or find some other way to deal

with the frustration that there must be Something Done,
some answers seeming obvious, some not so clear.
But far above, the sky persists in being blue;
the fragrance of the day remains unfortunately sweet.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018


On February 14, 2018, a young man walked onto the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and killed (as of today) 17 people, and stirring up within all of us deep emotion. Writing helps me deal with things.

A Star is Born

Laura Jane Rogers
Pendergraft,
b. 10/17/1933
d. 01/12/2018

She put in the request with management a year ago,
and wasn't happy that the resolution took its time.
Her agent sent the news this week, eyes still closed,
no one around to share it with because she'd gone so deep
into the conference call that when she moved her lips
we couldn't hear and vainly thought perhaps she had
Important Things to tell us. She did, but told us all our lives
in words and deeds and little sounds she'd make that spoke
so loudly of her views. But at the last, she just made sure
she understood her papers were in order, ticket purchased, transportation all arranged, no luggage necessary, thank you very much. The trip she wanted, longed for, hoped would come much sooner, now at last, come on! And so she took a breath and let it out, and as it went, she went as well, into the atmosphere, into the universe and then beyond. While taking note
of planets, constellations on the way, she smiled a little,
hoping that those left behind would one day made the trip
to see her (and much more) but as for now, the sights and sounds,
the scents, the wonder of it all put her in mind of movies that
she watched when just a child, the happy endings that she knew must
be a possibility, never guessing that the final scene was just the start
of something better, grander, richer.
That the movie of her life was such a tiny slice, a snippet of a story
she'd present eternally, the writing of it perfect,
direction flawless, and the cast of thousands grateful for
the chance to share the screen with such a star.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018