Thoughts on a Plane

Sitting on this chilly plane I pray the babies will stop crying

and I wish I had the energy to make up stories for the strangers all around.

A June flight got changed to
include a SEVEN hour layover
in Las Vegas. Ugh.

They chuckle at the videos they’re watching on their phones

or talk or doze. The engine drones,

my eyelids shut but not before a sudden thought astounds.

Is someone watching me instead

and making up a story that explains why I have left the ground?

Would I be the star, the heroine, the damsel in distress?

Whatever their imaginations be, I’ll bet they’d never guess

that I am sitting here wrapped up inside

the clothing of the dead,

which sounds a bit dramatic but is true.

Leaving Vegas, I am wrapped in Mama’s sweater

warm inside the heaviness that hung on cancer-ravaged

bony arms there at the end.

We’d never seen her thin although she said she was, in school.

The sweater isn’t stylish,

not my color, doesn’t match with what I am wearing but I thrill

to think that Mama,

like she did when I was young and sitting on her lap, still

wraps her arms around me now and then.

When my husband’s sister died,

the clothes she’d bought to keep up with whatever size

she was that month hung, waiting, in the closet

until Mom said take whatever. I’ll just give away the rest.

Her jeans caress me now,

a pair I never saw her wear or don’t remember

but they’re soft and stretch enough to cover my vacation sins.

In life, though family, we were never best of friends

but in her jeans now

I am grateful for the grace that taught us to at least pretend.

Leaving Vegas and the desert far behind

no money lost, no money won,

and if again I travel there it will be much too soon

which sounds a bit dramatic but is true.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2023

Note: Riding on the airplane I jotted down a few notes, that turned eventually into a poem for my writing group, then changed a little more as I read it to them.

Enough

I wouldn't say the month passed quickly.   

.

I only know that when I take a breath 

it's not the ICU I smell. (That took a while.)

We said goodbye and touched the blanket

one more time and that was that.

They called Code Hero for a donor

while inwardly we wished that he would save 

not all those others, but ... well ... us. 

The hugs made damp by falling tears.

The drugs we used to try and medicate

away the pain or catch up on our sleep.

Fragrant flowers that could not outlast our grief.

The phone calls and texts that must be made

while knowing that each bit of information 

would elicit sobs. Unanswered questions 

rise within my throat that taste of bile and dust. 

 "How are you?" people ask, although this time

I'm not the one who suffers most. But still.

The phrase I use is that I feel a little wobbly. 

What I leave unsaid is that I'm standing 

on a precipice and I know that I could sit.

I know I could avoid the wind that's picking up,

that threatens, that could blow me up to heaven,

down to hell or somewhere in between

but something in me plants my feet, defiant.

I raise a fist and yell "Enough!" as if my voice

could even carry in a storm like this. But suddenly,

sensing my resolve, the wind moves on.

The air is sweet and full of peace and that

will have to do until the next time 

Death, once more, comes near.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2023

              

Midnight Introspection

Sometimes I wish that I was brave enough to throw off 

all the boundaries I’ve known since I was born, 

the noble expectations lurking, nimbly hidden there 

among the do’s and don'ts, the just-because-it’s-rights 

or that-would-be-bad-forms. Or what about the mirror 

of the Word of God that’s miraculously free of streaks 

some days but mostly, since my hands are soiled, is smudged. 

I’m judged as wacky by a world who could not possibly perceive 

my deepest needs and wants, the things I crave to see 

become reality. Freely I confess I’m judged more harshly 

by my inner inclinations interrupting, finding fault 

because I hesitate to face the mist alone, to step out of my comfort zone,

cocoon of who I think that I should be, must be, who I am 

that someone else decided long ago. Shadowed 

by those braver few I love who’ve forged new lives in steel 

and looking at them from the outside how they seem 

to thrive, surviving all the drama they created 

while I’m waiting here, just sitting with a pile of gold 

that glistens but is soft and therefore useless as a sword. 

Even more of those I see seem equally uneasy but 

still they choose to take a chance and push parameters 

to reinvent their universe at will. I wanted to believe 

the year before had whispered promises of change. 

I thought I heard them once or twice upon the breeze but no. 

The hope was just a self-inflicted wound that’s healing as we speak, 

the scar serving as reminder every day that almost all 

I ache for’s just beyond my reach and ever will be thus. 

The truth is sometimes cold but it’s enough. And when I light 

the match and when you gently blow upon the embers of my dreams 

the fire’s as blazing hot as it is short-lived. But if I’m honest – 

and why wouldn’t I be honest, raised by southern saints – 

I wonder if the wine I drank tonight’s responsible 

for all this introspection? Or if it was the key to open up 

the golden box inside my heart and hold it up, 

examining the what ifs and the maybe sos 

that sparkle even as the glowing coals that are my dreams 

grow dim and I am drifting off to sleep once more.