Go

She is ready for the journey but
she's packed too much. The weight of
what she sees as wasted time will bind her
to the place she's wrongly thought was home
for all these years.

We try to tell her that she's
got eternity to make it up, if making up is needed,
but we're of the mind that it's a grand illusion,
that she's done her best with what she had,
she's faced the challenges of life and loss and sadness
with commitment most mere mortals could not conjure.

We try to ease her mind, release her to the upward call,
and all the while we know it isn't ours to decide.
The ride will come for her (and sooner rather than
according to our wishes) but even so we hate
that she must wait a second longer than is necessary,
putting off the bliss, postponing rapture and reunion
we have always known existed
but so often acted like it was a myth.

What does she wait for? Reconciliation or some pronounced
wise words that will erase a wrong or set relationships
onto a better path? Screw that. Just rise, dear daughter
of the King, and meet His open arms.
He'll sort the rest out, never fear.
He'll comfort us, he'll take the place you've held so long;
he'll mother us, sweet Mama.

Go. Enjoy the journey.
Let us know,
somehow,
that all is well,
the way you did
when we were little,
waking,
frightened,
by our dreams.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

What Good

What good are neatly stacked CDs
of all the best of jazz or Bach, The Beatles or The Eagles,
if they're never listened to, if music never fills
the room?

What good are pantries filled with food,
exotic spices, boxes, bags, canned meats and beans,
if everyone goes hungry, starving as a choice,
too lazy to prepare a meal?

What good's a woman's skin, what does it matter
if it's softened by sweet oils and lotions, silky
sheets draped over promising curves, if no one
looks in her direction, no one's fingers trace the
boundaries and venture far beyond?


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

Global Warming

Long before we knew the temperature of Daddy’s brain was shifting, so to speak,

the mercury inched upward.

Liquid memories began to drip into the sea, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, and no one noticed,

or not much.

Mama got annoyed, of course, convinced it was his quiet yet persistent way to pay her back for all her past remarks that hurt him, the sins she’d done, the kindnesses she’d overlooked.

When doctors validated Daddy’s, well, condition, affixing it with labels long and clinical, the guilt that she accepted, almost welcomed, wasn’t something she could wave, a fan to cool him, slow the glacial melting of his mind.

And now, years later, it is more like global warming. Chunks of iceberg – decades, occupations falling with great splashes to the salty sea of tears we choke back as he asks another question that he asked before and asks perhaps another six or seven times within the hour.

Where is your mother?

What am I doing here?

I don’t know what’s going on. I feel so useless.

Where is your mother?

What am I doing here?

I don’t know what’s going on. I feel so useless.

And to be sure, a melting glacier has but little purpose.

Still, it has a grandeur and a substance that is mighty,

that is fierce, although diminishing a little every second,

and more each passing day.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

Coloring Book

Perhaps he joined me long ago to color in the Lennon sisters

or the Barbie dolls within the thick and muslin-hued pages
of a book of outlines waiting for the flesh to grow beneath
the ivory crayon, the periwinkle eyes, plain brown for hair
(a stickler, even then, for honesty). But more than likely he did not
have time with lesson plans to write, or garden needing weeding,
getting ready for a fishing trip that we would take, just he, my sister, and myself.

Today, I sat with Daddy, so unsure of where he was or what was going on,
and opened up the book I bought at Ollie's (such a bargain!) with
the scenes of Paris and around the world. And though I hadn't
planned it, as he etched the Eiffel Tower on the one page, I began
to color in a city scape upon the opposite, while feeling good that for a
span of time, just that, he wasn't troubled or confused, but coloring,
his little girl and he, the time he'd spent on other things so long ago
apparently available, held
in trust, against this afternoon.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

Satin

The multi-colored satin hangers, in the waning hours
of an estate sale, failed to entice hungry crowds
who loudly pawed the furniture and tools of someone who
might never have invited them for coffee, or a swim
nearby. The lake community, perhaps, had mourned
for months before the relatives had finished with dividing
up the best, and all the rest was priced to sell.
The signs were many, promising a bigger treasure trove
than what was left when I arrived the second day. A weary
woman saw me looking in the closet.
Inquiring what the hangers would be going for,
she said a quarter each, no two, it's time we packed it in
(that last remained unspoken but I heard it from the lines
around her smile). And so I bought them, but not all.
A few I left behind so that the closet, missing a dead
woman whose name I'll never know,
and missing the weight of her clothes
and missing her lingering scent
will be, perhaps, there in the weeks to come,
or even longer in the present market,
forgotten when the house is finally sold.
They hang there patiently and wait in darkness
for some mother's loving hands
to hang Sunday dresses for some sweet little girl
remembering that long ago, their lady was one too.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

Beautiful Lady

The prompt for my writer's group this
month (and I can't make it anyway)
was to complete the sentence:
"I am beautiful because..."

I am beautiful

because

my mother said it,

or my father,

or another man?

Is there an absolute

or are we talking relative?

Some natives know that

beauty means huge drooping earlobes

but at some address, it is golden tresses;

at still others, ebony. Straight teeth

or lots of curves, a certain weight

(which differs greatly in the world,

the target, Cinderella’s shoe of pounds or grams

abounds in ads and articles that tell the

mindless masses

what is beautiful this year.

A teen, I read a book whose

character said, “Every woman is

as beautiful as

some man thinks that she is.”

It made a big impression at the time.

And then I had to talk myself into

another truth to fit the circumstances,

so I didn’t think that it depended all

on me. A man who wants your love

will tell you anything.

A man who truly loves you

sees the beauty of so many things:

a smile, a sassiness, the eyes,

the way the hips sway back and forth,

and he is blinded to the faults

that (honestly) exist in many

forms and fashions.

I’m beautiful? You bet I am,

and any woman who knows love,

(but even more than that, she loves herself)

will say the same. The scars and sags

and imperfections only add more

interest to the eye of someone keen

on knowing everything about you

(which includes the woman at

the center of the conversation, too).

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

Grammatically, "We"

There is, at times, no poetry,

no words or paragraphs,
no songs to bring forth spinal chills or tears,
and no pontificating prose affixed to
pretty cardboard monuments
to this or that emotion.
And at such times, the feelings
fight, give way to facts,
hard truths that are self-evident
but which we're prone to cover up
with syrup, sex, or sentiment
which have their places, have their
name cards at the table nicely lettered
in calligraphy. We honor them.
But even then, there is a recognition
of the knowledge underneath it all,
fierce this-is-it that cannot be
removed or altered or embarrassed
by the faint and vain attempts
to make apologies, to blush,
to lie, to cover up, to dress it up in
clothes that don't embarrass, call
attention to the bumps and lumps of
our existence.
That is where I want to meet you,
in the honest glare of stark awareness
that there is an Us.

That there has always been,
and always will be, Us.

Whatever argument
you may present,
whatever pacifying poultice
you apply to wounds that only you
can feel, I reel, I swoon, I agonize,
I glory in the Us and nothing more.


(c) Ellen Gillette