Holiday

I want a holiday from holidays,
the special seasons giving reasons to be stressed,
dressed to the nines, attempts to find the perfect gifts
no one will know I hunted far & wide, and high & low to buy.
So why the hassle and the bother just to make the merchants money?
Send the cards because a certain square there on the calendar
is marked in red? Instead, I'd like to NOT,
and opt for just the two of us to spend the hours in bed or
snuggled on a comfy couch before a roaring fire. Desire,
the gift that we exchange. And that, my love, costs nothing
and means more to me than all the tinseled packages placed
carefully beneath the artificial tree that is a metaphor of sorts:
no pine-y scent enchanting me to childhood,
no fun-filled trips into the woods to chop it down.
A lie, is what it is, a falsehood of a balsam symbol for
sweet families and memories that used to loom so large, I thought,
but were important mostly to the ghost of who I thought I was.
A Dickensian ghost, not of a Christmas past or present, nor
a Christmas still to come, but what I thought that it should be,
the empty dream that overtook the visions of St. Nick and sugar plums.
"Reality's for those who cannot handle drugs," they say.
The way you laugh and kiss me gently on the neck, perfection
that will never be a holiday for anyone but me, and more,
the origin of "holiday" itself,
a day, a look, a touch
that's holy,
holy,
holy.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017    -   My writers group assignment for tonight's meeting was to write about holidays. I was almost not going, but started this poem. The ladies asked me to post it. Like I told them, I'm not sure what it means, or why it started so dark, but sometimes you write the poem, sometimes it writes itself. No need to overthink.

Energy

The energy to hold the pencil
and to make it move escapes me
and I stop, mid-sentence, syllables
and punctuation caught and held
in the vicinity of my elbow, stranded
while I close my eyes and find the will
to free them, releasing words onto
the paper while the background jazz
sings a lullaby. My lids could close
for hours, days. A week could pass
and then I would awaken, energized,
enthused, enraptured, captivated by
the words I wrote the week before.



(c) Ellen Gillette

To a Modern Don

Don Quixote battled windmills for the lovely Dulcinea;
Knights of old, for ladies fair, those flaming dragons pierced.
Other tales of such heroics make us blush or swoon,
we ladies who respond dramatic'ly with many sighs or tears.

You killed, instead, a smoke detector chirping very loudly
so your lady love might sleep in peace,
curled in the bed beside you.
I think (correctly) that such actions quantify your love
as something grandly fierce.

Opinion, yes, but true.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

A friend told me that this actually happened to her one night in a motel some years ago, and it struck me as rather lordly of her fellow.

Irma

Inside the darkened, shuttered house,

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we listened to the shudder of earth's atmosphere
outside and prayed the roof would hold, and
that we wouldn't wake up to catastrophe,
and that we'd wake up, period. (Actually,
I never prayed this for myself,
because I wasn't worried all that much,
directing supplications to the west,
where Irma set her sights. And in the aftermath,
while carrying the massive piles of branches and debris
through standing water to add decoration
all along the street, a soundtrack was provided
thoughtfully by something like a million happy frogs.
Many others, far too many, didn't fare as well,
still underwater, powerless (both in reality and metaphor),
and Irma managed to wreak havoc all along
the state and up the coast ("wreak havoc" being
currently an overused description, albeit
accurate) but prayers of thanks are lifted
for our safety, overall; for lineman on the job and
(in the case of kids) the fact that public schools
are closed until next week.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2017

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