𝑾𝒂𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘮 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 Getting me Back (The Voices Within) 𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 . 🫶🏼
She would be 66 years old today. Instead, she is frozen in time at 17 and I ….
I sit with what I have left of her – a lot of cherished memories, a handful of photographs, her purse, her wallet, her 45 records and her old scrap book.
𝘏𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘺 𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳. 🥂
I love this photo for so many reasons. I wonder what those little boys are thinking? What one said that created such an expression in the others.
My 5th grandson started playing baseball this year. He, like my other grandsons, is a rascal on the field and off.
The photo made me think of my other grandsons (their ages range from 10 months to 22 years) and some of the things they discuss/discussed.
I imagine right about now I have a grin like the little guy in the picture as I remember how I busied myself, pretending to be unaware while they talked.
Their conversations ranged from bugs to books and dinosaurs and bikes. Rocks and clouds and robots. …
When the older boys discussions evolved to automobiles and girls I busied myself out of hearing range.
And just for clarification, I don’t consider it eavesdropping if I’m in your presence.
As If
As if your shoulder
brushing against my breast
in a crowded room
meant anything to me…
As if your smile
would thaw my frosty heart…
As if your constant assurance
could overcome my cynicism…
As if the invisible boulevard
would never rise up and beckon.
The street lamp
glows in the bleached mist
only three floors below us.
I blow streams of smoke
into the black night and hum
to the drone of the unseen road.
Be steel my bleating heart!
Be quiet! Be silent, hard steel.
As if wearing your tee-shirt made us lovers.
From Getting Me Back (The Voices Within)
Lord!!! My mind is almost as blank as the paper in front of me. (Oh it’s worse than writers block y’all 😂.) Still, I am thankful for the coffee, the scenery and autopilot. Autopilot gets me out of bed every day. 
And on we roll..
Week two of NPM (A Poem & I Picture) where I share a photo taken by me and a poem by some awesome poet. I hope you all had a lovely weekend.
Where do sandcastles go
when the tide engulfs the view and
lonely shorelines crest in tear drops
beneath white capped dream chasers,
foam laced erasers combing sanded wishes,
taking towers in the water’s rage
as moats become minor indentations
on a beach bathed in the moon light,
moving gleams in metronome tickling
as our hearts wash out to sea
drowning in the depths of forbidden love
and with my final breath,
salt water drenched I profess
that forbidden or not, I love you
and the lighthouse shines its orbiting light
as I go under for the last time
happy in my declaration
as rust falls from the anchor
and I wait until we meet again,
on the island of meant to be
Psst, if you want to read some of my poetry Getting Me Back (The Voices Within) released this month and is now available in digital or paperback.
“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper.”—Thich Nhat Hanh
Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and murmuring like a mouth.
You were the shadow of a cloud crossing over a field of tulips.
You were the tears of a man who cried into a plaid handkerchief.
You were a sky without a hat.
Your heart puffed and flowered like sheets drying on a line.
And when you were a tree, you listened to trees and the tree things trees told you.
You were the wind in the wheels of a red bicycle.
You were the spidery Maria tattooed on the hairless arm of a boy in downtown Houston.
You were the rain rolling off the waxy leaves of a magnolia tree.
A lock of straw-colored hair wedged between the mottled pages of a Victor Hugo novel.
A crescent of soap.
A spider the color of a finger nail.
The black nets beneath the sea of olive trees.
A skein of blue wool.
A tea saucer wrapped in newspaper.
An empty cracker tin.
A bowl of blueberries in heavy cream.
White wine in a green-stemmed glass.
And when you opened your wings to wind, across the punched-tin sky above a prison courtyard, those condemned to death and those condemned to life watched how smooth and sweet a white cloud glides.
*Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954) is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street (1984) and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). She is the recipient of numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.
Oh my goodness, those final lines left me a little misty eyed. I do not recall reading Sandra Cisneros before but I certainly enjoyed Cloud and in case I haven’t told you 1000 times Getting Me Back (The Voices Within) released this month and is now available in digital or paperback. I will be saying it again, and again… and again in case you missed it. As a matter of fact I am going to paste it on every NPM post.
P.S. If you have a recommendation for a poem (even your own) Get in Touch
Is that a lame title? I can’t help help it, it made me laugh. If you could hear the fella in my head you’d laugh too — or not.
Anywho…
It was a lovely long weekend but now I am back. You wanna see some pictures? Okay.
Starting tomorrow I will be posting A Poem & Picture. I can’t guarantee you that I will post daily throughout April but I will earnestly try for two or three a week. There, I’ve set a goal.
The goals of National Poetry Month are to:
It is NPM, that stands for National Poetry Month baby! Ahhh, I crack me up.
And in case I haven’t told you 1000 times Getting Me Back (The Voices Within) released this month and is now available in digital or paperback. I will be saying it again, and again… and again in case you missed it. 😉
I don’t know about you guys, but I was in dire need of some humor to get me through NPM. I scrolled & scrolled through my inbox and found nothing to make me grin. 😦 But then I remembered a fella named Regis…
Poem & Picture provided by Regis Auffray
I once met a lass named Molly,
Who made me vulnerable to folly;
I fell for her charms,
Took her in my arms,
Molly was a sweet Irish collie.
by Abdul Ali
here among them the dead the others the aliens
I see you without coke bottle glasses a wavy comb over
your nose buried inside a notebook over-
flowing with strange sightings men and women
without a homeland a library to shelve histories
dreams the names of rare flowers fruits baby names
exiled from their villages learning to say hello
with accents thick with nostalgia for their purple planets
here UFO sightings aren’t so spectacular
border crossing is quintessentially american universal
crowds gather in squalid ghettoes where every country is a city
every city is a verse & every verse echoes “Those Winter Sundays”
where a New World opens up where all the martians are welcome
at the writing table with their fountain pens & swollen digits & you
whispering
what took so long?
The Real Janna Hill in 