The Masked Woman
I remember the first time
I saw you sitting inside a tire
Swinging under a tree
Like a happy child
Your eyes were fixed on me
Like a bee chasing my thoughts.
I was memorizing the afternoon
Poetry of a pandemic.
The Masked Woman
I remember the first time
I saw you sitting inside a tire
Swinging under a tree
Like a happy child
Your eyes were fixed on me
Like a bee chasing my thoughts.
I was memorizing the afternoon
Poetry of a pandemic.
Love
Walking around the kitchen, dining room
She notices words on boxes, objects on the walls
On papers lying around the tables
She hears the sounds, sees images, juxtapositions
She remembers her mother
making wreaths out of corks
She arranges her own
Made of mushrooms and marshmallows, crackers and fruits
She remembers when her mother took her to an art museum
They saw Monet’s paintings of haystacks and water lilies
She remembers her mother
took her and toured a pineapple plantation
She imagines Monet painting
rows and rows of pineapples
How about rows and rows of olive trees
Will he get tired of them?
She wishes she can ask her mother
She will know.
I remember
a halo of black curly hair
and your distracted face.
Pearls of laughter, precious and soft
The laundry hanging, rhododendrons of peach and purple
Photos of them together next to a giraffe
Arranged themselves in her mind
While she walks on the beach
with no vanishing point
Where children are playing,
Two are chasing the gulls
and laughing
They will not be at the tea ceremony
dainty mountain of gestures and formalities they want no part
One day the memory will rise
And remember one own’s happiness
Like a child waking up
Her eyes looking at her mother
Her mother smiling at her
She turns around and walks back
The children and the birds are gone
The sands are changing colors
Someone waves from a distance
She continues her walk on the beach
With no vanishing point.
Lift the veil of early hours
Look at the mirror
to see what you want
You see not what you need
You have to remember the instructions
which key, which book to open
The best songs once lodged in loneliness
rising with the first light
You are not a star that fell from the sky
But a stone picked from a dry riverbed
You are experiencing difficulty of change, fragmentation
13 dishes from the blackbirds to feed the masses
the song birds are gone, problems remained
You return to the room
sit next to someone in a lotus position
hearts beat in silence.
note: I finished reading Circe by Madeline Miller. Entertaining,flowing prose.
I draw my childhood on my notebook
As far as my imagination can take
I was once a shepherd to five sheep
I watched them graze and sleep
I ate alone and slept on the grass
Then I went back to the city and school.
Field of hay flickers in my memory
A lingering kiss of time.
They walk the ruins
haunted by all the brokenness
for what was once there
Remembering certain moments of elation of the afternoon
And not the whole idle expansion of the day
We walk towards the fountain expecting a cooling mist
It’s windy, we laugh as our hair and faces get wet
The changing detachment and tone in the photographs
Overhead a falcon practices its dives,
Hiding a new flying patterns and surprises
The day ends and we go our separate ways
Not knowing if there is a new day.
Old age approaches threshold of innocence
easing it’s way for memory to slowly fade
soundless like a star falling from the sky
a swan in the river.
A woman wearing a multicolored scarf
waits for her friend in the Flower Fields
on the wrong day.
photos: Flower Fields in Carlsbad,CA