Self-Doubt

 Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason

All Rights Reserved

 Thank you for spinning me into self-doubt

your perfectionism a magnifying mirror

of my own.

My creations rendered ugly by your measure

words only a mother could love

the baby spanked with your measuring stick

before it draws its first independent breath.

I’m grateful for the preview

of the moments that will terrify me

when my uniqueness confronts others

more concerned with form than substance.

I’m better prepared.

I stood up to you.

Self-doubt will not be

the boss of me.

My child will go out into the world

find its own way

make its unique contribution

and if it wears purple spiked hair

with a gray flannel suit

self-expression and reverence for custom

will meet in an explosive synergy

a blast that leaves in its rubble

the best of all worlds

an explosion that might just change forever

the one where we used to (almost) live.

~~~

Photo Credit: © Aleksandar Todorovic - Fotolia.com

Loss and Found

Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

When all the grief is gone

echoing the emptiness

There is only love.

There is only love.

And this is the reason for loss:

that we might know

the height and breadth and depth

of our capacity

to feel

to expand our hearts

to keep on loving more

until we burst

into starry fireworks

and return

to the love and light

sparks of the Creative Oneness

made in Her image:

Divine Mother.

~~~

Photo Credit: © goccedicolore - Fotolia.com

Older Than Dirt

Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

  

Today you are officially
old, senior by even the strictest
definition.

I dare not write
to say Happy Birthday
risk opening the ancient wound
each of us hurting the other
in ways so subtle
they go right over
our heads.

I’m still not over
your last missive
dripping regret
cursing the calendar
biology
wrinkles
being wider
maybe not wiser
your losses as palpable
as the sorrow still in my psyche
grief as old as dirt
not even buried
by four decades
and a marriage that’s right for me.

Us at our best
still eclipses the pain
the sadness
the chances we passed up
each in our turn
the eternal enmeshment
of our psyches
my dreams
a constant replay
you still haunting
my soul
with alternating grace
and damage.

I was in my scrapbooks
this week
for another reason.
You were frozen in time
young and virile.
I hit replay in your
photos, cards, gifts
vapors of your disappearing acts
rising out the pages
opportunity unrealized
loss crystallized
fading to yellow

tears of mourning
arthritis of the spirit
too old and creaky
to flow down the rut
we dug
in my cheek.

~~~

Photo Credit: © goccedicolore - Fotolia.com

My Throat

Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

Deep inside my throat
A cork begs to be popped.

Fizzling words, opinions

feelings

New Year’s Eve of Flowing Voice

spilling

celebrating

not stopping

till the last bubble bursts.

 
                 ~.~

The song reverberated.

My sinuses a sounding board

my lungs

a bellows.

A passageway cleared

to hit the high notes

for the first time in so long

I was a giraffe.

~~~

Photo Credit: © Andrea Izzotti - Fotolia.com

For My Father

Dad Louis Mason - 1980

© 2013 Joyce Mason/ All Rights Reserved

He was surrounded by women

but learned to love, not fear them,
despite his jokes to the contrary.

He cried and did dishes and knew
that none of us were born stupid
for being born female.

He was stubborn and sentimental

and hard-working

and had this knack for making me laugh

every time the sky fell down

(or me on another bleeding knee).

He had faith in my dreams
and was always smart enough to realize
he couldn’t figure me out
(neither could I)
but he was so much a part of me
you could see me in the morning mirror shaving.

He was half of love
of parents
of every foundation
that’s held me up.

He was, when I was at his knee,
and is, now that I’m old enough
to be my own person,
the greatest father,

man and hero
any daughter
could have ever found.

So when you ask me about love
and why it’s been so long in coming
(and sometimes so short in staying)

realize
that when it comes to men
my dad is a tough act to follow.

~~~

Photo Credit: Family photo album

Postscript: I first wrote this poem in the 1970s.  Just before my dad died in early 1997, I reunited with my childhood sweetheart and married him the next year. I was so glad Dad got to see me happy with Tim before he passed. It was only years later that I realized, in the end, I married someone remarkably like my father.

From my unpublished poetry book, Thick Water: Poems on Bonds of the Heart.

Happy Father's Dad to All and to the nurturing Dad inside everyone, male or female.