She Just Wants, by Susan Lesser

She just wants …

To lie in bed eating chocolates, dark chocolates, maybe a few will have nuts. Maybe she will also have an orange, and a cup of tea.

That bed to be a king-size bed with room to sprawl out with books beside and pillows behind, and, of course, the box of chocolates, some with nuts.

The pillows to be covered in silk, blue like the sky silk and green like emeralds silk. If there needs to be pink on the pillows, she just wants it to remind her of the inside of a seashell dredged up from the ocean depths, still feeling shy at finding itself in the sunlight. 

She just wants …

Books strewn over half the bed, books she has never yet read, with gold-edged leaves, that pulse there on the handwoven spread, inviting her to open the cover, and other books with thumb-worn pages and mellow spines that already know she loves them and they will always have a home. She just wants to take her time deciding.

She just wants …

A cat, or maybe two, curled up at the foot of the king-size bed, cats that purr when she wiggles her toes against a rounded feline tummy. 

She just wants …

To have someone else to pay the bills and boil the carrots, to fold the laundry, to call the vet, to send the cards, to sweep the green and white floor clean for today.

To have someone collect all the bits of a day and put them in a basket just outside her closed door, to hold them there for safekeeping, for tomorrow.

She just wants …

Someone else to answer the phone, or as is most likely the case, to check the caller ID and let the phone ring itself out since the caller is, once again, Anonymous — Out of Area.

She just wants … 

To be Anonymous and Out of Area, there behind the closed door on the king-size bed with the box of chocolates, dark and dreamy, and the Books-in-Waiting. 

She’s just wants …

The sky-blue and emerald pillows to cradle her, and the cats to look up and yawn and stretch and go back to sleep.

NOTE: This piece is inspired by a collection of poems called "She Just Wants," by Beverly Rollwagen

Auditory Hallucination, by Stacey Murphy

Willow at the edge of the marsh

wiggles her toe-roots in the cold mud

as the sweet racket

of thousands of peeper frogs

washes through her branchy fingers

and the continuous trilling

gently coaxes the bark from the ends

of buds and their beginnings

with a chorus of

“At long last,

we have made it.

You are safe to grow again.”

Something from Utah, by Carol Miller

I take down the salt glazed teapot from a high shelf,

admiring blue fish patterns brushed on the cream background,

remove the perfectly fitting lid

and spoon a tablespoon of fragrant green tea into the mesh holder.

Tea for two.

I pour the hot water

over the dried leaf fragments,

replace the perfect cover

and brew.

The tea was bought in Salt Lake City, Utah,

carried east on Delta Airlines and gifted to us.

We were thought of in Salt Lake City —

that this selection of green tea flavored with walnuts, 

a dusting of coconut and a whiff of pineapple

would make us happy and content.

===

This poem was inspired by “Bounty," by Robyn Sarah

After Midnight, by Stacey Murphy

After midnight,

The water tumbler

In the dish drainer

Shifts ever so quietly, subtly

Toward his favorite plate

Who is standing on edge,

Facing away from him

Toward the microwave,

Its lighted numbers

Casting a spaceship-glow green

On both of them.

After midnight,

I kiss the sleeping little boy’s cheek

And he groans and mumbles

Just like the old man

He used to be.

After midnight,

Dancing in the dark

If only in my dreams

After midnight,

Only the owls

Hear the first geese returning

After midnight,

Warm, flaky aromas from

The corner bakery

After midnight,

Only the owls

Hear Jupiter’s bawdy joke

And Venus’ twinkly laugh

Signs of Spring, by Susan Lesser

A glove has gone missing, a black knit one. No matter. I can cope.

People are refusing to wear their hats. Look around. See what I mean?

Birds, the intrepid ones, the scouts, are singing heartily in the trees behind our house, not often, not aways, but with great sincerity.

I have decided not to make pot roast for dinner after all. Instead we will have salmon and asparagus, and melon for dessert.

The cats, both cats, went outside. It was only for about four minutes, but they did it. Afterwards, they ran shivering upstairs and tucked themselves back in into bed.

This morning I forgot to use the magic blue fob on my keychain that starts my car from behind the kitchen door.

The trees on the hillsides, that last month were only unrelenting gray, now present themselves in a pink sort of haze, if you catch them in just the right light.

The bottle of water in my car is not always frozen solid. Such freezing creates a useful missile to hurl at brigands and bears, but does nothing for the thirsty driver.

The seed catalogues that arrive in the mail make sense now. The ones that came in January went straight into the recycling bin.

From Emily — a poem, by Sue Crowley

Emily wrote, "A solemn thing it was I said."

There are no other lines, no punctuation, no frame of reference

     from the lines above or below.

Only, "A solemn thing it was I said"

So was this descriptive, as in 'I said it was a solemn thing?'

Or declarative, as in 'I said a solemn thing?'

I think the latter, a solemn thing it was she said,

and now I want more words she said.

Or scribbled in the nooks and crannies of her little house,

     her worn wooden desk,

     her so observant mind.

"A little madness in the spring"

of tiny birds, brown and blue,

    arriving with the waxing sun.

Surviving through the bitter dark,

    flitting little miracles of life.

Or snowdrop and crocus sprigs, how do they dare

    poke green defiance into ice?

They must be mad.

Or do the birds and flowers know what we cannot,

constrained within this cranium, this mammal mind?

Apart, yet part, of the same sunlight,

the same urge to life?

Do intrepid bluebirds sing the answer

in a language meant for flight, while

earthbound, we hear only sound?

Is there a knowing in the ground from which come

the seeds and bulbs unfolding slowly, so slowly

it escapes our frantic eyes?

A solemn thing perhaps I say about madness in the spring,

when ordinary miracles abound.

I am a Woman Who . . .

This list was compiled during the last few minutes of a writing workshop held at Tompkins County Public Library on Saturday afternoon, March 14, 2015. The workshop was held in conjunction with Women's History Month, and designed as a way to honor significant women in our lives. At the end, we celebrated ourselves by creating this collective list. 

Contributors: Barbara Kane Lewis, Gabrielle Vehar, Jackie Parslow, Kathy Hopkins, Maude Rith, Zee Zahava

I am a woman who is amazing

I am a woman who is ready for spring cleaning, summer travel, fall weatherings 

I am a woman who might create a new computer language

I am a woman who can cook for two — exactly enough for dinner, with leftovers for lunches the next day

I am a woman who can finish a book

I am a woman who is ready for a new knitting project

I am a woman who can look fabulous in ten minutes, though putting on lipstick requires a bit more time

I am a woman who is realistic, without taking on more projects, plans or supplies than I can use in one lifetime

I am a woman with a very rich fantasy life and I’ll generously share

I am a woman who is an excellent listener

I am a woman who didn’t have a curl on my head until I went through menopause

I am a woman who always wears black and silver and turquoise

I am a woman who loves my cats more than I love anyone else

I am a woman who has lots of opinions that I keep to myself . . . unless I don’t, and then: Watch Out

I am a woman who is trying to learn to care-take myself as well as I do the others in my life

I am a woman who can’t throw anything away (because I might need it one day)

I am a woman who doesn’t trust people who only give pale, wishy-washy hugs

I am a woman who is introverted and craves close connections . . . but not too many

I am a woman who is always in the middle of reading several books

I am a woman who has many interests — reading about air traffic control one day, and origami the next

I am a woman who laughs when no one else is laughing

I am a woman who is a night-owl by nature, but I've tried to be a morning person because I like the mornings

I am a woman who sometimes forgets to be polite, using my shirt as a napkin, for example

I am a woman who has trouble identifying as a woman; not biologically, but perhaps psychologically

I am a woman who can organize a garage, an event, or a drawer

I am a woman who went to Africa, with a 15-month-old child, and slept under a thatched roof in a hammock

I am a woman who can get a car repaired, with French insurance, at a French repair shop

I am a woman who can connect people to people

I am a woman who is intuitive

I am a woman who is afraid to try new things but does them anyway

I am a woman who has good intentions and a good imagination; who talks to the Man in the Moon

I am a woman who keeps balls in the air and all the plates spinning

I am a woman who loves to sing

I am a woman who enjoys talking with strangers (friends I have not yet made)

I am a woman who drives to unknown destinations even though I have a poor sense of direction

I am a woman who loves life

I am a woman who gets carried away by enthusiasm, and then gets exhausted by all my new ideas and inspirations, with little ability to pace myself

I am a woman who is superstitious

I am a woman who had a sweet dream once, about my own death: in the springtime, while sitting in a chair near a lake; there were swans floating by on the water; it was England

I am a woman who wished, sincerely, to be a nun, if only it didn't require converting to Catholicism

I am a woman who can laugh at myself

I am a woman who used to be a rather good tap dancer

I am a woman who pauses, more and more often, trying to retrieve the right word which seems to be flittering just beyond my grasp

With gratitude to Judy Grahn, whose 1972 "She Who" poem served as our inspiration