October 10, 2012 - OctPoWriMo

 

Boots-alicious

 

Dressed for rain

In New York

 

Rubberized boots

Slicker yellow

Tan and blue plaid

Purple with flowers

Navy with Ralph Lauren’s polo player

 

Shiny silver hiking boots

With embossed floral pattern

Loose laces tucked down inside the

Grommets standing wide

Like a wicked witch’s collar

 

Cobalt patent leather, ankle highs

Three gold buttons stand at attention

Along outer sides

 

Nut brown leather knee highs

Side-zippered

Sole to knee

 

Black patent,

Waterproof gortex panels

Contrast with texture

 

Burnished taupe knee highs

Five carved buttons

Run up the outsides,

 

Fifth Avenue manikin

Complements her chic skirt

With black leather knee-highs

On tall stainless steel heels.

One-upping the masses

in transit

 

October 9, 2012 - OctPoWriMo

In Flight

Before take off

Travelers on cell phones

voices

ricocheted

all the way back

to Seat 38E,

third-to-last row.

Overhead bins,

Slammed

Slammed again

Too stuffed to close,

No items to shift during flight,

Guaranteed.

Seat 38E.

Sandwiched

Between perpetually-whooshing

Rear- cabin toilets

Add to the symphony

Ceaseless engine noise,

The buzz and whirr magnified

Inside this fiberglass shell

Cough, cough, cough

Atchoo! Atchoo! Atchoo!

How many“bless yous”

Does a polite

traveler

murmur

Before

ducking and dodging,

hunting up her Vitamin C?

October 8, 2012

First Taste of Wine

The Cassells cellar

Oh.

Really

A cellar

Earthen-floored

Must-scented

Raven-aired

Grandma Annie Cass-sells

and ten-year-old me

We heave away worn wooden doors

Throwing daylight underground

Pick our way down brick slab steps

Let our eyes adjust

Then I follow her

En route for

wooden plank shelves against one wall.

She stretches toward a dusty jug

Pours a half-pint jelly jar

One-quarter full

Pronouncing “grape juice” and

Taking a sip.

Passing the jelly jar to me

She cautions

“Just a little now.

It makes you feel all warm inside.”

Her eager

knobby fingers reach

for the jar

as it leaves my lips.

October 7, 2012

Trudy

Trudy

Animated, passionate

Encouraging, questioning, challenging

Emanates light wherever she walks in the world

Sharing, protecting, caring

Steadfast, compassionate

Friend

Her birthday poem

Written and read

A scant thirteen days 

before,

freed from pain, 

she left us

weeping for our loss.

Today

Her cactus blooms

Ah.

She's back.

October 6, 2012

My Dad

Thomas Cassells, October 6, 1917 - March 14, 1972

 

 

He was the tallest man in the world,

My Dad.

His voice thundered from the skies,

And when it did

We children of the 1940s stopped, listened

Answered yes sir

Jumped right then

In a minute did not exist

He was like a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone,

My Dad

Beneath the hard-shell exterior

Laid a compassionate heart,

Love-filled,

Harboring a man who, in retrospect

of course, was funny.

How did you meet Mama?

On a slow boat to China.

He was the tallest man in the world,

My Dad.