WAITING FOR A MATCH

WAITING FOR A MATCH

      susan ambrosino

You're safe in the slow graze of your days

Watching the potential fire of the night

Through the open door

Thinking about a short step outside into combative blissful

Awakening

Wood piled high

Waiting for a match

You hesitating at the table

In your bright fluorescent kitchen.

It doesn't really matter how long it takes.

You just plod along a few inches each day

Drink some wine

Take your vitamins:

Bone builder and thyroid cofactors

Eat quinoa

Play with your grandbabies

Make sure they will grow up

Remembering who you are.

Make sure your children will want to

Visit your grave

Bring you flowers as you lay there unaware

For all time eternal.

You plan on living a long time.

You take care of your teeth

Your joints

Your lumbar spine

Your flexible open mind.

But most of all

You keep your husband healthy

He will always be there for you

He also has no one else

But you.

Sometimes you feel like a big round mass

of earthy Boule bread

Meant to be torn apart roughly

With the hands out in a field

Near a shovel and a mound of dirt.

And sometimes you feel like the dough of white bread

Able to be pulled in any direction

Shaped in any way.

(Green is the color of trees

Though for some it's the color of money)

Then you smooth your hair

Pull in your stomach

Pose yourself sideways

And become

A Focaccia

Oh! so delicioso!

In your imagination.

It's all just the imagination.

THE QUIET OF THE BONES

THE QUIET OF THE BONES

          susan ambrosino

Bone is quiet

But bones hear everything

From their vantage point inside the body

Protected from the ravages of the outside world.

Ultra-violet light, wind, cold

Drumbeats, snatches of conversation

It all breaks through the silence within the flesh.

With no understanding for the force of energy

A reverberation outwardly

That is inwardly received

You wonder one day why the barometer has dropped.

You can't imagine running wild

Through the dark forest alone

Into the sounds of insects and bird calls

With wet dripping overhead

And something scurrying in the underbrush

Thinking about the eyes that watch you

The noses that smell you

What ears are hearing you

Or how afraid they may be

Of the woman who dares to run

Boldly through the woods at night alone.

So you offer yourself something to be done early

In the light of day

Which gets you to bed on time

Keeps you safe in the house with the doors locked

Bed covers tucked up to your chin

The myth of the woods remaining

A child's good night tale

With Goldilocks staying home

And Little Red Riding Hood

Never leaving her bed

But if you dredge up the courage to go

It's a good idea to take some equipment

Heavy shoes

Peanut butter

Tenacity

You never know what you may find

When you look into the quiet of the bones.

IN THE DIRECTION YOU WANT TO GO

IN THE DIRECTION YOU WANT TO GO

                      susan ambrosino

You'll never run off with some clothes

A debit card and your Toyota Prius

Tearing across the country

To some out-of-the-way desert spot

In the wild west

Instead you spend much time walking

Carefully through live trees

Dodging roots, stumps, low branches

With the thought you'd like to change your name to

Moves Through Branches

Or

In Pursuit of Nothing

It doesn't matter how long your walk will be

As long as it's enough to renew the history of many years.

If you need to get back to the house

For a glass of white wine

Or apple cinnamon tea

Never thinking about the connectivity of events

It's ok

You just go home.

The world bends

Can be worked like clay

If you talk to it

If you let it talk to you

Like it did when you were twelve

A newborn woman forever skating

At Coffman's Pond during Christmas week   

The world an unexplained innocent opening.

Your own private mountain

Starts with one stone every day

One that just fits in the palm of your hand

Drop it in the center of your yard.

You never know if what you say will make a difference

So you just go home

And go about your business

Wondering why it is you are still here

Steering the wobbly wheelbarrow of your choices

In the direction you want to go

Thinking you passed through grace by special selection.

You set yourself up

Blindly planning your life without knowing

That it was fine to be exactly who and what you are

Taking each day in small amounts

A type of slow graze that led you home

With doors suddenly opening

You standing surprised

Gazing into what you thought was the wrong vestibule

Thinking yourself in the midst of strangers

Living another life

With a future to fret about

And the need to invent sins for the confessional.

When you were six

The building across the street burned to the ground

You watched from the kitchen window

The amazement of flames and smoke

Fire trucks all night long

Then missed school the next day

Went to the RKO movie theatre

Ate popcorn

That's what mattered the most

The popcorn

With lots of butter and salt.

Being afraid of dying is silly.

When you're dead you don't know it.

It's like the unborn being afraid of life.

And you can only hope the little pains of daily life

Go on and on.

THE CERTAINTY OF LIFE

THE CERTAINTY OF LIFE

         susan ambrosino

Sometimes all it is you're doing is

Planting geraniums

Folding clean laundry

Lifting grocery bags from the car

Beating eggs into a bowl of flour

As you suddenly realize

You've moved somewhere else

Away from the world you inhabit

Into the space of your mind

Where you've learned to understand the silence

Passing through the world

Knowing its inability to judge you

Has saved you

And you nearly let go

But you don't

Instead you slowly return

To the non-porous certainty of life

To continue making a cup of coffee

Knitting a baby sweater

Deadheading your perennial garden

Or scrubbing a pot.

CHILDREN PLAYING IN THE GARDEN

CHILDREN PLAYING IN THE GARDEN

         susan ambrosino

Working in the garden teaches patience.

A child playing piano does better in math.

Soft, furry animals are responsible for the disappearance

of lettuce leaves in the garden.

None of the purple mums from last fall came back.

You don't own nature.

It owns you.

You don't own the creatures who chop the carrot greens unseen.

Like you don't own a child

Can't make him play piano.

Anything that comes to you comes free.

It's easy to stand in the open doorway

Watching the pale tendrils of leaves

Moving out from last year's old wood

Watching empty flower pots

While listening to one small cheeww, cheeww, cheeww

In the maple tree

Smelling a modest rain from the night before.

Nobody knows what will walk or not walk

At the end of time on the forest floor

Wondering about the thunder or the sparrow

Or the daffodils that are always there.

Like the summer you spent on a farm

When you were nine

Hiding behind the hedge along the porch

While the mulberry tree near the barn dripped purple

The spooky, old, rusty car in the back lane

Seemed like a phenomenal mystery

And the crumbling stone wall along the property edge

Was a shelter

Dividing the world of children

From the adults

Who would never understand them.

Though the winter is long

They keep cozy warm

Waiting for the right time to bloom.

BURNING BRIGHT

BURNING BRIGHT

     susan ambrosino

Do you think that when it all goes up in smoke

You will be one of the few who survive ?

Do you think you're one of the enlightened ones ?

Do you think you will rise from the dead ?

From the ashes ?

Do you think you will be remembered ?

Do you think you will have a gravestone ?

With flowers ?

Descendants coming to look ?

To think of that woman who lived so long ago

And died just like the rest ?

When you are gone

Will it be the same as before ?

When you look away from the forest

Will  it still be there ?

Will it change ?

Your bedside table lamp keeps burning

Beside your night time glass of water

Your library book left open

A bookmark picturing a tree placed

Upon the page

As you lie in bed

With a burned face

Dirty feet

One earring missing

Hungry, thirsty, tired

But too alive to sleep

Just because wild grasses grew in open fields

Weeping willows drank from shallow ponds

Blackbirds sat on fallen branches

Meadow hillocks moved in waves

Silken air breezed over your skin

Old stone walls tumbled softly to the future

Dirt paths led you off

To vast blue sky

Wind

Sun

You can't sleep

You're too alive.

LINES WRITTEN AFTER READING BILLIE COLLINS

LINES WRITTEN AFTER READING BILLIE COLLINS

      susan ambrosino

You spent the morning reading through poems

Written by a poet

For whom it is impossible to determine

Which of his poems is his best.

Then the tiny mouse of desire inside you

That longs to write

Squeaks a final gasp and runs

Back into a hole by the baseboard along the floor

To hide again in safety

Lick her wounds

Pant until her breath calms

So she can venture out again

Into the castle of poetry

And make another attempt

To cross the vestibule.

WHEN GOD COMES TO YOU

WHEN GOD COMES TO YOU

     susan ambrosino

The sense of it is always with you.

How you feel yourself extending out

From the surface of your skin

Beyond the confines of the body

Into the realm of space and time

Into the realm of what you think is god.

But it's a miracle that you need

To feel fully present in your life

A pop ! that will show you what's under the tent

Making all your thoughts irrelevant.

A shaft of light to break through the roof

As you sit complacently knitting

In your favorite chair.

Hit you square between the eyes

Or smack in the solar plexus

Changing you

Until no one recognizes you and you look

Into the mirror and see someone else who you know is you

But isn't.

Perhaps an out of body

While spreading hummus on rye crisp toast.

Suddenly your hovering near the ceiling

Watching yourself in the kitchen.

God won't go away but it doesn't come close either.

You long for it to take over your life

In a dramatic way

Like it does for saints, the selfless, the innocent,

The suffering, the dying, those who

Take upon themselves the stigmata.

Or maybe a large white bird flying into

Your house when you open the front door

Making itself at home as if it always belonged there

With your things

In your life.

Perhaps if you become fierce

Let out a low growl, or a loud bellow

Or engage that scream therapy so popular in the 70's

You'll release the latent god so long sleeping

Beneath your soft manners.

Something you can call a small miracle

With special meaning

So you will know a force beyond your skin

Has sent you a wonderful clear omen.

But god comes when it's time

Through suffering and pain

Loneliness and sorrow

Loss and more loss.

That's how it works.

First the pain, the agony, the blood

The inability to walk

Someone sticks a catheter in you

You soil yourself

People visit and look at you

Hold your hand

Doctors come and go

Come and go

Then go

Slowly away

To whisper to your family.

That's when god comes

To pick up the piece of

Your scrap of body

Minus the needs, the desires, the money.

It's just you in your hospital robe

When the shaft of light drops down

And your lifted out of body

And the sound is so loud

A fierce bellow that only you hear.

It is the body tearing apart from you

You not wanting to let go

Until you do

And there it is

God

And god

And more god.

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID TO LOSE ?

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID TO LOSE ?

       susan ambrosino

All of it.

Don't you want to keep it all ?

Every last thing that life has to offer.

Your husband's broad grin as you

Drag him into a store to buy him clothes.

Every last bit you can take from the world.

You want to keep it all.

Your grown daughter's soft cheek

Her pensive look, her sudden smile.

You want to keep it.

Your grandbaby's fist clutching a red strawberry

Shoving it into his mouth so he can suck the juice.

You want it forever.

You son's proud stance, his loving glance toward

His wife and daughter.

No matter what you have, it's better than nothing.

Banana yellow floribunda roses.

The good, the not so good, the bad, and the awful.

Patchwork America seen from the air as you

Travel its expanse from coast to coast.

No matter what you don't have, it's still something.

That feeling that envelopes your soul while standing in

Moonlight, the stars, the vast nothingness.

The something that you know is there

Never seen.

You want life.

You want to live.

You want to continue.

What are you afraid to lose ?

Everything.

MORNING WALK

MORNING WALK

            susan ambrosino

The early morning mist seemed just a fog

   Until you wished

      You had worn more clothing

         Perhaps something plastic.

Doors suck open as you walk

   Car tires rustle the damp pavement

      Garbage truck metal crushes metal

         Your walk turns to frolic down the street.

Many people don’t think

   To stop their automatic lawn sprinklers

      Though all the morning weather reports

         Declare the inevitability of rain.

Vapor dripping from trees overhead

   Clouds your eyeglass vision

      Just enough

         To soften the suburban world you move through.

You're alone

   With the one who knows everything about you

      Your private pleasures and resentments

         Your secret loves.

The one who wants what you want

   Doesn't argue

      Follows quietly

         Listens and agrees.

You always suspected your dog's love of cheese

   Would send him off a cliff for a piece of it.

      You quicken your pace

         Hurry home.

Sometimes the spirit alone goes out for a walk

   Comes back for the cheese.

      Though you come from soil and seed

         the product is far from complete.

INSTEAD

INSTEAD

   susan ambrosino

Instead,

hear the bell ringing bird song.

See the sun shine in grass blades

from deepest dark to the sunniest open spot.

Notice butterfly bush leaves hanging in every direction,

360 degrees covered in the space of one small bush.

Watch roses carouse flamboyant,

the trumpet vine relentlessly climbing your arbor

summer after summer

dripping orange amazements at your feet.

It was all there before you looked,

will remain when you turn away

to dream your life is a great sea,

you a wave moving across it,

the boats of each day passing

as they cut through the swell of you,

and are gone,

to dream you're a hurricane,

a big, heaving wind,

balancing over your head everyone you love,

everything you own,

on an eight foot square section of stockade fence

your wind blowing, your rain lashing.

You still have a 1960’s cylindrical metal box

with bright neon daisy flowers.

You continue to keep it.

It continues to survive your need

to throw out the old

bring in the new.

There’s always something that remains.

EMPTY POT

ALMOST EMPTY POT

susan ambrosino

The drip, drip, drip of the kitchen faucet

is a calming, fluid, many sided drip

seeming to run along the musical scale, up and down

and you imagine sharps and flats in there as well

with an occasional mournful sound as in a minor key

but it's just a stainless steel pot left in the sink

with maybe a half inch of forgotten water in it

and you think how easy it would be to fall asleep

to this sound of dripping

especially on one of those nights when the mind won't quit

when you wish to be like the one single atom

you imagine never moves

at the very center

of a spinning wheel

then to rise and go about your day

feeling a happiness that makes you laugh out loud

to look out your window and notice the beauty

so incredible you want nothing more

then to die some distant day

almost empty like your pot

with the drip, drip, drip of all your wonderful memories

slowly falling away.

BALANCING ACT

BALANCING ACT

  susan ambrosino

The storm comes, pulled by something

beyond its control.

The tree grows, though it doesn't even know

it's alive.

The lion keeps its cubs close, it has no word

for love.

Life is a tearing apart, then a binding together,

broken dishes and holding hands,

out on a limb and hiding behind a bush.

Floral gifts fool you. Wrong turns lead you.

A blank face is no face at all.

It's a balancing act,

take your pick, one toe or two feet.

You know happiness,

the indefinable condition you think you want

can be achieved,

concentrate, concentrate, concentrate

by letting go,

relax the shoulders, the mind, find the soul.

From the ladder, to the mountain, to the sky so purple and pink,

you finally stop to blink.

Creativity needs flaws or you're just a technician.

A touch of madness is a gift.

Most wouldn't know what to do with it. You must have

freedom first,

no one to check up on you.

Chickweed in the garden is a problem the whole town

is having, not just you.

Animals say nothing when they suffer, they go off

on their own, hide behind a rock, lick themselves.

You've had it good, makes you wonder, what

you're gonna get when it all comes home.

You celebrate your birthday, but what

about your death day ?

The wind just blows and blows, the rain

comes down and down.

You always have a splendid supply of candles.

If you become mellow enough will you rot ?

The expressionless face as seen from the outside,

is only a face,

evoking what ?