You Walk Gently

You walk gently

in my life these days,

so gently I barely notice

the creak on the stairway,

the photograph gathering dust,

weeks floating by

without a thought of you,

the sterile bedroom,

the immaculate silence,

months floating by

without a thought of you.

You never did make

a pretty ghost,

and I never prayed

that my wounds

scab over completely.

In losing my grief

I had lost my joy…

your joy…

the breeze on the stairway,

the sudden footsteps,

the startling clarity

of your smile.

By Lisa Lindsey

A Man without Guile

“He was a man without guile”

said Father McCarthy,

Those were the words

that haunted me, followed me

from the church to the cemetery

to the family gathering,

winding through a room

of teary embraces and brave smiles.

They followed me to the table

where the casserole was being served,

past the fruit salad and homemade

brownies meticulously stacked on a tray,

past the photograph display,

his life propped up like a heart on a tripod,

beyond the day itself, and the years

of  marking time ticking backwards,

away from death.

I would not have encapsulated

his character in six words.

I would have written romance novel

when all that is necessary

is an inscription on a headstone,

 a caption in an obituary,

the unflustered voice of a priest

who knew him best..

“He was a man without guile.”

By Lisa Lindsey

Silver Buckles

"It covers the buckle in the wallpaper."

That was her excuse,

as if she needed a reason

to display on such a prominent wall

 - papered in silver roses -

the photograph of a child dead

half a century

and born too soon,

this silver blur in her frilly dress

with a huge bow pinned in hair

too baby-fine to hold it up,

and so it drooped to the side

of her tiny moon face.

"Her name is -- was Virginia,"

she said when asked about her,

tears moistening her eyes.

"She was two when the fever took her,

didn't have penny-cillin in them olden times."

Silver roses buckled and withered brown

with age, wallpaper stripped

and a mother's memory laid to waste.

Virginia's picture received a burial

in somebody's attic, but once it covered

buckled walls and hearts.

By Lisa Lindsey

The Memory of Green

Life was green then, soft and fertile

for sprawling over grassy blankets.

Water came in rolls of emerald

for canoeing through leafy afternoons.

Now green has lost much of its sparkle,

like the eyes of an aging woman,

as fascinating as a paperweight frog,

spontaneous as a rubber plant in the corner,

preciously preserved as an old army jacket

with a love letter in the pocket

written forty summers ago,

when the color green was more beautiful,

more honorable than a memory.

By Lisa Lindsey

Forget Me Not

A cemetery is a well-kept home
for those still mourned
in the hearts of the living

colorful pinwheels are planted
and tiny teddy bears propped

fresh flowers will replace
the stems consumed by winds
or wandering in deer

while the graves of the long dead
stand neglected, like the one
I saw the other day, undecorated

but for a blue flower in granite
carved next to her name
with a haunting plea...

“forget-me-not”

By Lisa Lindsey

Great Grandfather’s Inkwell Eyes

A Victorian frame accents his smooth

young face yellowed in antiquity,

the face of a man looking tall

in his Sunday coat with high collar

and a Cross pinned in his lapel,

and in the fashion of the day his hair

is slicked and parted down the middle,

hair as black as his inkwell eyes,

pools of gentleness.

But the man in the century-old photograph

that covers the stain on my wall,

is not the man my mother took me to visit

in his cold water flat on Second Street,

for he was a liver-mottled ghost of a man

dwarfed in his flannel robe,

whose only offense was gumming cigars

and hacking in his spittoon,

bothering nobody, just creaking the rocker

while he sang along with the radio

and told stories of his youth.

He was a gentle spoken, gentle man,

as gentle as his inkwell eyes,

and when he died I gained custody

of his photograph – but for the eyes

a man I never knew.

By Lisa Lindsey

Death in June
 
It was a hot green day in June
when I heard the rattle in her chest,
the day the kitten died.

In a ritual all too familiar

I processed through the backyard
with a shovel in one hand

and in the other a shoebox

containing the eye dropper

that was her milk bottle,

the doll's bib that mopped her chin,

and the dead kitten herself,

fetal coiled, chilled but still soft

in her yellow-striped suit.

And I cried -- not only because

we had previously made eye contact;

two souls, nurse and nursling,
connected forever in one pitiful moment --

I cried because it felt cold

to encounter death in June,

and because her tiny spirit
had struggled so hard to live,

her struggle ending in a casket

designed for pink sneakers.

But I gave her a lion-sized eulogy,

sending her off to some feline equivalent

of heaven, a palace in ancient Egypt

where her ancestors were worshiped as deities,

and she was groomed and bejeweled,
fat from feasting on ritual foods,
curled in a ball and purring contentedly

in the lap of Pharaoh's daughter.

By Lisa Lindsey

Pinwheels

I stand next to your grave
and the buzz of the pinwheel.
Happy birthday to you. . .

A stray balloon and wind-tossed flag
awakens past Julys with sisters
always waiting for nightfall,
for fireflies and fireworks to flare.

But night seems such a long way off
and I think how, in this mournful place,
the sun never sets on our visits.

One blue sky begets another
and another. In this blueness
I sense the best is gone.
That's what the skyline says. . .

Cartwheels

You were always a clown
escaping in circus acrobatics,
and I am always a clown
escaping in poetry,

even now as my words somersault
into meaningless metaphors
and my thoughts cannonball me
to the past where

you are showing off, as usual,
doing handstands on the sidewalk

and handsprings in the yard,

backflips and cartwheels,

anything for applause.

Maybe today I'll tame my inner lion,
stroll gentle under the big tent
of a blue-heaven sky.

I'll envision you entertaining
the Divine Ringmaster, cartwheeling
in the sunny field of his eye.

By Lisa Lindsey

Seventeen Years After

Seventeen years and my heart still breaks,
the loss as bitter today as the morning

our black parade undulated through the cemetery.

Sing me a verse from Amazing Grace
while I resurrect a few gentler memories

of the girl who finds the candy bar
tucked in the lunchbox between the apple
and the note signed, “Love, Dad….”

who steps on the feet of the handsomest man
at the Father-Daughter Dance,

whose curly head nods off to sleep
on shoulders fragranced with Old Spice.

By Lisa Lindsey

Daydream Believer

Never thought the news of his death

would hit me so hard. . .

I was a gum-cracking teenybopper,

a monkey in my own right when

his pageboy haircut and roving brown eyes

became the best thing about 1966.

Not like those girls who couldn't pull

themselves away from their television sets,

who wore out their record needles playing

"Daydream Believer" over and over.

I mean, he was a pretty voice with bangs,

competing with all the Bobby Shermans

and Peter Noones populating our bedrooms,

smiling at us from wall posters

and the covers of 16 Magazine.

Never thought the news of his death

would hit me so hard. . .

Maybe I'm thinking of my own mortality.

Maybe deep inside I'm a homecoming queen

waiting for Davy Jones to show up at the prom

and sing for me and Marcia Brady.

Maybe I'm a daydream believer after all.

By Lisa Lindsey 

St. Columba and the Horse

The old monk
leaned his head against the muzzle
of the horse who nudged in return,
groaning its gratitude.

A sadistic rider had kept the bit
in the animal's mouth for ages,
and so the saint unbridled it
and washed its mouth with water.

How long, the holy man wondered,
had the creature been denied
its floor of straw and lump of sugar?

Therese of Lisieux

I saw you among the little flowers

buttoning the pathway to Les Buissonets,

and in the touched-up photographs

sold as souvenirs on the streets of Lisieux.

I saw you in the marbled halls of heroes,

their statues carved in solemn poses,

and in the stately domes of great cathedrals.

I saw you in the ready eyes of pilgrims

breakfasting at the Cafe Francais,

and in the tour guide with a dozen stories

to tell in a charming French accent.

But I never saw you as you were,

an ordinary saint among the simple,

among the cloud of routine faces

veiled behind the convent grille.

I never passed you in the corridor,

your finger pressed to your lips,

a song stifled in cloistered silence.

Only in my mind

does your smile sneak up on me,

a humble visitor,

a century late.

By Lisa Lindsey

Marilyn's Posthumous Fantasy

If I had my life to live over
I wouldn't be Marilyn Monroe.
I'd be another Plain-Jane,
Mrs. John Doe,

and I wouldn't live in Hollywood
or in New York City,
I'd make my home in Dayton
or in Cincinnati,

and I wouldn't be a platinum blonde,
I'd keep my hair a mousy brown,
and I might have a kid or two
by the man I am married to,

and on Saturdays I'd go shopping
at the supermarket and
nobody would stare,
nobody would care.

I'd stroll around slow

and lazy as molasses
without wearing any sunglasses.
I would, I swear.

If I had my life to live over
I wouldn't be Marilyn Monroe.
I'd be just plain Norma Jean
from Anytown, Ohio.

Fathers
 
Some of us have
a whole gallery of memories.
Some of us have
only a snapshot in time.
Some of us wish
we could borrow more time.
A thousand years,
for some of us,
still wouldn't be long enough.
 
By Lisa Lindsey

Familiar Spirits

The faint fragrance of Old Spice
still lingered on my father's pillow
the morning after he was found
dead in the yard.

My sister and I had gone to the house
to sift through his belongings and take
what his current wife would allow.

But sentimental properties paled
in the face of the 'familiar spirits,'
those items capturing his presence

and the essence of lingering life...

Like the half-smoked cigar
in his favorite ashtray,
and the shoes caked with mud
from last evening's rain,

and the china plate smeared
with dried egg and the crumbs
of yesterday's toast,

the answering machine that
had trapped the voice of a ghost...

'We're not home right now,
leave your message at the sound of the...'

Room after room
my sister and I drifted,
touching, inhaling, embracing,
but it was the pillowcase holding
the scent of his aftershave,
a clean, man smell,
that made us cry like babies.

By Lisa Lindsey

Goodbye, Joe

He was just a baby that summer

I ran away from home,

just another damn good riddance.

And I didn’t even say goodbye.

Must admit he had the prettiest

blue eyes in the State of Ohio.

And could that boy play the guitar!

I didn’t appreciate him enough, I guess.

And I didn’t even say goodbye

Mississippi, where the Choctaw weep,

flowed into my runaway summer.

The South was new and, somehow, mine,

but all I could think of night after night

was how he ran through that house

like a hurricane, charged up

because it was his birthday.

He didn’t understand I was going away

and when I walked out the door

I didn’t look back. I don’t know why.

And I didn’t even say goodbye, Joe, goodbye.

By Lisa Lindsey

Aunt Daisy

She had a backwoods drawl

and a smile full of gums,

throaty laugh and skin

leathered from the sun.

She was everybody’s grandma

with a corncob pipe.

Her cabin home was as sacred

as the occasional visitor.

She shared a friendly fireplace

and a fresh killed chicken,

but not before we drew water

from the well to wash our hands.

Mostly I miss her stories

spiced with local gossip,

and her childhood recollections

with nary a tone of self-pity,

or mention of how many miles

she had to walk to get to school.

By Lisa Lindsey

I Cannot Let You Go

Let the good earth cover you now,

like the blankets that covered us

when I was afraid of the dark,

when your knock-knock jokes

and bedtime prayers kept us

anchored until morning,

or let's go back to Myrtle Beach,

where you motioned to me

from a sunflash of waves,

and I forgot my fear of water.

My savior, you could not save yourself,

swept in a series of addictions

like those others whose graves

are honored with cigarettes

and empty beer cans.

"But they that wait upon the Lord

shall mount up with wings as eagles..."

I cannot let you go soaring into the sun

on eagles' wings -- but I can let you

float swanlike on golden waters.

I can cling to dreams of graceful swims

as you beckon a far-off embrace.

By Lisa Lindsey

"Mandolin Rain"

Mandolin Rain is spinning again  –

like an old phonograph record in my head.

And just when I think the song is fading,

the auto-return picks up the needle

and reapplies it to the grooves in my brain.

My skull – a turntable whose new purpose

for existence is to play Mandolin Rain.

Tonight there isn’t room for cerebration.

No thunderous inspiration rolling over my mind.

Tonight it’s just Bruce Hornsby and me

and a rainy memory on a rainy Monday,

listening to tears rub against a wilted smile.

By Lisa Lindsey

Princess Diana

The tolling bells are silent,

the mourning veils long stored away,

but the love letters in crayon

and hearts of bouquets

still adorn her palace gates.

Even death could not steal

the blush from her smile,

or the compassion in her eyes

that continue to shine

from the covers of magazines,

because we can't say goodbye.

Fog palls and mist veils

come again, mournful bells

fill the late August sky,

because we can't say goodbye.

By Lisa Lindsey

Almost Heaven

Almost heaven…

a simple ballad by John Denver,

who writes his epitaph in

mountain rock and pure streams,

whose voices rises in the dust clouds

spinning off country roads and

the wheels of my Chevy pickup.

I crank up the radio

and the decades roll back

to the summer of `71.

But today it’s October

and I’m on my way home,

hauling a truckload of tears

for a sweet man who flew

too close to the sun.

By Lisa Lindsey

Thelma’s Robe

Thelma sits on a chair
in the morning of my soul.
I sit at the folds
of her worn peach robe

made not of silk or satin
that's pleasant to the touch,
but of fabric strong enough
for a grandchild's clutch.

Her steady dark gaze
sings a quiet prayer,

then she winks when she tells me again
about a woman's proper attire,

how she must be clothed in mercy,
her dress tattered from overuse!

What I yet lack in mercy
I have in my reach – a study in peach
at the hem of Thelma's robe.

By Lisa Lindsey

Kathy’s Smile

Kathy’s smile?

It's been lost for a while.

I think it's hiding behind her ear.

But only last year it galloped

through every room of the house,

played peek-a-boo around every corner,

beamed at us like a tiny crescent moon

from her bedtime story pillow.

She'll find her way home again,

somewhere between her nose

and her chinny-chin-chin,

escorted by the old familiars

of ice cream mustaches,

kisses that taste of vanilla wafers.

By Lisa Lindsey

A Haunting Glimpse

Who needs sound?

Her eyes speak epics.

Who needs color with a face

like hers -- alabaster beauty

and classic structure.

Black-and-white silent films

enhanced her mystique,

but after the death rattle

of Talkies and Technicolor

Garbo made her exit,

retiring to a highrise

hermitage in the Big Apple,

slipping into dark glasses

and big hats and silence forever,

a haunting glimpse

for those who remembered her.

By Lisa Lindsey

Time Warp

He remembers the day Ohio went dry,

when two kegs of beer were placed on the bar

and shrouded in black crepe paper.

He remembers the noisy penny arcades

and the ticker tape parades,

church bells pealing the armistice.

He remembers that not all Johnnies

came marching home-- some went west

and others had no legs to march home on.

He remembers the trolley that killed

his beautiful doll, his Great Big Beautiful Doll.

He remembers 1918 – and that’s all.

By Lisa Lindsey

WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM…
November 22, 1963

It was a Friday afternoon of cold soup
and half-eaten tuna sandwiches,
of interrupted house chores
and cancelled board meetings,

as the world gathered in disbelief
around the nearest television set,
and third graders, like fatherless children,
bowed their heads in a desperate prayer.

Later I walked home from school,
pierced by the silence of a planet
that seemed to stop turning,

the empty streets, the empty playgrounds
and yards, the half-naked trees
with their limbs pointing aimlessly --
a November wind weeping for us all.

By Lisa Lindsey

A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
– Oscar Wilde

With his fur coat and walking cane
and flamboyancy long laid to rest,
I recline under covers, reading
The Canterville Ghost by flashlight.

With his sins a thousand times forgiven
I poke through library shelves
in search of Dorian Gray, flipping
through pages of his flowery love poems.

How often I ponder, with curious sorrow,
the marquees of London literary fame,
the celebrity strolling Victorian streets
in fantastic hats and boutonnieres.

None of it mattered to a man of no importance
when death crept to his bedside,
when through his broken heart
the Lord Christ entered in.

By Lisa Lindsey