Tag Archive for poetry

Independence is the easy part

3 Jul, 2008  3 Comments

In college, contemplating and confronting so many things at one – love, feminism, liberty, life — I began my wonderings about independence.
I wrote poetry in bluegreen notebooks:
“ Dependent, from Latin,
meaning: to hang from
So tonight I am wondering:
Do I hang from you? “

Hanging from was not a good thing, I concluded then. I would not hang from, not from him or anyone.

So I didn’t. Didn’t say “I love you.” Didn’t love fully. And didn’t hang from.

I thought it would protect me. From hurt, from risk, from giving too much, losing myself, blending into another.  But the walls I built were sheer and cool and blew over in the wind. They were poor fortresses.

Thank God.

In came the stabs and embraces and hurts and loves of the people around me, whether I wanted them or not, whether I depended or not.

I am still careful with loving, with depending. I am an independent woman, with a good job, real estate , a life, a world. To me, that’s the easy part.

Being a “dependent woman” of sorts – depending on and being depended on – has been harder to learn. And it’s been 4th-of-July-fireworks explosively fufilling – a kind of love that grows and widens and stuns and satiates. I am still learning to hang from, to trust I won’t blow over or become an unnecessary appendage. Sometimes I do fall.  And sometimes, if I let them, someone or someones catches me.

Photo credit: DC Fireworks, by Grundlepuck via Flickr.

Blue

2 Jul, 2008  3 Comments

I haven’t been writing as much lately. Yes, I’ve been busy with work and work and work. Yes, I’ve been trying to learn about some other facets of the internet to grow my blog and make it better, perhaps even profitable.

But also, I’ve been blue. Deep, beautiful, aquamarine blue, in my core. Read the rest of this entry »

like bookends

30 Apr, 2008  4 Comments

Old friends, Old friends, Sat on their park bench, Like bookends.
A newspaper blown through the grass Falls on the round toes On the high shoes, Of the old friends.

***

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was A time of innocence, a time of confidences Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph Preserve your memories; they’re all that’s left of you, they’re all that’s left me to.

-Simon and Garfunkel, 1968

A month or so ago, no, undoubtedly it was longer now, an unknown number showed up on my phone. As is my practice, I didn’t answer. I often don’t answer the phone even when I know the caller- it scares me, disrupts my rhythm and flow of my days, or, in the case, quiet, writing evening. I especially don’t answer when I don’t recognize the number.

A minute later an email came through. This time from a name I DID recognize. “Just looking up old friends. How are you doing? Call me!” said the message from indeed an old friend, an old friend I hadn’t heard from in years, an old friend I once thought I loved, desparately, painfully, though now I know that feeling was just Read the rest of this entry »

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