BLUE WILLOW, CRACKED
BLUE WILLOW, CRACKED
by MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick
BLUE WILLOWED, CRACKED
This circle has no beginning or ending, no signposts for arrivals and departures—it has always been and shall always be. Our days blend, one into another, an underground stream hissing along, carrying the flotsam and jetsam of all our memories—these bob up still in dreams and moments of abstraction.
It is not so strange. It has happened before. The best we can do, perhaps, is to tell our stories. We each, stars, satellites, revolving in our separate domestic spheres, sister sun, brother moon, alternately blazing and deathly pale, observing all within our—spaces in ever closer detail. The scratch on the sideboard (how did it come to be there?) the loose tile in the bathroom (I must get round to fixing it.).
Still, there are meals to get, letters to write, and life goes on—or does not. The branches of the family tree tap out Morse code in texts and subtexts, and the mail, always important, becomes ever more so, as care packages are sent through the post.
The frame of the kitchen window showed black veins of branches against overcast skies. She waited for the daffodils (in vain). The forsythia, golden daubs against green, blossomed and faded, so too the snowdrops, the crocus, and violets. The buttercups are beacons, each reflecting a tiny golden light back up to the sky. What do they know of sickness? Then the trees are thickly green and the crickets have begun to trill.
Birdsong cracks each dawn like that blue and white teacup tumbled from the dresser. The gods took pity on those lovers and turned them into birds. See them—forever—racing over that bridge?
Theirs is an old story, as is ours. We have walked this path years ago. How it all boils down to love, loss, desire. Such commonplaces as sleep and sustenance, all the fat sheared away, the irrelevant dispensed with.
How to get through the day, then? In kneading bread and folding freshly laundered towels? Perhaps. Busy hands are suited to long days and there is always work if we look for it. Don’t lose the morning—or you’ll be running the rest of the day to catch up!
What is—has been, before. We humans are hardy creatures, made of star stuff, emerged from the oceans and we will forge on, relentless.
About MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick
While primarily a writer of poetry, MaryAnn creates collages, which may (or may not) include handwritten or printed text as well as found materials. Born in the Bronx in 1967, she lives with her husband and sons in Peekskill, NY.
Email: mccarrafitz@hotmail.com
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Website: https://mccarra--poetry.blogspot.com