Home

Is it the place you left behind

or the place where you are going,

Is it the place you chose

or just where you happened to land,

Do you see it with your eyes open

or only ever with your eyes closed?

How far back do you have go

or how far forward,

To get to

the place in your

mind

where you feel well?

Can

you

get

there

from
here?

Does your home have a name

an address with a yard

signs to point the way,

Or, is it a path

The road itself the only constant

That keeps you moving on …

@2016 Donna Jo Wallace

Art Night

Broken hearts and misfits

prone to delusion and distraction we

walk the world

with tunes in our heads,

colors in our eyes connecting

dots in mostly

irreverent ways mad,

we are, every one.

Not quite part of

your sane little world.

We find each other in coffee shops,

church basements, impromptu meetings

art markets, open mics,

circles made to grow larger

we come as singers and players

writers and tellers

seekers and loners.

Loners, all

Until we find each other

strange and dented

then,

poem by poem

song by song

we make

the invisible, visible

the foolish, brave 
the world, more human.

© 2016 Donna Jo Wallace 
shared with Poets United / Poetry Pantry #285

Interview

Eight-twenty in the morning

and I have escaped my orbit for a day.

The highway has already spun me out

in some new direction,

another trail of false hope,

probably.

We’ll do the dance:

Handshake on One, Smile on Two,

Do the Positive Spin.

It’s the first date of the business world,

always awkward,

full of fear, and yearning.

Maybe all this

real-world play-acting

is just a dream, and

tomorrow I’ll wake to find that

the only thing I’ve really done today

is to write this poem.

©2004 Donna Jo Wallace

Silence Song

Freeway lights wash over my face

one by one, by one, by one, by one,

the lonely rhythm tells me

we have approached another city

far from where we’ve come

and far from home,

Dad’s hands steady on the wheel

Mom dozes in her seat

A sister at each of my elbows

I wait,

This is the gorgeous silence

after the singing has ended,

wheels and road, each
pushing against the other always and forever, 

the white noise drones on still
and fills my ears,

Far from home

my family is condensed to this small steel box

pulsing along the highway

following the long smooth curve of the Earth,

halfway between silence and song,
halfway between home and not home,

©2002 Donna Jo Wallace.

Star Stuff

We did not ask
to be catapulted among the stars
never knowing where the universe may take us,
how far, or why

we have been left like debris
along the trail of stars
no map, no instructions
only questions, and desire.

Still, this hostile place gave birth
to the paths we walk

and showed us what a home is.

This is the long game of long games,
the universe itself,
creating, destroying, inventing, rearranging
into a future not envisioned

it is wrong, somehow, that what had burned so bright

leaves a hole, a hole in the universe
a presence known only by its absence

It is an accident of life, isn’t it,

that any of us should even be here,

to be alive at the same moment

in all of everything.

We cling to our certainty that we are here now,

but we are each, after all, only a flicker, a whisper.

The questions that arise from the void create possibility.

It is only in certainty that we are truly lost.

©2014 Donna Jo Wallace.

The Day the Sidewalk Fell On Me

Falling

The wind is smacking

against the side of the house.

From my comfortable place on the couch

watching a movie with my daughter,

I think of the garbage can,

which must be blowing down the street by now.

I will just go grab it from the curb.

My foot must have caught a spot because now

I feel my body going down

straight, stiff, graceful,

like a piece of plywood caught by gravity,

arcing up, over, down, straight down.

I have no doubt of what has happened.

My tooth is inside my mouth,

I taste blood,

I hurt everywhere

a voice pours out of

my body screaming

helpme ohgod helpme.

Twenty feet from my front door

I suddenly wonder how I will make it back.

I feel my feet lift me up (I guess my knees are okay),

my left hand arrives on the doorknob.

Had I not been able to do that I do not know

what would have happened

yes I do.

I cradle my right elbow like a broken wing,

arriving screaming help me help me.

Happy people dance across the TV screen.

Lamplight warms the room.

My quiet family

does not know

how to take in my scene.

Its okay, we’re on our way.

Suddenly it seems like a good time

to see the inside of an ER.

Sleeping

Not only do the images of the ER fill my mind

harsh light, first one doctor, then another,

but this way of getting comfortable is not comfortable.

I could have told them I couldn’t sleep this way

in a sling, afraid to move,

but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. 

My initial exhaustion has abandoned me,

my mind turns churns

raking up old debris and new,

each scenario plays in my mind;

what would have happened, and 

what did, and what might, and what will.

Finally, a thought that helps:

my arm reached out (though I have no memory of it)

my arm reached out and that is why my elbow cracked.

My elbow cracked, and that is why

my head my whole head did not hit hard

against the sidewalk

with all that force.

What a good elbow.

Thank you elbow for rescuing me. 

All the rest of me.

Doctors

I am less afraid to face the doctor than the dentist,

and I am less afraid of what they will do than what they will charge.

I know my elbow is cracked and what I must do,

but my tooth, oh, my tooth.

Since the ER doctor asked if I could press it back into place,

I tried, later,

feeling like a naughty child picking at a scab.

It helped a little, but now I cannot help but wonder

at that dead feeling in my mouth where my tooth hangs, still stunned.

No one has told it yet what has happened, and it hasn’t woken up.

My family takes me, because I need them so much now;

We are at the dentist.

my husband and his strong quiet arms,

eyes that shine with love,

and my daughter, newly quiet,

though, still ready to play a game,

merciful distraction.

When the dentist speaks of healing,

perhaps orthodontics later,

some slight discoloration,

I am amazed.

It was even lucky that in that naughty moment

I pressed my tooth back into place, because now

it would have been  too late. 

I shall yet leave this adventure without a hole in my smile,

I will learn how to eat again and elbows are only bones;

they will heal. I will heal.

The Story

When people ask what happened I say I fell.

It sounds dumb because it is.

Then I have to tell them more of the story

so they don’t think there is trouble at home.

The story wears holes in my ears.

My Mind

When I go down the stairs

I feel my feet sliding out from under me.

When I walk on the sidewalk

I watch my feet with new suspicion.

I walk bravely out the front door in broad daylight

to examine the crack where it happened.

I teeter-totter

my feet over it,

I step over it

as many times as it takes.

The things that could have happened to my body

have not left my mind.

There is skill in leaving the past in the past

and I still have much to learn.

I will quiet my mind. 

I will quiet my mind.

Learning

Each new skill I discover is like a lost treasure, found.

I am thrilled to shower, to brush my teeth, to open the Tylenol by myself.

I have learned to dress myself, to feed the fish, to eat left-handed.

When I discover I can type it is like breathing again.

Curt takes command of the kitchen, and Rose helps where she is needed.

Maybe I was always working harder than I really needed to.

I am learning something about my family,

how much they need me, and I need them.

Healing

I think often of the reflexes in my arm that saved my brain.

I think of my broken wing that heals itself.

I think of the broken wings in people’s hearts that are not so easily healed,

cancers that invade organs, and tumors that appear out of nowhere.

I think of this and feel a little greedy for claiming so much attention

on account of a simple bone.

I trace my face, my arm, my unbroken skin;

The list of things that could have happened is long

each and every day.

Today I am beautiful just for being alive.

©2009 Donna Jo Wallace.
Note: Share at Poets United / Verse First

Speak

I, too, have the conceit to speak,

and break into your sacred silence

I, too, must hear my voice

to know I exist

I imagine that the workings of my mind

Must be fascinating to you

You, who I do not know

And will not know

Sincerely and well

Because of the noise between us

©2011 Donna Jo Wallace.

Coffee House

Cups fill to the brim with music

rich and warm, poems
brown and frothy

Guitars burst with pages from life, real and hard

Masked thinly by tune and rhythm.

We are neighbors who agree to be strangers,

To seek kind anonymity for

memories too harsh to bear

dreams too fragile to speak aloud.

Performer or audience, to watch or to do

Here, it’s all the same.

To slow down

for an evening separate from a frenzied world

We take a breath of another life.

We take away bits of each other;

See in others bits of ourselves.

We have stolen a moment of sacred sharing

Among strangers who are really neighbors.

©2011 Donna Jo Wallace.