Others

Maybe                                         too many people
have gotten the message                    too quickly
that this social                                       distancing
was supposed to be easy.                  Real change
is not easy. Saving the world              is not easy.
This is your sacrifice.                                Own it.
Do it well                            and without self-pity.
There are no others                               right now
who will do the saving                             for you.
We are all others.                            We are all us.

05-11-2020

Storm

It's that moment

when we raise eyes to each other
as if for the first time

the way you do when the storm is rising
and it is time to go, or stay, or something

the questions begin to breathe, take life
are you okay, and what do we do

you suddenly see another
and so many others
on a lonely planet spinning in space

stranger and friend strangely the same
you search each face the way you search your child's eyes
behind her expression and beyond her words for some piercing truth

caught in the tide, we have a small grasping chance
to save self and other in the same moment

and if we should survive it
to understand something new about how to become more
human.

08/21/2019

The Next Season

Faded brown leaves, dry as ash
crackle under my heels,
swirl anxiously around my ankles.

I look up at branches, clearly visible,
and wonder if my old maple misses her leaves,
feels a little exposed without them,

or, if just before she dropped them,
she worried about letting them go.

Do you wonder, old friend, at what rash thought
made you shed your lovely coat all at once;
do you wonder, sometimes,
if you should have saved a few back, just in case?

Now that birds are on the move, and flowers scent the breeze
do you worry, that your last leaf has come and gone,
that you have nothing left to give?

So I will bring my book, sit under your branches,
and wait a while, with you.


©2008 Donna Jo Wallace
shared with Poets United / Poetry Pantry #315

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

Born That Way

or, Substitute Teaching at Ruby Van Meter School

You can always wonder how the kids at Ruby Van Meter School got to be the way they are, but once you know it rarely matters. 

I assume most of them were born that way,

whatever that means. 

I feel satisfied, at first, with my instant compassion for all these broken bodies and dented minds. I am content to teach them as they are, for the most part,

understanding there are more similarities than you would think

with children broken only in the average ways.

Over time, I learn bits, shadows of tragedies, about the victims and heroes who walk in these broken bodies.  I am just their today-teacher; I cannot know their whole stories, but now and then I learn from those who know them, some bits of stories they cannot keep to themselves:

This boy, Jon, with brown hair and pretty blue eyes, had a pool accident at age 13. Didn’t breathe for minutes in a row. Now he sorts objects into buckets, and receives praise for pressing a button. He’s lucky to be alive, they say. 

I try to imagine him as just any student

I might see in one of my high school classes.

I can almost do it.

Rett syndrome – I’ve never heard of it. I hear the story of this child, Cassie, who at 11 months, had walked, then started to crawl, then to roll on the ground and lose all comprehension.

My own sparkling 11-month-old is waiting for me at daycare.

Starting to talk and walk, sings twinkle-star, “reads” books;

I cannot imagine her having come all this way, then

just going backward.

I have no name for grief like that.

I meet the girl, Sarah, who drank bleach as a baby, and hear how it tore her insides and altered her brain.  I look deep into her uncomprehending eyes, and I recall one of my own baby-stories.  I, too, drank bleach–

reached  with my small, plump hand

for the plain plastic cup off the kitchen counter,

sipped it and was observed as I made a  sour face,

was swept off my feet  and sped to the doctor

by my frightened father.

I drank bleach that day. I am told.

I did not know how many ways my father saved me that day.

These are the children who live for today, never tomorrow;

Who walk like ghosts in place of the children they could have been.

They make us wonder at ourselves, if we let them;

Make us wonder at each other,

And all the things that might have been.

©2009 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.

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

Go

if we knew what we were seeking

we wouldn’t need to go.

fragile travelers

vulnerable to change

young before experience

dare to go, return, and go again

enter the void

our eyes search

and discover humans

just other humans

in the great kaleidoscope of life

going, then coming, then going again.

©2008 Donna Jo Wallace.

Determination

This earth spins

In its dark natal space

Aching

To be born.

Fetal position

Still it grows

Basic functions not yet

Ready.

Vastness cradles

Holds us knowing

Our fragile lightness

Our near to nothingness.

We hear, kick, spin, wonder

What it is like

To be truly

Creatures of the Universe.

©2011 Donna Jo Wallace.

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.