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

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

wumbly

more in a million

in the wumbly-tub eyes

to give them a critter

together surmise

wandre-lust wilderness

wants you to give

to grieve giving lust
and the will to live

©1993 Donna Jo Wallace

____

Poet's Note: This is just a little frolic in nonsense. Really - don't hurt your brain on it. 
___

Freckle-Face

Summer sun is bringing them on
like so many tomatoes on the vine.

These are my little spots,
the ones that follow my home after a day in the sun. 
I used to think of them as bits of beach that stay.

New constellations emerge, like stars in a country sky - 
some new and faint, some gaining confidence,
others always and steadfastly there.

Now and then I remember my freckle-faced first grade teacher,
the one who said she took hers off and night and put them on in the morning, 
who declared them as beauty marks and wore them with pride.

I never thought of them as a blemish
as, sadly, I've heard some women do. 
I never had a chance to. 

I don't think of them much at all until summer comes,
then they pepper me up, and say 
hello.

© 2016 Donna Jo Wallace
shared at Poetry United / Poetry Pantry #313

Strawberry Pie

We do not speak ill of the dead.

You will not say what Grandpa did to you,

even if it is true.

Mother to daughter

the crime goes on.

Remarkable, really – clever, almost

how he got his own victims to keep his secret,

even after he was gone.

still …

Furtive voices among the clamor, family reunion.

Tendrils of truth pass between women,

words spoken between slices of strawberry pie:

It really happened and I believe you.

The story is heard in pieces and bits

Told in stops and starts, glances and silences

Over time, by different players

We have conversations about conversations,

Wonder aloud what has never been spoken

did it happen to her too? we’ll never know.

when, what did you know? oh no, not the little ones,

cousins, at least a few - have you asked your sister?

it would explain some things …

But we were a happy family.

No, it didn’t happen to me, except …

the hands, a back rub, a wrong feeling, just once in a while.

Yes, yes - my aunt says - he had wandering hands.

Another generation passed, your secret has gone rancid

and our family tree is spitting out your silent perversion

in poisonous, adult-sized problems.

And I,
I have something to tell my daughter …

©2016 Donna Jo Wallace

Silence

Seek the silence

Cool and steady,

Centered and still

Trust the silence

It is here amid the noise,

Even in the storm of the city

It is the silence of land, of rocks

Deep within the earth,
Far beneath the waves

The same silence that is

In the still small space in your soul

When you are lost even to yourself

There you can find

the gentle space of silence

And that it is good.

©2011 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

Sand

more has been forgotten

than can ever be remembered

every story that we tell

is embedded in all the stories

that were never told.

blank spaces frame the words.

doubt, shame, or simple forgetfulness

become the framework

through which a few survive

along the turbulent shores
between imagination and memory.

the cracks between the grains of sand

are so much greater than the sand itself

yet somehow sustain it.

the thoughts

you thought today

came out of that void.

the unwritten unsung unsaid

words of the millennia

yet,

        spoke a truth.

we think we know our history

our story, our song

but we will never know it

unless we see

and hold precious

the void which sustains it.

©2015 Donna Jo Wallace
Note: Shared with Poets United / Poetry Pantry #279

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

Travelers' Sun

There is something in the setting sun

that can be seen 
only Days from home.

Mile after mile, the sky reveals itself
kisses the horizon, caresses its curves.

Cloud and color dance in Earth's rhythm,
creating a light show for my eyes
that I could easily have missed.

I let my mind play
at the edges of thought.

Slowly, the tightly wound ball of twine
that lives at the back of my head,
the base of my spine

begins to loosen.
I am breathing.

Home
is more vast and welcoming

than I had ever thought.

Mom, the way she used to be, appears beside me

Do you see the sun? she would say

and we would Ah,

and see 
what we had not seen

before.

©2004 Donna Jo Wallace

The Fires Fly

Long ago I discarded the idea

that the backsides of these little insects

contained the fire their names promised.

Still I let them delicately step

across my hands,

wonder at their magic,

respecting them

above all other six-legged creatures,

pets for an evening, then wild once again.

Now I look, caught by surprise

by the field of fireflies before me,

wild, uncatchable, and free.

sparks,

embers of the earth

wild, hot, and fragile

shooting, swirling, sailing

©2008 Donna Jo Wallace

Meander

There is power in meandering

winding wondering

to the center of the soul

where the monsters live.

We cling, instead, to strong straight paths

with measured steps and certain destinations,

where we suppose the thing called safety

waits for us.

But

Isn’t it in the dreaming of days,

the spinning of tales,

the tracing of

paths

of

rain

drops

down

                        long    

window

panes

that

create

some

thi

n

g

n

e

w

where we learn

what we have always known

©2007 Donna Jo Wallace.

Birthwrong

Do you wonder at the land

Choctaw Cree Seminole Sioux

and the terrible story it tells

Can you help but wonder at the silence

Sac Pawnee Oto Pottawattamie

of stories not told or heard

Do you wonder at your birthright

Cherokee Blackfoot Dakota Monona

claimed through lies, threats, and blood

I live my life contentedly

Ayuhwa Ottawa Algonquin Chippewa

and do not know or wonder

much.

©2006 Donna Jo Wallace.

Haiku

All life is absent
Storm clouds gather, loosen, and cry
Sheets of black rain fall

©2010 Donna Jo Wallace.

Front Porch

Still, I am the child who sits on the stairway,

illogically pausing where life is meant to always pass by

I ponder the brick frame of this

room that is not a room,

neither in, nor out

Here, sun and shadow,

wind and walls

banter and tease

Lines blur between houses, 
neighbors take human form

Past and present 
mingle in my mind, and
sit down with me

Such a simple thing, to break the seal of the house,

to go somewhere without going anywhere,

to breathe the air and dare to be seen

So just for a bit, I give myself permission to be here.

Content with book, breeze and birds

In the place that is not a place,

for a reason that is not a reason, and

Sip a bit

from a fresh cup of now

©2015 Donna Jo Wallace.
Note: Shared at Poets United / Poetry Pantry

Page

What suicide is this, to set the pen down,

to walk away from the page at all.

What hubris to think that in escaping,

the page would not follow,

dog your steps, and infect your mind.

Your empty page grows, mortal,

vacant and white,

pursuing you like the tomb you thought to escape.

Numb and smiling,

you have given in to bland busyness

while you tried, vainly,

to hold the past at bay,

the present in limbo.

What do you fear what Do you fear

A critic has been born in you

who cuts at your page with scissors

like a child run amok,

Your mind in fragments across time.

Her power grows while you thought to ignore her.

She has had her say and thinks she can win.

And yet, patient page has waited after all.

She has not accused you as you had thought.

But wise and implacable, has waited

For you to do that, entirely, yourself.

©2015 Donna Jo Wallace.
Note: Shared with Poets United / Poetry Pantry

Soon

I could have

brought my music to your room

when I came to help with chores each week.

I would bring my fiddle soon

I thought

after I’d learned some more.

I would have brought my music

to the hospital

but it seemed awkward to jar the silence

with such joy.

Anyway, you would be home soon.

I should have dared to be heard

to know your delighted eyes

just to see that I tried.

Small comfort to improve now.

Now I look up from my song and think

hey Mom, listen to this,

and for a while I imagine

that somehow you can.

©2015 Donna Jo Wallace.

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.

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.

Bubbles

Rainbows float across the breeze,

Small spheres of wonder.

It’s the last little bubble I love the most

Her arms waving, her laughter rising

As surely as the spheres she follows.

Spontaneously she reaches for the sticky magic

of these small rainbow spheres

Never doubting the magic that is hers

if she can only catch one.

But she never can, quite,

So she tries again and again

Again and again

Some leave their mark, wet and sticky on her hands,

And some drift free, above, take flight.

And I . . . love to make it happen

To cast my magic wand

To see her dance

To the music of bubbles.

©2006 Donna Jo Wallace.

Winter

Silently it enters

a chill, a flake.

Lacy polka-dots appear in the sky,

gently they swirl, transform the outdoors

into a child’s play-toy

Snowmen, sledding, snow forts

for a while.

Today

frozen into this implacable mass

it does not play or tease.

It glares sternly and bites with Cold’s harsh teeth.

Ice over snow over ice

this white-hard rock

brings you down and pens you in.

Piles of snow in the driveway

grow faster than last year’s garden.

We frost-encrusted Iowans will not claim

to savor this white beauty (much)

but we wait for it always to come

and we wait for it always to leave

and we seek that thing in ourselves

that will outlast it

once again.

©2010 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