Tag Archives: parents

photography, poetry

that i would do better

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mrfhschool

hand colored high school photo, circa 1933-34.

Margaret Ruth  (Draper) Fink, 1917-2004

 

 

that I would do better

 

how much of my life

would I look to retrace?

not the thousand small decisions

that built to a course

I may have mistaken for true,

nor the loves and the lost loves

and shouldn’t have loved’s,

 

but you whose ears

have now passed beyond hearing,

who made the milk that fed me –

 

that I would do better.

 

if you could only come here and die again,

 

here, where this time I would hold you

as you once held me,

here, where we’d cry over parting

and joy at the end of pain.

here, where I would hold your gaze

as the light sifts from your lovely eyes,

 

and then close your brown eyes

with kisses.

 

© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com

 

 

 

 

 

photography, poetry

the women tell me

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Crab

 

 

the women tell me

there is soon to be a baby.

 

I remember calling my brother

upon the birth of my oldest son.

both of our parents were dead,

and I needed to tell someone — he,

however, seemed unimpressed.

 

I see this son now grown, bearded

and strong, busy planning their lives together,

as if such a thing were possible.

 

I can almost feel the life force drifting

like pollen from our branches to theirs,

calling forth small, green buds, the sap

beginning to rise.

 

the flowering crab in the yard

holds dark, withered fruit fermenting slowly

under a weak winter sun, when a solitary robin,

who should have gone south months ago,

brushes the snow from the branches

and gorges himself on the hard, bitter fruit.

 

eventually, he grows drunk, drops into flight,

and spinning once in midair, flies straight

into the darkened glass of the window,

then drops to the ground like a stone.

 

so many deaths

caused by mistaking reflections

for truth, by confusing images

with the unyielding surfaces of life.

 

the women tell me

there is soon to be a baby.

and we shall welcome her

with indescribable joy. we

will surely be impressed.

 

we will do our best

to hold her safe, to teach her to see.

we will stand with her by the window

and watch the comings and goings of birds.

 

perhaps, she will smile and laugh with the birds.

perhaps, with time, she will come to love

these hollow-boned, fragile,

exquisitely mortal, impossible birds.

 

perhaps, with time,

she might even be the one

who teaches us all how to fly.

 

image, poetry

Home

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This was written for the wedding of my oldest son last month. Life…

reception

 

Home

 

the man on the radio

said children first learn

there are three dimensions-

 

height and width and, of course

length, like a shoebox, or a house.

and only later do they learn

 

of the fourth dimension, time

the one that lends meaning

to all the others – standing here today

 

as we watch you prepare

to begin building your life together

I am acutely conscious of time

 

of how the immediacy of youth

can ripen of its own accord

into patience

 

of how we begin by thinking that love

is something that happens to us

like a bee sting, or an unexpected fall

 

and only later do we see that love

is something organic, that if we’re lucky

is something we might grow

 

to inhabit, like an atmosphere

or more, something that might

come to infuse us, like blood.

 

the older I become, the fewer things

I take to be certain. But some few things

I do know. I know that keeping score

 

is never helpful. I know that love

for one another is cultivated

through an appreciation of small things.

 

I know that even amid the uncertain winds

of this life, in this you might find shelter —

that if you are willing to work together

 

with patience, and with love,

and perhaps with some small measure of grace,

you must certainly succeed

 

in constructing of your lives a home.

 

© 2017 jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com

 

 

 

image, photography, poetry

Food – more pieces from Karme Choling, November 2014

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food

BnW mt superior

my mother kept a grinder in the kitchen

for breaking nuts, or making

sausage– I remember the feeling

of jamming pieces of meat

into the mouth of the machine,

watching as muscle, tendons

and the odd small bones were crushed,

feeling the resistance as the handle

paused until the harder bits would break.

Any path worth taking eventually

leads us to a grinder, tearing us gently

limb from limb, crushing

the harder bits, making sausage. They say

that space and time are one,

that this world of appearances is unbounded

and flowing. So I suppose

it’s still happening somewhere—somewhere

she still sits in a blue cotton dress

in a simple white kitchen in Detroit, still

slowly turns the handle,

feeling the resistance, then pausing

as the harder bits are broken,

still watches as muscles, tendons

and the odd small bones

are crushed beyond all recognition.

©jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com