And Suddenly

We expect our lives to rumble along in a fashion in which we wake up mornings, go to bed nights and perhaps have some minor interruptions. Huge changes only take a fraction of time to make a difference that may effect the remainder of many lives. To get back to a point of comfort is a major achievement.


And Suddenly

A warm morning
Fireplace crackling
Bitter cold on the windowsill
Frost tapping at the glass
Soup bubbling on the burner
Kitty curled in a corner
My music, my book
To comfort me
In an attempt to forget
How sweet was our life
And suddenly
Like an old star dying
Poof
Gone
Missing in its constellation
Changing all the pictures
Everything we knew
And trusted
Rethinking the future
Reconsidering the past


And this was my Haiku I was inspired to write:

Suddenly spring came
Winter had not been informed
Ice covered tulips

April 2, 2010 Kelsey Fontaine

PAD Poetry Challenge













The prompt for today is “Water”




Kelsey Fontaine

Fontaine his mother named him.
“Why?” cried the father
Who was consigned to the sea.
“Name him Kelsey, who is Cenal’s land,
Anything but water.”
And so it was he was named for both.
Torn between the two;
Finding comfort not in oceans
Nor mountains, rivers nor trees.
Disabled as a fisherman, hunter, farmer
Or boat builder.
Unable to drink it;
“Turns ya to rust,” he bellowed in the pub
And ate great hunks of meat.
He fathered none, as no clean woman
Would come near a man
Who’d rather burn than bathe.
His moral compass vanished
Along with all the rest;
The sun and moon and stars
Were lost to guide him.
As ale his only companion,
Friend of none,
Nor even the priest who’d first presented him to the
Fluid of life,
While he wailed in the font
Like the child of a banshee.
Cursed by a name;
Never truly dry,
Drowned in drunken tears,
Commited to a pyre…
The ground too frozen with ice
To make a grave.

GOODBYE

Today’s prompt from NAIWE is:

“If you had to eliminate one word or phrase from the English language, what would it be? Why?”

Goodbye

What’s the one thing I hate to say? Goodbye. The times in the past I have said goodbye on both sides of the border blend into a mix of waving arms, blown kisses, tears, laughter, hugs and kisses, ending in a barrage of hellos.
Goodbye quite often results in hello, with an interlude between. I prefer hello.

When I left Mexico permanently, after more than ten years, a series of farewell parties that lasted over a month’s time saw me off. They began with a surprise birthday party

in a gorgeous cliff-side villa, celebrating with nearly thirty friends. Only one person realized it was a swan song party: me. It was a tough evening, bringing me back to the location I’d begun so many years ago. I was surrounded by loving friends and family, all whom I realized with each greeting, I’d have to tell I was leaving. I’d misplaced my glasses that evening and couldn't see well, which added to an imbedded angst that would simmer within me for weeks: the knowledge that I was truly saying goodbye. (Spanish says it so much better…Adios…with God.) There is rarely anything good about goodbye.

Over the weeks, as I prepared my move, I was cast into a role of comforting others who cried at the thought of my departure. Party following party stretched the agony of leaving in a manner not unlike bloodletting; little by little, a few drops at a time.

The week before I flew away, like a bird migrating in the wrong direction, not looking back, I attended seven dinners, six lunches, a breakfast, three parties and on the final day, a coffee klatch. I must have said well over a hundred goodbyes. One last trip up the coast to bid farewell to my old lover, my ranchero, my melancholy Mexican sealed the omen that I was now finished and this was, indeed, the last goodbye. I would never again linger in the mind of hellos with this man, who was the essence of Mexico for me, the fountain of my youth.

My daughter doesn’t like to say goodbye and sometimes refuses to, disappearing at the last moment. “It’s just so final,” she says, as she verbalizes what I feel, declines hugs, turns a sad face. She has inherited my aversion for goodbyes along with my distaste for spiders. When I was a child, I hid under tables and bushes, depending on the season, when it was time for friends and family to depart. My daughter shared this habit and I see her daughter developing the same manner.

Maybe we can be like the fish that live on the bottom of the ocean who no longer have eyes because for so many generations they didn’t use them, so their eyes ceased to exist. If we just stop saying goodbye, perhaps we can stop thinking of it, too, and survive without it.

Thank you for reading.

The Magic Ingredient of a Book

I continue to engage myself in the NAIWE challenge this week. Lord knows, I love challenges; I’m up to my ears in them.

A bit about NAIWE (National Association of Independent Writers and Editors): An association devoted to writers and editors, who are committed to earning a living by doing what they love. Online classes, vital information for writers/editors and great benefits are included in the membership.

The prompt today from NAIWE is “Writers are people who take isolated words and craft them into memorable phrases, stories, poems and plays. Who are the writers who make your heart sing? What is the magic ingredient?”

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction and I do believe those writers have the more daunting job. To make history and current events hold a readers attention like a novel is an ambitious undertaking. But I digress…

I recently read Paul Auster’s Moon Palace. I’d heard him read and speak at the Opera House in Oaxaca in November ’08 and was fascinated by his prose, however it took more than a year for me to jump into one of his novels. When I finally did, I nearly ate it. Moon Palace makes you care SO much for the main character and his cast. MS Fogg has been securely implanted in my memory banks and, I suspect, will remain for some time to come. In the first paragraph of Moon Palace, the reader is exposed to every basic element of the entire book, yet not one surprise is spoiled. MS reveals how he was born the summer that men first walked on the moon, nearly perished, walked the breadth of a desert, lost all his money, fell in love with Kitty Wu (who saved him), discovered his father and took an unlikely job. And then strange things began to happen.

A fundamental element in capturing the reader’s imagination is to have him know and care for the character/s. The earlier the introduction, the better... and a writer should not be afraid of revealing too much. Given Auster’s example, it’s really okay to let the reader in on the plot. It will entice him to go further. Auster’s moon tie-ins are also inspiring: the man on the moon, the Moon Palace Bar and Grill with its neon sign, and the references to the actual heavenly body all figure heavily in the story.

Auster’s imagery is stunning and leaves the reader with descriptions and emotions that linger. Less than two weeks after I concluded Moon Palace, I read The Man in the Dark, a tale in two dimensions that leaves one breathless to move back and forth. August Brill’s dream-world gives the reader a glimpse of possible realities, while at the same time, reflects the chaos of his imagination. Political in nature, it is Brill who the reader focuses on, regardless of opinion or bias. It only really matters what happens to him, the man in the dark, and how he embraces his little family of daughter and granddaughter.

To make the reader care, wonder and rejoice or commiserate; this is the magic ingredient.

Thank you for reading.

Chopsticks

In honor of Words Matter Week, I am prompted to write about the following: "Communication breaks down when words are misused. What is the funniest, most interesting, or worst break-down you’ve ever observed?"

Years Ago.

We finished dining at China First on University Way and were driving down 45th Street, when I was sure I heard my daughter say “Do you have any chopsticks?”
I thought it was a very peculiar request and said “No, I do not.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Of course I’m sure,” I said and went on to explain we had plenty at home in a drawer that Grandma had given us, some very old ones and a lot of new ones, too. “Why would I?”
“Because you always have some in your purse.” She was staring at me as if I had lost my mind.
I shook my head in disbelief. And turned to look at her.
“I always have some in my purse?” I was incredulous. "Did you take yours?"
“Mom,” she said. “What do you think I said?”
“You asked if I had any chopsticks.”
“I asked you if you had any chapstick,” she said with eyes wide, a gaping mouth and a slow shake of the head.
We both fell into a spell of laughter that forced me to pull to the side of the road.
“Chapstick,” I sputtered, tears streaking down my face.
“Chopsticks,” she said, wiping her eyes, launching into another round of guffaws.
Chopsticks/Chaptick turned into a family mini-legend. We try to have a sense of humor about the misery of hereditary hearing loss. Rarely does an episode pass, when one of us “mis-hears” that chopsticks aren’t mentioned.

Thank you for reading.

BELIEVE

Believe is a word from childhood that might strike fear or give hope. “Please, believe me” and “I believe you” are two of the strongest statements a child can share with a parent. “I know it’s hard to believe, but…” will always make a listener lean a bit closer and “If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you…” gives one person an arrogant power over another.
THIS I BELIEVE is an NPR program of essays written by over 70,000 believers, a series started by Edward R. Murrow in the 1960’s that has spawned some of the most inspiring words ever written.
Believe is tied very closely to hope and faith, but it is more than both of these concepts. “If I do not believe, I will lose hope.” “I must have faith in what I believe in.”
What we believe is what we are indoctrinated with, what we experience from birth to death and what we find in the search and discovery process of life. What we believe is our very own truth: convoluted, perfect, perverse, ideal, twisted, principled, dark…completely individual and personalized.
Believe, used in political campaigns and sermons from pulpits, or as a message to those in peril or in preparation for battle is a very potent word, standing alone.
We begin early in life to believe in fairies, elves, bunnies who hide eggs and a fat bearded man who delivers gifts, which we believe have been carted down chimneys, while a group of flying reindeer paw the roof. We are instructed to believe in virgin mothers and men living for hundreds of years. We are expected to believe in a holy supreme being, given a variety of names and further projected to be the only one of his/her/its kind. And we better believe it.
Some of us believe in miracles. Others believe in coincidence, or science. You may believe in ghosts, good and evil, reincarnation, the 5th Dimension. Some cannot bring themselves to believe in love.
I believe in myself. I have been tested over time enough to realize that the most important concept in my entire life is that I believe. I believe in a manner that is positive, willing and optimistic. I believe in can and do and have and be. I will believe. I must believe. I can believe. I believe.

Thank you for reading.