Taos: In A Large Bright Room
When we sat together, you and I, strangers in
a room with other strangers, I was able
finally to say what I had learned from
letting go. How churches are now always
locked, but the faith they once taught
you is not. How loss is painful, when those
things you earned are ripped away -
how the strength you need to continue
is not a virtue or a gift, but is sometimes
more of loss itself. How surrounded by
death after death, you finally let go of the
last thing - fear - fully understanding its
pointlessness.
In that large bright room in Taos, you look
at the poem on the table between us
and speak of learning love and hope, and
I look out the large high windows that
surround us, and watch the delicate upper
branches of the cottonwood swaying in
the desert breeze, and the single line of
moisture that, slow and steady, forms a bright
rivulet as it travels down the clear glass.
Blue Angels
On the hillside, we lay back on a
mattress made of
gathered leaves, its autumn
beauty covered by the
quilt I made for you
Sharing tea with watchful eyes
on your child and mine,
we clapped and cheered
and gasped in awe
as the planes danced through the
sky above us, turning
every way, taking every
attitude in motion -
teasing each other at mach
speed in the fall air.
“They’re like us,” you told
me, “they dance around
each other without
really touching
and,
they’re like us,
they fly”
Their rehearsal a private show
for us in the narrow valley
below our house, where
we practice our own
dances at night, in
high flight, trailing our pleasure
across the sky, and, like
them, at the end,
fluttering to the ground
like leaves.
Judith Mikesch-McKenzie is a teacher, writer, actor and producer living in the Pacific Northwest. She has traveled widely, but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. Writing is her home. She has recently placed/published in two short-story contests. Her poems have been nominated for Best Of The Net and the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Calyx A Journal of Art and Poetry by Women, Plainsongs Magazine, Clackamas Literary Review, Monterey Poetry Review, Cirque, Wild Roof Journal, and over 40 others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her friends seem to like that about her.
When we sat together, you and I, strangers in
a room with other strangers, I was able
finally to say what I had learned from
letting go. How churches are now always
locked, but the faith they once taught
you is not. How loss is painful, when those
things you earned are ripped away -
how the strength you need to continue
is not a virtue or a gift, but is sometimes
more of loss itself. How surrounded by
death after death, you finally let go of the
last thing - fear - fully understanding its
pointlessness.
In that large bright room in Taos, you look
at the poem on the table between us
and speak of learning love and hope, and
I look out the large high windows that
surround us, and watch the delicate upper
branches of the cottonwood swaying in
the desert breeze, and the single line of
moisture that, slow and steady, forms a bright
rivulet as it travels down the clear glass.
Blue Angels
On the hillside, we lay back on a
mattress made of
gathered leaves, its autumn
beauty covered by the
quilt I made for you
Sharing tea with watchful eyes
on your child and mine,
we clapped and cheered
and gasped in awe
as the planes danced through the
sky above us, turning
every way, taking every
attitude in motion -
teasing each other at mach
speed in the fall air.
“They’re like us,” you told
me, “they dance around
each other without
really touching
and,
they’re like us,
they fly”
Their rehearsal a private show
for us in the narrow valley
below our house, where
we practice our own
dances at night, in
high flight, trailing our pleasure
across the sky, and, like
them, at the end,
fluttering to the ground
like leaves.
Judith Mikesch-McKenzie is a teacher, writer, actor and producer living in the Pacific Northwest. She has traveled widely, but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. Writing is her home. She has recently placed/published in two short-story contests. Her poems have been nominated for Best Of The Net and the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Calyx A Journal of Art and Poetry by Women, Plainsongs Magazine, Clackamas Literary Review, Monterey Poetry Review, Cirque, Wild Roof Journal, and over 40 others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her friends seem to like that about her.
