mE-piphany

epiphany

YES !

My name is “Yes”

and

I am in love with you!

You With twisted legs, marching to the same places I go.

and You in the hijab, different beauty, hiding flesh, revealing ours.

Or you

plagued? blessed, I don’t know…

palsied in a moving chair, beyond ‘overcoming’,

surpassing the ‘silver’ refined by fire –

and going farther than we in the same space.

(and then there is you, oblivious to even the concept of a furnace)

I love you,

alumni, pioneers, trail blazers

women of weber

girls in the hood

You the ‘trailer park princess’ and the all American ‘country girl’

walking the halls, sharing the company of ”Iran’s exiled daughter”.

“Sons of Texas” , “boys of summer” take notes, play ball

analyze the “Veto” process – with the fatherless.

Opposing thoughts find us at the same end of

everything,

and

I love you!

Dogmatic professors and

Colorful not -so – professionals with degrees.

Young aspiring women tangled up in their unpractical shoes

and the graceful elite who stumble before all, red denial.

The elder who’s affect reaches the student long before his lecture does,

and the younger who is still certain ‘it’s all just a popularity contest’.

If angels really celebrate salvation, then

they are here, in droves.

Huddled above , eagerly awaiting each new ‘epiphany’ and lesson,

cheering for the antique repetitious ones.

I too am watching

in this place where my name was changed

from ”second class citizen”  to that which I said above.

Absolutely.

This place where my ‘never’, became ‘hurry up’

and my some day, delivered.

I love you.

All of you.

Each more ignorant than the next

but willing and everyone  of you

far more deserving than the last.

Opening books, writing things down on blank pieces of paper

making it mean something.

Do you know how many blank pieces of paper there are, that need to be filled?

Those that are filled that need to be read?

The ‘read’ that need to be worked.

And What of the work?. ..

You who listen and you who teach or rather – Profess

from concrete platforms that overlook the salty desert.

Nestled on the granite bench,

elevated only by the wishes and needs of  the faces in the valley.

I love you,

All of you that seek to find change, becoming it, forgetting original anger.

Those with seeing eyes, learning by braille, scrapped knees.

Mute debaters, deafening expectations,

ritualistic lecture, redundant response,

and sometimes birth mingled with endless metamorphosis.

I am in love with those

and you.

You that remember segregation

and the rest  who will never know it,

experiencing a new twist on an old wrong

living your generation to fix it.

Sacrificing or freely giving,

(sometimes they are the same thing)

to become, be-have.

I love you,

all of you

The one who has yet to understand the gift,

the same unaware of those nearby that secretly want to shake you.

And you, the one that just shows up!

God knows that just getting here, to this place of

such concentrated  confetti-like living

is a

miracle

a gamble, a gift, a choice, a trial.

This place where personalities and sensitivities’ hold the tongue

until the dependable and critical questions allow for it’s release.

Like now, in this place

where I say:

“Berkley’ meets “Animal house’ and things get done anyway”.

Things that mold each of us, forcing the ‘major’,

and then, grace.

The minor allowing for abrupt and ‘ah ha’ moments of fear and freedom.

similar to being stuck in first gear, letting off the gas and ending up on the

dash – where…

the view is very clear.

Here on this rock, this contadictory place on a hill,

supported by sand and water,

where we think diversity is something outside of ourselves

that should be experienced,

until someone yells “youre it !”

And our faces look like they did when we were two,

all shocked and surprised and crooked like the puppy

that doesn’t understand but really wants to.

This wonderful place of Yes

where we hope to gather wisdom and knowledge,

only to discover we are those things,

in one another,

all day long.

It is not arrival, it isn’t even close

but it is an absolute,

Yes!

 

ad (just a damn poem, a creative writing assignment)

Classified Ad, “Lost and found”

To everybody East and West of me.

A storm came through last night and took my things away I guess it is my own fault, I shouldn’t have left them out in the weather could have nailed them down with some money, or the abusing of other people.

But all I had was some laurels and they don’t make those like they used to.

If you have or see my stuff please give me a call. I am missing my confidence and curiosity, although I still have my mind.

Amazing ! It was wrapped around the little ‘lean to’ fort my children built next to the garden. (which is destroyed by the way, the garden that is. (you really should cover the tender things in a storm and not expose them)

Here is a list of the things I am missing:

a green trash can, dog food bag, small multi colored rug, a blue sun hat with a daisy on the rim and my neediness.

Maybe you have seen them, maybe my dignity has made it your way and washed up on the banks of your security.

On the edge of your green judgement sticking out like a sore thumb all crumpled up and clinging to life.

It could be reaching out of the mud fumbling for tree or plant or slimy rock. Maybe my pride is with dignity and they aren’t struggling at all but are where they belong now, weighty and nestled in the shiny gravel of the river.

Who knows! I don’t miss them really, so you may keep them if you find them. They are trouble anyway. The maintenance was unbearable and I tired of those who would take pictures with their dumb luck. I saw them as they started to blow away, at first they got stuck to my neighbors white picket fence flapping in the wind. He pointed them out saying ‘Clean up that trash, I don’t want it in my yard!”

I thought about running after them but running only makes the wind blow harder and I have chased things before only to loose footing and stumble. Watching on to see the item stop tumbling for a minute so I can finally catch up and like some cosmic joke it begins to blow again and so I am left in that spot pondering scraped knees, palms out, sharp grime and dust whipping at my eyes.

To chase or not to chase. I chased a dollar once because I was really hungry and I must have bumped my face on the back of someone’s knuckles because I found myself in the woods.

I thought I could hear the wind laugh but when I looked up it wasn’t the wind at all it was a man with his pants around his ankles. Anyway, some good news… I left my laundry out on the line too, but it didn’t get blown away.

It just got twisted and knotted up. Stained and wrapped tightly around the thin rusting wire until it couldn’t spin anymore. So no worries with that, I think I will leave it up for a while, it’s not like it is in my neighbors yard. If you heard screaming, I apologize, it was just my TV, and there was a lifetime movie on about some lady who was a victim and then survivor and then martyr (aren’t they all?) So predictable and ‘cliche’.

And all she wanted was to punish the world, but It wouldn’t acknowledge her sacrifice or some other profound thing. But anyway… my point is, I couldn’t find the remote and so I just left it on to drown out the desperate howling of what sounded like a rabbit who was wounded but not quite dead and I was afraid it would attract the dogs.

I thought it was my faith dying or whatever and then realized it was just me. So if you see any of these things, I will be here, in the field feeling around for my life. It is very small, but dense so I don’t think it went too far.

I could probably just rinse it off in soap and water, unless someone else has a better Idea. I have seen lives on the side of the road along with a few obligations and responsibilities and big gulp cups, so I know they can be refurbished. I have never seen shame or self pity though.

I found a set of balls once and put them in the ”lost and found”, but no one ever claimed them. Probably blew out of the bed of an old dented pick up truck or belonged to a nice guy in a clean Cadillac family sedan but was thrown out by his well kept wife. Come to think of it, he is probably the same guy that put up the ‘discreet relationship wanted’ ad on this same site. If I stumble around out here in the field long enough, I might bump into him. He might have liked my neediness and my old sun hat.

That guy in the woods would really like his wife. But like I said, If you see any of these things leave a note for me in the obituaries or ‘free’ section or put a sign on your lawn or maybe slap someone you love when they start to think things could be better.

You can keep the rug, you might need it if yours is ever ripped out.

 

(update……… it will be ripped out sooner than you think)

Patty Musgrove

written in 2009-2010