One Thing That Gets Me Through. How About You?

Creativity…that is one great gift which gets me through this life, my own and the creativity of others. To me, it’s a great human expression of Spirit! As you may know, poetry is one area where I find such sustenance.

I was recently published in a journal with the poem below. Though not my first published poem, the publication party last week was the first time I read any of my poems to a sizable crowd. I was nervous!! Until I began to read. Then the poem took over for me. Funny how that happens, no? Friends who could not attend wanted me to share the poem. I preferred to do it as a blog in order to share it readily on social media, and to add some photos. My WordPress template made it hard to format it just as it should look, but nonetheless…here it is.

The Beauty You Left

for my sister

As usual

you were ahead of your time

Now it’s almost fashionable

to die of cancer.

Though it’s been nearly a decade

I still savor the sight of the heavy thick bowl

you made with your kids at the pottery studio

squiggles painted on bone glaze

And the milky glass vase,

another gift from you

now holding long sturdy stems sprouting

dried baby roses the size of pennies

My enameled purple earrings

replacing the original pair you bought me

which had been lost when that burglar

broke in, stealing only my earrings

I wore them at that pricey café, where you insisted

on treating me, for getting your son to his appointment;

you’d been too nauseous from the chemotherapy.

Our final dinner out, we didn’t know your last relapse was near

The small green porcelain bull

red surfboard on it’s back

tiny yellow lei around the neck

replica of a Chicago cow sculpture

you collected them like baseball cards

this one a duplicate

that your husband gave me

after you passed

The book about health I no longer have

you bought for me in a fit of extra

sweetness, perhaps mixed with pity

for my own lifelong maladies

You were so different from me, full of vigor

entertaining scores of friends

cooking for them and

dancing, always dancing

It’s the Scorpio mug you brought me from Israel though

with all my astrological traits in a language

I can’t even read

that made me think of you today

Most mornings I use it for turmeric tea, its nutrients

meant to bring lighted health to own my cells.

Imbibing, I relish the beauty you left

After, I scrub it to vanquish yellow stains

© Elizabeth Good