Telling Stories

Lines versified
cut to take shape of
lips of a last kiss good-bye.
Words record the song
played as I drove away
to my separate destiny.
Rhythms played the hurt
of my heartache
as I fought to continue on
not undo my journey.

Old poems
hold the bitter sweet marrow
until I return to them
remembering experiences wholly
and can smile anyway.

© 2010 Shari Lynne Smothers

This poem is for the napowrimo prompt #30, free day (and farewell). Visit the post to see the details of this prompt.

Since we could choose anything to write about, I thought I’d extol the virtues of old poems with another one about my daddy.

I remember fragrance.
He liked subtle colognes.
Different ones,
each complemented
what was uniquely him.
It was the smell
of church Sunday morning.
The smell I breathed in
when he helped me inside
after I fell off my bicycle.

And the smell of him
when he returned home
from a business trip.
He had hugs
and kisses all around.
And conversations for mom.
They exchanged
home updates and trip recaps
while my brothers and I
rummaged through
the designated suitcase for souvenirs.
I got T-shirts neatly packed.

I put them in my shirt drawer
so it smelled of
dad, security, home.

Interestingly now,
some odd days
a look in my neatly folded
t-shirt drawer
catches me up in a whirlwind
that blows in the memories
that trigger the familiar,
missed scent that was my dad’s
and I’m home wherever I land.

© 2010 Shari Lynne Smothers

This poem is for the napowrimo prompt #16, what’s that smell Visit the post to see the details of this prompt.

I’ll never forget the day—

After doctor visits
just me and him or with other family
in hospitals and waiting rooms,
examinations, procedures, and treatments
hours spent in fruitless and unavoidable worry,
we finally got the doctor’s
last words on the matter;

Whatever they decided to do
whatever dad accepted to be put through
he didn’t have much time to be here with us,
they were sure they couldn’t fix him.

My life moving on felt like
a betrayal to dad who’s life was coming to a close
and everything was heavier.
Still, I continued doing what I knew I had to
placing everything I could on my automatic list,
with breathing and swallowing
because everything I thought to do
became easier to just skip it.

And then one shimmering
breezy September afternoon,
I was driving alone when I laughed aloud
and had to admit it—
I can’t recall the song, joke
or thought that brought me to it,

but that was the day I knew
that even through my profound grief
over the impending loss of my father,
in my soul I would eventually know joy again.

©2009 Shari Lynne Smothers

Prompt: Write a poem about a memorable person or event. Day 30 of the 2009 November PAD Chapbook Challenge, from Poetic Asides.

His snappy two-toned glasses
people knew him by
that sat on one end-table
and his brown briefcase that stood table-side,
can only channel his countenance as
my dad’s no longer here to use them.

Mom has moved them now
but these and other little things
that spark so many memories,
I hang onto
and quietly cherish them.

©2009 Shari Lynne Smothers

Prompt: Write a hanging poem. This is my poem for Day 15 of the November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2009, from Poetic Asides

I hardly remember
what the houses looked like
in Greensburg, Louisiana
where my daddy was raised.

In our brief visits
when my brothers and I
were children,
I got to experience
life very different
with cousins I didn’t know
who became friends fast,
as we usually only had the day.

They showed me where
to tiptoe close in
to yellow jacket nests
in the tall grass
just so we could run
when they swarmed.
I passed time
checking out the cows and bulls,
wondering how an old rickety fence
was actually enough
to corral the beasts.

I remember running backwards
with my daddy and his cousins
across a front yard
maybe belonging my great-grandparents’.
It seemed to last forever,
extending further
the harder I wished
to finally reach the porch.
Once I got there
no strength left
I sat waiting for lemonade
all out of breath
and still rooting for my daddy
who raced his cousins again.

Coming from the city
everything
seemed old and rustic out there.
It was thrilling!
I was inside one of those
cowboy movies
I used to watch
back at home in New Orleans.

No particular movies
come to mind
only the sense that I loved
watching them
and eating salted tomatoes,
just my daddy and me.

©2009 by Shari Lynne Smothers

Death in the Family

My grandmother died March 30, 2003. It was painful and breathtaking. And then…

Maybe ten days later, my father was rushed to the ER. Blood clots were killing him. By the time I got to the hospital, dad’s heart had stopped and he’d been resuscitated twice.

The doctor working with him asked if we wanted to sign DNR papers. I didn’t want that and I was certain my mom didn’t, but she was so distraught she couldn’t make the decision.

My dad died twice more and was revived without having to crack his chest, before my mom made her decision. In fact, she never made the decision.

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It was my parents’ anniversary.
Fifty-one years ago
they exchanged vows;
Two anniversaries now
without daddy here to count them.

I meant to ask my mom
what does the count
feel like without him.
But it sounds in my head
a little too morose even for me.
Even though, to help me understand,
she’d probably
try to
find the words to say her grief.
Hoping I’m sure that naming it
could somehow put her in control of it.

It’s the poet in me
that is willing
eager even, to sit with a pain
pulling it apart to know it.

Protecting myself
I get rational
logical, my dad would say
reflecting on all the times
when my breath catches
as though he was newly gone from me.

Counting occasions
as the blessings I had
each one signifies, in its turn
my dad’s not here anymore;

Mine are enough anniversaries
to wade through missing him.
For their wedding, I’ll leave it
to my imagination.

©2009 by Shari Lynne Smothers

I looked at a random
new-born baby on TV
held by her mother.
From the other room
I heard my mom’s voice,
“That baby looks
just like her mother.”

I never could see that much
in the faces of new-borns
wrinkled and otherwise nondescript
even in my family.
Maybe my eyes were never
quite trained to it
and remain as yet
undeveloped.

My mom tells the story
that when my dad’s mom
first laid eyes on me
she said ‘I got one.’

I still wonder
how she saw it that day
that I’d grow to have her face
as mine.
But she was right
and so pronounced is our likeness
until all the family
knows who I’m from.

©2009 by Shari Lynne Smothers