Across the miles
(just miles)
sitting
cross-legged
on the floor
mind moves

home again.
Down
round the mountains
they came,
loyal sons
in Sunday suit
keeping tradition.

In the kitchen
grandmother stood
and I
beside her,
kneading hands,
biscuits
never failing.

Dinner over
back door slams
children run,
quietly
in the living room
hard working people
sit
shoulder to shoulder,
heads nodding,
chins on chests.
They rest

on the couch
where her youngest
withered
away before our eyes.
Cancer caught
from chemicals
in a factory
up north,
he came
home again
to draw
familiar
final breath.

Home again
heart alone
sitting
without
her recipe
for biscuits
or peace.

Muse calling.
He wants to go home,
home again.
Trees, truth,
dogs, distance,
coveted difference,
put the pieces back.

Whatever, whatever
Will one fly away on angel wings?

Echoes
like song
different
never
changing
believe

you are not alone.
My grandmother
on the porch
sitting
in her apron
still

I sit
holding her hand
pinching furrows of translucent skin,
that slowly
descend,
we watch,
till in tears
of laughter
she surrenders,
raising her apron
to her eyes,
and I
can see her belly shake.

Barbara Martin grew up in War, WV amidst a large, loving extended family.  She attended West Virginia University where she obtained a BS in Journalism and an MBA. In 1990 she rebelled from a career at Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh, PA for home life and many mini-careers.  She is the mother of a handsome 19-year-old, Benjamin, and is recently divorced.

"Meditation on Life and Death" is the first published poem for Barbara Martin.  A corporate refugee, she is living miraculously, in Oakland, CA writing her first book, a spiritual journey of love and transformation tentively titled, The Misadventures of a Spiritual Warrior or If John Hiatt was God.

Humjourney@aol.com


Life and Death is a book of poems by Robert  Creeley

ForPoetry