Category Archives: Poems

The history of my mother’s family is actually rather complicated. My ancestors are remembered, some I knew and loved like my grandmother and aunt Toni. Others remain names in the Ahnenpass. Ahnenpass, a genealogical document required in Nazi Germany  listing birth and death dates, occupations, where lived, who they were married to – all toContinue reading “Ahnenpass”

The dark of night flows in like water, fills the room, imprisons me, a creature in its burrow. Eyes wide-open turn inwards to a world alive with ghosts that break unbidden through the fragile diaphragm separating out from in. Phantoms of the past exempt from time and space come one by one and then are gone.Continue reading “Ghosts III January 11, 2004”

Eugenie (Jenny) Voetter  1876 – 1936 1899. She was 23, a concert pianist and a soprano, when she sat forher portrait in Munich. In a year. she would have her firstborn child,on a forlorn island in the Pacific where she had followed the man withwhom she had fallen in love. And where a dark-skinned nativeContinue reading “Ancestors II”

ANCESTORS (January 2004) Ancestors I knewand those I never knew.Family trees.They grow and branchbut backwards.We say we’re looking for our roots.So who is branch and who is trunk?I am the end product,the result of endless matingsbut in turn branch out into others.I am the sumthe penultimate answerof a penultimate answer. Who were theywhere did theyContinue reading “Ancestors”

First thoughts – 1994 and 2021 The wind, the rain a wavering leaf caught up let down motion life New Year passing of time motion.  No fireworks last night unless meant to celebrate the passing of a year – infausto – inauspicious, fatal as no year before.  Although in other times and places For otherContinue reading “First Thoughts”

Winter is a time of skies   Jan. 15, 1994 Winter is a time of skies of winds that blow through empty trees and pipe their plaintive solo melodies with crevices of house and door as reed. All foliage, excess verbiage, has fallen by the way. The unencumbered beauty of what lies beneath is now revealed. DeceivingContinue reading “Winter is a time of skies”

What is Befana:The Befana or Epiphany is the arrival of the Three Kings with theirgifts on January 6th. Over the years, I sent a little girl who lived inthe United States some of the Michelangeli frogs. She will now soon bea mother and the frogs will be bequeathed to a newborn child. Thestory was written forContinue reading “Befana”

Was there ever a time without time, with what was and is and what will be? It is the clock that tells us that now has given way to past, heedless of the future. Only you and I project ourselves into time as yet unborn as we try to stop its onward march with allContinue reading “Time”

 Ribbons, yarn, cord Tied in a bow, knotted, looped Narrow, wide, twisted, flat Purple twine Scarlet satin Glittering gold Leftovers from Christmases past The twine my son, practical The scarlet satin, older friends Each ribbon matches the person who chose it, wrapped the package, thought of you and  thought of me.

It’s Christmas Eve. After patiently waiting with our mother for the tinkling of the bells telling us the angels had left and the curtain to the living room could be drawn, we stand enchanted by the Christmas tree aglow with lights and the flickering flames of tiny candles.  Our father is playing Silent Night onContinue reading “Christmas Memories”

Morning walk. Ten o’clock. She, meaning Teah the dog, jumps down from the bed and stands hopefully in the doorway. “Time for my second walk, for that cappuccino, so I can see what’s going on in the street. Besides which I like Anthony and the others who come sit outside the Blue Bar. I mightContinue reading “Teah at Blue Bar”

Give me a name and let me tell you what it stands for. A chair is simply a chair. A daffodil just that. But say Wordsworth and it’s daffodils and lake and wind. Say Shakespeare and it’s to be or not to be and the shoemaker’s sole. Robert Burns is a wee timorous mouse RobertContinue reading “What’s in a Name”

Written for Sally’s grandmother around 20 years ago “Suddenly there was no more pain. It just stopped. Like when one stops breathing all of a sudden. For a moment, without the pain, she felt lost. So blessedly unaware of the body she had become accustomed to in the long years in which it had beenContinue reading “For Sally’s Grandmother”

A great title. Heralding a friendship. One of those some people say can’t happen. Why? Well because I’m over 90. One doesn’t make new friends after a certain age I was told. If I were less of a lady, I’d say Bull… I made new friends when I was 70, and when I was 80.Continue reading “Tea For Two On Tuesdays”

November 17, 2019 THE HAT THAT GOT AWAY It was a light brown fedora type hat.Worn to protect its wearer from the rain.Worn because the wearer no longer had that mass of lustrous hair of 50 years ago. On her way along the cliff to the elevator and well aware that the wind would loveContinue reading “Hats”

The child on the empty beach runs, arms outstretched, to embrace a ball. Her past lies there behind herfor she has felt her mother’s cheek warm against hershas heard her mother sing a ballad at dusk. The child on the empty beach with arms outstretched is running with the wind to embrace the world.

A mother and her child. I try to decipher her gaze and, entranced, have fallen under her spell.She could be a Madonna, holding a babe in swaddling clothes, safe inits mother’s arms and not yet aware of the world outside. What are those eyes and that enigmatic smile that lingers on her lipstrying to tellContinue reading “A Mother and Her Child”

I wander through the rooms as if I were a ghost choosing this and that. What to take, what to leave what I will need, what holds meaning. But to me alone and not to those who follow. A book – read yesterday to read perhaps tomorrow. A book – the small child kept throughoutContinue reading “Moving 2018”