December 26

Here comes the sunshine

Here comes the sunshine

 

Here comes that daughter of mine

Here comes wit sublime

Here’s a poem for her for all time

 

Sweet kisses

Three wishes

Lovely MacKay

 

The most beautiful

The most willful

The most fantastic countenance 

I have ever seen

 

Sweet bliss

A mirthful twist

Lovely MacKay

 

You bring me so much joy

A love that does not cloy

My heart you fully employ

 

~Charlotte Greer Slater 8.7.09

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December 26

Enter Twilight 

Enter Twilight       

 

Looking back on my life

I see all my mistakes run rife

Wake up another day but the pain won’t go away

What am I fighting, in my own peculiar way?

 

Enter the twilight

And rise into the light of dreamtime

Give me knights and dragons to smite

As I rise straight through the night and out of time

 

Into a light I pass

Another dream another chance

To succeed I must find my compass

Through the maze will I advance

 

I’m going to find my way in life 

Finally see things in black and white

Making everything all right

If I could just rise to the light

 

Because I know there is time

So I must exercise my dreamtime

Resolve demons as night hours chime

Sorting my life while supine  

– Charlotte Greer Slater      7.16.11

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December 26

The Back of My Mind

The Back of My Mind

 

Here comes the night again,

Left feeling so hurt for two little girls.

Makes it hard to pretend,

I’m okay with what life sometimes unfurls.

 

I hold you both close in the back of my mind.

But I know it’s for naught,

Because he doesn’t play like our kind,

I am painfully familiar with the onslaught.

 

The hole in my heart like a vacuum, 

It whistles, what if you fail again?

All his ugly words well up in the void like a sad tune,

But my little engine fights, says I think i can.

 

So I hold my little girls in the back of my mind,

Whisper for them to be strong.

Now I pray to God for strength in any sign,

For I gave up asking him why things went so wrong.

 

My apron strings stretch for miles, my little girls.

My hope and faith and determination with them.

But when big blue eyes sprout tears like pearls,

I feel like the loveliest of flowers crimped at the stem.

 

So let me hold you tight in the back of my mind,

Where he cannot reach us.

Listen when I whisper be strong and act so in kind,

Never let him pull asunder our mutual trust.

 

So here we three are, my arms wrapped around you,

I will sing you songs and stroke your long blonde hair.

Please don’t forget it’s your mama who will see you through

For it is I who lives and breathes for your every care.

 

April 16th, 2014

Charlotte von Wolfle Greer

 

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December 26

The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog
Rudyard Kipling, 1865 – 1936
There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.
When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But … you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.
When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.
We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?
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December 26

I Chose

I Chose

Today I chose it over the ocean

Over the trees, their fall leaves

A hawk perched high on a branch

Over the chandelier of sunlight broken

By a cathedral of trees

On azure waves: over sweet smelling flowers

Shaped like teacups and trumpets

Over my ivy garden where I once dreamt

 

Today I chose the steeper path

I stare defiantly at God’s wrath

I dare the world to encumber me

For I shall chose to shed its weight

And dwell with the stars and moon

Above the treetops

With the owls and night noise

 

Today I found a reservoir

I chose to find the font inside myself

I will lie down in crocuses

But rise again to the treetops

With owls and night noise

To lift me high

~Charlotte Greer Slater 3.10.09

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December 26

I Read

I Read

I read to my children, every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet, fertilizing the ground.  I feed their eager minds with the stuff of imagination. Some stories I have never heard of, and others I knew as a child, these stepping stones that are there for everyone.  What is the real meaning of these stories, I wonder? …. of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination: princes, woodcutters, empathic dragons, honest fisherman who live in hovels.  I want my children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, the habit which gives us shape.  I want them to know both degradation and sainthood, the former without humiliation, the latter without ignorance. I am preparing them for this voyage. It is as if there is only a single hour, and in that hour all the provender must be gathered, all the advice offered.  I long for the one line to give them that they will always remember, that will embrace everything, that will point the way, but I cannot find the line, I cannot recognize it. It is more precious than anything else they might own, but I do not have it. Instead, in an even and sensuous voice like my mother’s, I steep them in petty myths of Europe, of snowy Russia, the East, of anthropomorphized animals.  The best education comes from knowing stories- purity comes from that, and proportion, and the comfort of always having an example close at hand.

~Charlotte

3.19.09

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December 26

THE LIGHT

THE LIGHT

When light shattered across the floor

and briefly there was thunder between us, 

If your eyes had held water it would not have spilled

and when we peeled aside the dreams 

the skin underneath was still young. When all was black

you smoothed aside the words and said, 

It’s there, the light, when you want it it’ll be waiting for you –

and a certain peace came into your eyes,

That this was no different, 

that this was so different

yet every bit the same, 

and your hands stilled with satisfaction.

You did this without touch so that all around me your hands stood

shaped like shelters, all around me there was room

and after each moment the next was like a cavern

and around the corner and down the stairs

There lurked as always, light, as ever, light. 

 

~Charlotte 3.2009

 

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December 26

It is a day of little sunlight and much rain.

It is a day of little sunlight and much rain.  I sit at my desk, the room is silent. This is what sets me thinking; all was suddenly calm.  So it is again time to spill it all onto the page.

A perfect day begins in death, in the semblance of death, in deep surrender.  The body is soft, the soul has gone forth, all strength, even breath is lax. There is no power for good or evil, the luminous surface of another world is near, enfolding, the branches of trees tremble and stand witness outside.  Morning, I wake slowly, as if touched by the sun. I am alone; the blue-grey coat of my cat curled on the duvet drinks the burning light.

For the day to unfold it must in its blueness, its immensity, hide the conspiracy I live in, enclose it, invisible, like stars in the daytime sky.  Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still anything can be endured if all humanity is watching.  The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers turn their lovely faces to the sun. But do I still endure? I feel as if the ground subsides beneath me. I feel as if my own mind has undermined my cause, my plight.  I feel nothing and everything at once, I am overwhelmed.

There is not a complete life.  There are only fragments, selective memories.  We are born to have nothing, take nothing, letting it pour through our hands like a sieve.  And yet this pouring, this flood of encounters, struggles, dreams one must continuously endure.  For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing the opposite. The very acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox, the boolean way of existence.  So that life is a matter of choices, each one final and of little consequence, like dropping stones into the sea, who would notice the displacement? We had children therefore we can never be childless.  We are moderate; we will never know what it is to spill our lives. I am Charlotte, how could I ever be anything different? They all think of me as knowledgeable and capable, but I am shite.  

I am not myself, I am vague, adrift.  I am lost in the woods and the midges are biting.  I am panicking now. I am frantic, so I cannot be calm, I am angry so I cannot be happy, I am very very sad, so I cannot be.

Today is the day they are going to put it back to me, and I was supposed to have a plan.  But all I have is a shell, and I can describe it in great detail, with passion and great regard, but it is only a shell.  Hollow, hear the echo? It is a lovely shade of green, it is my shell. Yes, see the dings and dents? That is the flotsam of life barraging me at all times, and now that I am hollow, it is even louder when it strikes.

 

~Charlotte    3.27.09

 

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December 26

Driving

Driving

In the late winter evening she passes familiar landmarks.  The traffic is thick but moving. The stores are clotted with people.  The flashes of eye-catching signs making for distraction. It is dusk now, she is moving into the country… Headed home on the long curving stretches, lost in thought, egged on by the music on the radio.  By the time she crossed the river the trees were black silhouetted by the deep blue of twilight. She flew along, in the left lane only, above the limit, tired and wistful , filled with plans. Her eyes stung with tears held back.  On the seat behind her were bags of groceries, on the floor were gas slips, parking tickets stub, dog leashes and water bowls, mail that had never been opened, bills. Every scrap of paper filled with near illegible ramblings of her prolific muddled mind.  Penned at stoplights, in carpool, and even braced on the steering wheel while headed down the highway. All left on the floorboards to be trampled underfoot. Maybe the trampling of her thoughts serves her right.  

The road runs along the throat of the mountains, for most of the way there is no house visible, not a store, nothing except the long galaxy of distant houses on the hillside beginning to shine in the dark.  She turns from the main road onto a side street. She sees houses she knows intimately without any idea who lives in them. She sees parked cars she recognizes, a wooden fence with the same rail missing, the same two dogs tied and looking lonely in the same backyard.  She is nearing home, but she doesn’t want to go, she wants to keep driving. Driving till the street lights run out, till there is nothing but country. She wants to find a pasture somewhere and lie down in the dark to scream at the stars. She wants to accuse the satellites of mimicry.  She wants to feel cold ground on her back; she wants to feel something, anything but this. She wants to breathe, she wants space unlimited. If she let go of the wheel, the car would surely take her there. She rakes her fingers through her long hair in a frustrated moment. She rubs her nose, and then wipes her eyes angrily.  The tears flow now, and she hates the tears. She wonders if she could go to the barn this late, would they detect her? Huddled in a stall somewhere, her face buried in a sympathetic mane. She craves the smell of soothing horses and calm, quiet munching; the occasional shift of weight, swish of tail, anything to soothe her. She would stay there all night if she could… Hiding like a naughty child.

But here is her turn, and she dutifully puts on her blinker.  She regrettably makes the turn for home. She steadies herself for the onslaught…whether intended or not, it will be waiting for her…it always is. 

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December 26

A Grey Day

A Grey Day

In the morning, the light comes in silence.  The earliest light. This is my time…The house sleeps.  The air overhead, glittering infinite, the moist earth beneath- one can almost taste the earth, its richness, its density.  I bathe in the air like a stream. The sky is pale above the trees, pure and more mysterious than ever… a sky to dizzy, to end the astronomer’s night.  In it, dim as coins on a beach, fading, shine two last stars…or are they only satellites?

It is a grey day, a day for me.  I watch the rooks hang in the air, wheeling left and right then disappearing out of sight.  The dark skies hold down my feelings, keep me from flying off into the stratosphere. I accept the promise of rain in the vast and unmoving sky.  The geese fly overhead in their long, shifting V’s- like punctuation on the parchment page. They seem to approach slowly, accelerate, and then pass overhead like arrows….honking their flock-mates on to parts unknown.

I marvel at what a foolish and muddled heart I possess.  And there is a break in the vast grey, and some light pours down… God’s idleness.  He watches me, and there are moments when I reveal everything. Then I take my bricks and mortar, pen and paper, and seal myself back up.  I am subtle, penetrating and sometimes mischievous, strongly inclined to love and not overdelicate in the ways that must be taken. Why do people want to be in the aura surrounding me?  Why do they want to see me smile, to have me exercise that deep, imputed tendency to love? …when the exercise only pulls me from my cloistered haven, making me feel naked and reckless. I promise myself as long as the sky stays grey, I will not fly off into the atmosphere…I will not be lost forever.   Consciously, or unconsciously, we are all completely selfish, and as long as we get what we want, we believe everything is alright…but is getting what we want happiness? Never getting what you want, that is unhappiness…but as long as there’s a chance of getting it..

My eyes cannot fix on things; they slip off them like dying flies.  I am staggering, swaying between times when I have no strength at all, no reason, no urge to struggle…I feel as if I could only run to death like a fanatic, a believer, delirious, dazed, on those quickened feet that run to love.

Life divides itself with scars like rings contained within a tree.  How close together the early ones seem, time compacts them…but time does not truly dull the pain.   The noble tree stands erect, defying nature and gravity, saving its reserves for the drought, which will inevitably add more scars.  It cannot move, or relieve itself of its destiny; it can only grow and bear the brunt that nature will give. In fall, leaves come down like rain, like a sacrifice…the prodigious arbors give them up freely.  In the turning of seasons there will be buds, full of promise, then leaves verdant green again. The trees would again, in addition to their beauty, to the roof they made beneath the sky, to their whispering, their slow inarticulate sounds, the riches they poured down, they would besides all this, give scale to everything, a true scale, reassuring, wise.  We do not live as long; we do not know as much….we will never know.

Oh how their limbs must tire…All this makes me limb-weary and ready for sleep.

 

~Charlotte   3.18.09

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