almost two weeks now Dad has gone to parts unknown though i feel him wherever i go the most haunting when Alexa at Toni's house started singing without being cued and a blues song about sin and crossing Jordan came on, my Dad's last name Jordan and he was a Baptist preacher, oh, he is around all right watching over my mother, checking on me in new ways, i feel less of a loss i think than those of my kin who believe in a far away heaven where they will join him some day what we know is little, but people keep telling me they felt him close when they saw one of his favorite birds, a cardinal come and sing to them, when i heard affirmations from him when i was writing his funeral poems, is it true i have an extra advocate unseen helping well if it's not true than i'm not hurting myself much to feel him near
Category Archives: Jude’s Memoir Poems
I’m working on a new book of poetry that is auto-biographical. Most poetry is i guess, but these will be more blatantly composes in that direction.
Feminist Musings–Published unedited
it has been more than fifty years since I began to think of myself in feminist terms though I was born rejecting the third class citizenship card i was given for no other reason than my birth. my mother is 91 and will lose a bunch of the compensation my father had when he died a few days ago though she was married to him for 71 years and worked by his side on the mission field and in churches across Maine until she got her master's degree and began teaching school though well past her prime i turn seventy in a few days and live on the nothing that is the result of raising children in my youth and divorcing when I was forty, working to get my boys through high school with almost no help from their father my ex and theirs he rides high in his retirement while i collect $312 a month from Social Security and the yahoo clown in our white house continues to banish those of us who have very little in support of his cronies, though we are used to that from those who rule us and scream that we should vote. for what? another version of the screw job? We are all on this road to perdition. God on the backs of those who persecute and care little for their souls or the anguish of those who find themselves unable to live. i am a believer in Love, in a world created and sustained by this phenomena very few take time to understand. it is not a secret hidden in sacred books interpreted by powerful men, but an announcement written inside each soul and proclamation of nature loudly stated by stars, waterfalls and oceans. i chose this day to be kind, to love as if tomorrow will never come to ignore the lies that make up our daily lives and to be concerned and guided by nothing but the One Creator, sustainer, lover, giver, and caretaker of all that she has made in fact sometimes when i look in the mirror I can see my resemblance and it is about the only thing in this wide world that makes me smile and keep on walking there is nothing better for me than knowing where i come from and where my inheritance resides that there is not one little piece of creation to which I am not kith and kin to the Great Mother Father origin, essence and presence of all the Universe be honor Amen.
OM
his lips are open only the lower half of his false teeth in his dry mouth i swab it bringing back childhood memories of Jesus on the cross, I want to take his picture but my camera won't pick up his spirit hovering soaring above his failing body hesitant to let it go he hears the trumpet calling over the sound of the furnace and the sorrowful heartbeats of his wife and children love pouring it's tune into the silence some of the children still hanging on tight to his one good leg his picks his crusty nose like an infant unconcerned with protocol his empty stomach gurgles echoing empty, saying, "No one home." he is flying unaided by mortal invention he is making his way home
of planes and pasts
I wake to another migraine
they come like morning these
days as i combine two of the
elements that haunt me from a
childhood i fought to keep from
my own children…my demons:
moving and flying away alone
i fly away on Sunday in the middle of a move
but add to the mix my Dad dying
my little brother not anything little
any more is flying today and we
reminisce of our boarding school
past flying as little children on the
WWII surplus DC-3’s that were the
main transportation of our Brazilian
past the time my sister and i were
in the cockpit with the pilots when
they could not get the landing gear
down, how my father cried tears
when he put us on the rickety plane
by ourselves and we lost most of
our sense of permanent family
left to vacations and furloughs
to call home we return this week
from Florida, Virginia and Colorado
back to our roots before Brazil before
the war and the missionary zeal
back to the love of family to the
roots that made us strong enough
to endure the leavings, the losses
the opening of new worlds that made
us citizens of the Universe,
back to singing hymns
at the bedside of our loved ones
flying, circling, coming home to a strange land
Light of the World for Maria Popova and all the lights
she speaks of Rilke and Rodin
and the letters to a young poet
that is in one of my most beloved
books passed on to me by Silvana
Cenci, my amazing sculptor friend
who used explosives to make her art
the concept of empathy she finds originated only
a century ago lies at the heart of my teaching
in the sixties from a great man and my beloved
professor J.Whitney Shea and even her
text on Freud makes me remember my
years of the study of Psychology before i
decided it was an industry of ¨thera-pee and
thera-pists¨ her name is Maria Popova introduced
to me by a beloved artist, poet and friend
that is how these magical connections settle
into my being spurring me on when the poet´s
road gets too lonely and the night seems dark
and hard i remember all my foremothers and fathers
how they persevered through broken dreams and
though they sometimes cut off their own body parts
they left a legacy like a great neon sign to point us to the
Light of the World
https://www.brainpickings.org/
Is The Universe A Friendly Place
two days past my determination
to get this memoir published
this is my take on life lived from
the dimension of spirit
go quickly forward not knowing
how or when, just following the
small signpost you can read from
where you stand, then if everything
blows up in your face and you melt
and wail, don´t worry itś just a loving
universe touching your cheek holding
you anyway and moving you down the
path to the next place you can read the signs
like Einstein said, the only question you
need to know the answer: Is the Universe
a Friendly Place????? If you can answer
YES, your safety will not be in question