poem

Day 29 – On the occasion | Poem a Day (NaNoWriMo)

dragonfly on a Sweet William flower
dragonfly

BIRTHDAYS

measuring time—
twenty-five or thirty-some years
yet to go … or less
looking at past records
of family births and deaths

my dad felt a hundred years
was too long to stick around for
my mother thought that ninety-four
was quite a bit too short
neither was pleased

don’t know what I’ll think
when my world and I transform
when time becomes eternity
maybe I’ll notice, or perhaps I’ll
forget what came before

Copyright © 2019-11-29, by Liz Bennefeld. All rights reserved.

Day 17 – Extended Conversations | Poem a Day (NaNoWriMo)

Out in the Country

“Catching Up With Mother”

I woke up thinking, “I should call Mom, today”,
forgetting that she died three years ago this week.
Forgetting that she had not taken a call from me
at least half a year before I got called to have
the ambulance tear her from her only home.

I still want to call her and ask about her week
and the previous years since we last caught up.
I don’t know where she’s sitting, or if she wants
to walk with me along a pasture fence
in a place not new to her…or one not new to me.

If I go ahead and start a new conversation,
should I pause between my sentences?
to see if she will answer me or make
a comment of her own? She liked to talk to me
but she didn’t always listen. Now, I wouldn’t care.

I have looked through all the emails. Of course,
none are new, and the last that were coherent
were sent a year before she died. I hadn’t,
really hadn’t noticed how far things had gone.
Or feeling bewildered, I didn’t want to see.

When Mother wasn’t panicking, she took me
as she found me, loving me all the while
she wondered why I wanted to be me
and not the daughter that she’d wanted. But
she still trusted me to do what must be done.

I can feel her arms around me, giving me a hug.
I can’t hear her voice, but she knows when I cry.
She can hear me talk to her and read what I write.
I know that she and God are always present to my life.
The separation that I feel is just an odd notion in my mind.

Copyright © 2019-11-17, by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld.

Day 15 – In the Middle | Poem a Day (NaNoWriMo)

edge of town, looking south
The Edge of Memories

Recognizing the inevitable loss of friends, family members, and mentors over the years.

mourning once again
the loss of those who loved me
who brightened my life

locked themselves away from me—
walked away . . . I stand alone

Copyright © Liz Bennefeld, 2019-11-16.

Day 15 prompt: a “middle” poem

Edited to add: Another in the previous generation of relatives just died this morning; he was 95 years old. Alert and lucid to the end; a low blood oxygen level for a couple days, and then his heart just stopped beating.

 

Day 1 – Growing Up, Learning | Poem a Day (NaNoWriMo)

View of Village Cemetery
Hawley Cemetery – 2008

what’s the capitol
of the Peace Garden State?
where’s the garden at?

we learned all the answers there
working for Dad, clipping grass

Copyright © 1 November 2019, by Elizabeth Bennefeld.

When we were children (there were seven of us, and I am assuming that others got roped into this, each in their turn), Dad hired us during May and as needed during summer school vacations to maintain the grounds of the village cemetery where he was the groundskeeper and sexton. He didn’t retire until he was in his 90s. There was particular need for us children to prepare the cemetery for Memorial Day and to refurbish things after the influx of visitors during the following months. My brother Tim and I worked together, being close in age, and we would pass the time by challenging each other with such miscellanea as state and country capitols and other interesting trivia.

My mother died three years ago, this month, and my father followed her three-and-a-half months later. Their ashes are buried next to the family monument, near two siblings whose lives were measured in days.

Warming up for NaNoWriMo, Day 2

Cold Beauty

and why would I live
beyond all kin and kindness
absent to their eyes

so, one leaves a friendless warmth,
braving winter’s storms, to die

Copyright © 2019.10.31, by Lizl Bennefeld.

 

The many deaths of those most dear

within the past three years… Suddenly, I’m homesick

for a place I’ve never seen.

 

Mourning seems to come in waves. In the midst of happiness, remembered losses beg not to be forgotten. That’s a trap, I think. The insistence of the mind on revisiting those intense emotions, long after one has moved on. The bittersweet taste of loves and friends and family set aside until time ends, or else, renews all things.

Warming up for NaNoWriMo

I am once again planning to write 30 poems during November (NaNoWriMo)—hopefully, more than one a day, but we’ll see. November and December are cluttered months. Nonetheless…

Today’s and tomorrow’s poems are warm-up exercises. During this poem-a-day exercise, I am hoping not to resort to canned prompts, but to find poems in life as it happens.

P9199208 Waterdrops
Drop of Eternity

the years and the days
ephemeral, but endless…
looking for the end

Copyright © 2019.10.30, by Lizl Bennefeld.

Cold and windy

late spring in the neighborhood
Late Spring in the Neighborhood

the season shifts
to days of cold, and colder nights
stars shine more brightly

dry winds abscond with clouds and leave
faint wisps of smoky haze

Copyright © 2019-05-05, by Lizl Bennefeld.

Forecast for the week is for nighttime lows in the 30s and low 40s (although not below freezing), cold and gusty wind.

I decided not to post a couple of the poems that I wrote during April, so my count on this site comes up short.  I fell ill from an infected wound, and so I have been sleeping a lot and taking antibiotics every six hours. I will be so happy to have more than five hours of sleep in a stretch…you wouldn’t believe! Follow-up appointment later this week.

 

 

Day 26: An Everlasting Pause #NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo

Prompt for Day 26: Write 10 one- or two-line poems on one subject, however loosely related to the subject. Put them together, arranging and rearranging, and title them as one poem.

An Everlasting Pause

Only eternity lasts forever

              Be still and know

There are many mansions

              and the perfect one is set aside for you

Passage of time and distance of place…

              all is present in the Now

I cannot conceive of a moment of perfection

              that never ends or varies

One thing that puzzles me is whether eternity is

              a continuity, an instance of existence, or an object of art

Clarity persists in haunting the mind of the bemused

The eternal Here and Now overlooks the ebb and flow

              of distance and time, not counting minutes or the miles

Satisfaction is a state of mind independent

              of circumstances or the company we keep

Experiencing the tides of now, the gentle inflow and recession

              of being and not being

Hypnotized by sensation and waiting for the feeling

              to come again

Lost in the eternal pause between nothing more

              and everything

Copyright © 2019-04-26, by Lizl Bennefeld.