I, the Abominable Snowman’s Wife, hunker in the heart of winter.

I am a Thing, waddling down icy roads,

my breath slow and waxy, wadded to itself.

Sometimes I burrow under cedars;

low branches once weighted by heights of white

form solace caves upon hard ground.

Crawling in I talk with toads and frogs and bears,

and to my Mister, as if he might hear.

I chew frozen sap, gumming it soft, sticky, fragrant

as birds chatter snatches of lost melodies.

It’s not depression, or loneliness,

or even loss of grace defines me,

but I do envy bare ash branches weaving delicacy in filigree,

embracing frigid air against dimming light.

I remember summer, high up on a rocky ledge.

I held my fingers up to a sun.

I long to see that bright blood glow between my fingers;

webbing alive with red, red, red from within my very skin.

If I were not so heavy, so glued with weight,

God could toss me up to catch the pink rimmed horizon

like tulip lips about to kiss some tender part of me.

©2013 Mariénne Kreitlow

such a slow, gracious dance;

the wide wicker sweep

with genteel turns.

she follows, then leads.

tells her “off with your shoes,

loose your gown from your shoulder.”

she is wood. she is wheat.

hips and shoulder a’swaying.

they whoosh and they swish

as the floor is whisked clean.

he takes the scythe by the handle.

it’s off to the ditches

where weeds and grass riot.

reaching and twisting, sometimes working with effort.

he’s relearning the motion his ancestors knew.

they sing through the snath;

“do not strain. find your rhythm.

let the blade do the work

or toil yields no pleasure.”

a wide swath falls neatly, aligned at his feet.

later she and he will meet at the river,

bringing tired but undulant bodies together,

slipping into the current

and floating downstream.

©2012 Mariénne Kreitlow

Oh! The sparks in the dark are glowing. You are with me.

Joy flares up like a scene from Walt Disney.

I can see through a child’s eyes here on more more fourth of July.

Here in the park of my Thanksgiving.

Beautiful Illusion!

Ah! The light of the fireflies showing down in the swamp.

Who knows what we look like with our high voltage

flowing? Let me tell you what I see

when you flow your blessings through me:

I see a world that blinks from brightness.

Beautiful Illusion!

Nestled in the manger there’s a baby smiles as you pray,

and the story goes He grew to give light away.

Listening to the eternal hum to blaze the way for us to become

fearless inside our fiery glory.

Beautiful Illusion!

 ©2007 Living Song, BMI

YOU ARE WELCOME TO LISTEN TO THIS SONG from my CD

BEAUTIFUL ILLUSION: www.marienne.com/recordings.php

Have a most blessed holiday! With all my love, Mariénne

When Venus possessed me I’d have hunted you down.

Gnawed you raw on the half shell until I was through.

I stuffed myself daily, obsessing over what I would eat next;

tongue probing canyons for  salt and sweet;

heart stalking seduction, approval, peace.

I was naive, terrified,

veracious, victorious,

exalted, exhausted,

ragged, serene,

brilliant, broken,

lonely, swollen,

wanton, wounded,

ecstatic, exposed.

I judge not.  Regret not. I was feeling my way.

Now it is not that that I live without yearning or passion,

but I can leave much untouched;

 not just crumbs on a plate.

I find comfort snuggling into Puck’s fragrant fur;

alfalfa-scented from sleeping in hay.

I curve myself round his small vibrating form,

cupping his happy head in my hand.

I witness flakes of November, fields suddenly bright.

Watch them melt back to brown in the span of an hour.

I bring warm tea to my lips, like wine at communion.

I blow on bright embers until flames leap again.

Feel wrists resting now on this black plastic keyboard,

tap tapping letters into choreographed lines.

I stretch or I groan as my body directs.

Flirt with my husband; press him close – and then closer.

I make up our bed framed by limbs of raw cedar.

Perhaps all I consumed

during those restless years

was needed to form me,

to shape me,

to grow me.

The nutrition I needed to be who I am.

Birds animate the morning air; darting, whisking, soaring here and there

as trees speak in tones of sapphire, jade, and gold.

My husband tells me of two recent thefts in our rural neighborhood.

I imagine inviting these thieves to dine,

serving heaped up platters of tantalizing fare,

saying , “Friends, tell us of your need.”

Maybe they will come to steal things I don’t want:

the old mini-trampoline outside on the patio,

cheap plastic lawn chairs blown helter skelter by the wind,

mounds of old tires huddled in the windbreak.

Maybe they will steal things I’m so ready to be done with:

tubs of anaheim and jalapeño peppers

and mounds of bright red tomatoes saved from last nights’ frost.

Maybe they are hungry for affection and come only to pet our dog,

who will give them sly french kisses from his generous, juicy tongue.

Maybe they are empty and by craving crowns of beauty

will come to reap the brilliance of September’s sturdy blooms:

our snap dragons, petunias, and marigolds still standing

- or will they come driven by boredom, festering testosterone,

disastrous foreclosure, rage, addiction, greed?

Maybe I will lock the house now when I leave

- or maybe not.

 My riches rest in a pompous, pleasured cat,

88 piano keys,

the constancy of sweet goodnights,

a warm nest for my bedding,

a larder of meals I’ve yet to make,

a stash of glossy magazines,

and this bright morning – the one that’s here – astir with flocks in flight.

 Maybe they will come to help me clean these dirty windows

so I can see more clearly.

Maybe I will wash their feet.

Wash their feet

and hum

when they come.

 © 2012 Mariénne Kreitlow

Stanley Eddy Park, Wright Co.

Stanley Eddy Park, Wright Co.

I say goodbye to summer’s fading farewell. The garlic crop was dismal, the onions and purple potatoes mighty fine, the row crops managed to do their stately thing, and we’re prayin’ for rain for soil so dry it’s also prayin’. Still, we’re lucky all in all and the beauty I’m in continues to amaze me day by precious day.

Living Song Farm has been graced by the generous presence of several young, creative people who hopefully will return in seasons yet to come.  They have given themselves to fits of blooming, hard work, great humor, and solid friendship.  The pics of Brandon Wiarda, Sienna Nesser, and Kevin Karl at the end of this blog will allow you to peek at their dewey  faces.  But first, let me begin with a surprise visitation from Great Grandmother.

Pauline.  My name is Pauline.  That is all you know of me.  No picture left to contemplate.  You see my husband, August, in his boots and winter coat. Standing straight in the snow with crooked trees behind him. You know he was a master with horses.  You know he worked this land, this land whereon you sit and eat and dream and reap and live.  Where he worked with hands and horses.

His brothers lived not far away.  Do you know what it’s like to be among a clan of German men?  Their name survives as your own, while I have been forgot.

I stroked the horses too.  I brushed them for the pleasure, not for what they yielded.  I kept my linens white.  Insisted on good manners.  I read something from the Bible almost every day.  At other times I spurned it.  There are thoughts a woman dare not share, even with God, for God is no woman.

You have not thought of me.  Just spoken my name linked with August.  Given rote thanks to us for what we lived and created here.  Sometimes our children were selfish.  Sometimes the winters would break a soul.  Sometimes the larder lean, the chickens stringy.  But the horses, the horses.  The horses had legs like August.  Strong.  Sturdy.  But sometimes it was I pulled the plow. 

Think about that.  Think about what I might mean by it, and think of me, my name Pauline, from time to time.

Brandon, Sienna, and Kevin at work and play…

(for Jeremy Choate)

A flock of sparrows whooshes past;

right to left, south to north.

30 or 40 small brown birds. Common, yet fantastic.

They dip and swoop and disappear.

Yet, your face will stay the same when I remember you.

Your daughters will grow,

saying to those they learn to trust:

“Our Daddy died when we were very young.”

One will remember certain things.

Dancing with you on a floor of bright glossy blue

as Mommy hums, chopping jalpenos, tortillas sizzling in a pan.

You both press noses to the bright aquarium

to discover where the shy one might be hiding.

You’ll remember long, strong limbs,

laying sleepy you upon your bed, kissing your nose, hair, and cheek.

Feel him linger in the doorway as you fall inside your dreams.

The younger one will try and try to remember.  Something.  Anything.

Occasionally catch a certain scent. The residue of your devotion.

I see a ring of hundreds ‘round you now.

Some saying “hello,” some “goodbye.”

I am crying again because that is what there is to do.

I wish I could share this view with you.

We would admire stands of stately corn encircling August hills,

alfalfa deeply green, blooming bright as bleeding beets,

grassy waterways shimmy and shine, stroked into life by sudden wind.

We would witness shifting sun and clouds.  Nothing stays the same.

This late afternoon light drenches, deepens everything.

We might not say a single word, were you here again.

A flock of sparrows whooshes past;

left to right, north to south.

I don’t know why they dart so quickly or how I know to count them.

30 or 40 or somewhere inbetween.

33.  Yes.  Exactly 33.

Thanks to the artists & photographers whose works became my collage.

more about Jeremy:

http://www.artsjournal.com/texas/2012/08/light-years/

Where do those lovely, funny faces go of those we know

when the body’s done its curtain call?

The lucky ones funeralize in New Orleans

with a funky jazz band blowing hard, with grit.

The quick and the dead mingle in grief and joy,

while those who still imbibe drink mint juleps ‘til the grave is dug.

Soulful, steamy, righteous music and everybody dressed up fine,

including you there in the casket.

That undertaker had finesse.  Worth every precious penny.

Swooping ululation. Killer decimal wailing.  No holds barred.

Why keep it in? There’s nothing left to hide.

Same refrain again again: How I love you, love you, loved you.

Everyone arrived on earth with a tender bud tucked just inside.

That throbbing thing we call ‘heart’.

And as we live sweet day by day, grace keeps pouring in,

trying its best to keep us clean if we just only let it.

But you there. In the casket.  Where did your living go?

In the hollow months to come you’ll inhabit us in fits of laughter,

sudden bouts of wailing, anger that you’re gone

while we can’t help but asking, asking:

“Where’d the heck you go?” and “Why you gone so long?”

Personally, I think it’s that string theory thing.  My loved one coiled up inside springtime fiddle heads inside my bowl of Cheerios or accordioning out of Sunday’s crossword puzzle, marching up and down and round Escher’s endless staircase, or arcing with fishes on the mirror of a lake, leaping, diving, splashing, flashing iridescent scales as mallets strike a glassy hymn.

Missing the smell of cinnamon,

the musk of stinky socks,

but playing multidimensional chess,

brilliant now,

mapping out a quadrant of

a just-discovered universe,

or spying on your poor descendants,

sighing.

Wondering when we’ll get it right.

But right now, right here, I roll my windows down.

My Toyota chariot drives me home down route 55.

Snowflakes, rain, or mayflies splash and smash against the pane.

On and on I go with heaven here, there, everywhere.

I hum a song to anyone that’s there to hear.

WILLARD'S BIRTHDAY!

I weed and weed, a woman obsessed,

grabbing fistfulls of greens from saturated earth.

I pull up deep roots of dandelions.  Satisfying.

Last fall I took a sledge hammer to that huge, craggy stump.

Whacked it into chunks that flew all directions.

Now, a bowl of dirt brimming with lambs quarters

which I snatch and cast into a pile,

retrieving clumps of porous wood, a piece of petrified coal,

a rusty wire, a hinge without purpose.

I try to remember what stately tree stood here, next to the house

where my father, grandparents, and great grandparents lived.

White wooden siding, a screen porch that housed the christmas cactus in summer,

a sadly dissonant piano in a small living room,

the gas stove that shot up flames of gold, orange, green, blue in winter,

the sprawling kitchen with slanted floor of worn linoleum,

the cramped bedroom where grandma spent her last days

trying to fish a girl out of her cup with a spoon,

the steep stairs to grandpa’s abode,

a narrow pallet, narrow room where snores rumbled with rafters.

Beyond that the big bedroom where a chamber pot nestled

beneathe the high bed, where my cousin and I dared

to touch each other one night,

scared and amazed by pleasure not spoken.

The portrait of great grandma did not accuse as her right eye and left eye

were busy crossing themselves.

while chickens roosted in the drafty wood barn.

Memories seep up inside with each fist of weeds until a circle of soil is empty.

BLOOMING STUMP

There my husband and I will plant canterbury bells and trailing petunias

as maggots cling to wood lumps,

earthworms burrow, ants crawl.

Earth made so soft by the tree that grew,

died, decayed, then was gone.

 ©2012 Mariénne Kreitlow

 NEWS!  Here’s a few pics from our latest poetry evening.  How delicious to gather together to share poetry both original (my works and that of Karl Eduardo) and those previously penned. It’s like singing music together, only different. Everyone feels changed afterwards, our human spirits enlivened and exalted.

DAN READS & WILLARD LISTENS

We savored the words of Bill Shakespeare, Charlies Bukowski, Wislawa Szymbarska, Edwin Markham, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and more.  Especially hilarious was the poem “Hints on Pronunciations for Foreigners” by TSW, which was the perfect companion piece to a book both Jerry and I are reading: “The Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson.  We will gather together to do this again, and often!

JERRY, SIENNA, BRANDON, HEATHER

You would not see the full moon float above trees to your east, her pale face waiting for dark when she will shine luminescent as a pearl.  It was a day like today, and if evening had come, perhaps it would be just like this.  Exactly as I  see it now.  But it is early morning.  Possibly yesterday or tomorrow.  Birds chirp glassy matins as she ties her shoes.  She who was me.  She who was you.  She who is she begins.

See her solitary silhouette against a canvas of blue, an easy lilt in her gait?  The path rolls out as carpet, teasing her forward. “Come on!  Come on!”  Gentle inclines, gradual descents.  Sun kisses exposed skin that never will burn. Feet find a rhythm as hips loosely say, “Cha-da, cha-da.”  Blood pulses through arteries.  “Boom-da, boom-da.”

Don’t worry for her.  Don’t fret about food, fatigue, thirst, storms, sleepless bone-chilling nights spent on rocks being lost, alone, lonely.  She lives in timelessness.  Keep clear her image.

There is more to see.  Many viewpoints.  Layers of worlds.  No clocks ticking. No boundaries impervious.

A naked girl will jump with abandon into deep, icy waters. Braids flying high before she slices in.  You see her suspended.  She’s jumped off the planet from a spot of green thrusting towards liquid blue.  Remember the day?  You run from emerald grass to high rocky ledge. Gleefully leap in a snapshot of joy.  You laugh-scream as you hit with a smack and plunge deep, lithe as a fish, then pop up like a cork.  Gasping for air you shiver, teeth chatter.  Wrap yourself up in a tattered old towel until goose bumps subside.  Squishing a horse fly between fingers you contemplate the shape of your muscular legs, the promise of breasts that are budding. You yearn to be touched by one you’ve not met. 

You find a pitcher plant in the bog later that day.  A strange jiggling occurs as you walk on land laid over lake.  Grandma’s voice calls you back to the cabin. Raspberry Kool-Aid sweetens your lips.  The smell of old quilts and wintergreen wafts in through windows.  That’s as far as you know.  As far as it goes.

But look. Here’s another:

“How did you do that?” “Shh.” he replies. “Move very slowly.” He lowers his finger to your eye level. You move close, closer, closer.  Silent as air.  Wrap your hand ‘round his finger where a magic creature sits, slowly fanning itself.  Open and shut.  Open and shut. “Daddy? Does it tickle?” “Just a bit.”  Brown velvet wings edged with stripes and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 eyes on each luscious wing. You wish her to stay, but a wisp of wind rises.  She disappears in a wink.  “I can still feel her here on my finger,” says Daddy, “even though she has flown.”

Earth rolls around again and again. It falls off one side of the page and slides on to the other. It slices itself into thinnest of wafers, stacks into memories strewn into books.  Overhead a canopy of large pink petals forms an archway to more panoramas. An aquamarine and gold fish the size of Africa swims through the air, arcing just over leaping-girl’s head. From she-who-has-been-walking-forever-and-ever a shadow pulls at her body while dancing ahead. A string bean with swinging braids and long stick arms pumping in opposition to legs of high, skinny stilts.

Night leaks into twilight. Dragon swallows his tail.  Hidden entrances, exits like quicksilver lure us from here into this into that into there.  Boundaries fade as the Milky Way sprinkles her stars.  Night and day play in dreaming and waking.  Toddler, girl, woman.  Fish with fins.  Insect with wings.  I see your solitary silhouette against a canvas of blue, an easy lilt in your gait.  You would not see the full moon float above trees to your east, her pale face waiting for dark when she will shine luminescent as a pearl, but I see her now.  Or did.  For one moment.  One planet.  One day.

WILLARD, HEATHER, MY-OH-MY-PIE

JERRY WITH HUNGRY FRIENDS