Writing Life Stories

I finally got the taxes done so that is off my worry list, but this weekend I will be speaking at a writers conference. That is not the problem. The problem is that I will be staying at a motel overnight on Friday and, unless they are very accommodating of my chemical sensitivities, I could wake up sick on Saturday morning. Then, my day will be most difficult.

Four years ago, early morning, I awoke, exhausted, in a small sparse room in a hospice center where I had stayed round the clock for several days, realizing this would be the last day I'd have with my beloved husband who was transitioning to a better place, leaving me to make it on my own. I remember sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch afterward waiting for others in my family to come and wrap me in their love, take me home with them, and let me sleep.

Four years and still this day brings back such sorrow and so many memories. 

A BALMY DAY IN JANUARY

like none I've seen in years. In the park,
sunshine heals like days I waited urgently
to be free of walls, to tear across the pasture
on my mare, rushing toward fulfilling childhood dreams.

I stroll with Rocky this winter day, warm enough
to over-heat his black fur, his weakened bones.
His unconditional love fills a tiny part of that left empty now.

Women in tennis attire stride toward the courts,
new bags on their shoulders, swinging rackets,
tossing hair, wearing trendy shoes. Love – one.
Love-two, their happy voices sing on brisk air.

Tennis was once our game, long ago,
when a simple quarrel over a match seemed
the end of our world; a gentle world we did not
properly nurture, because we didn’t know
what we didn’t know.
                           --- Glenda C. Beall

Published by Wild Goose Poetry Review, Spring, 2013