Poetry Friday: My Journey: Allison

Our Poetry Friday host today is April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors. Take the time to stop by and read some of the wonderful poetry that passes through the Kidslitosphere.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been telling the story of my journey through grief many years back when I lost a child to a full-term stillbirth. Writing the posts this week has been a little harder as I have allowed myself to remember the pain. Grief is cyclical. We grieve until we find peace, then we go on living until some random event opens the door to that tender spot, and we grieve again. Learning to grieve well means finding a way to place that pain in the arms of God and find the peace and the energy to choose life in the face of that loss.

I was invited to see “Steel Magnolias” last weekend at our community theater. I was hesitant to go. Allison died in 1985. “Steel Magnolias,” the movie came out in 1989. I was totally unprepared for the climax and sat sobbing my heart out in the middle of the theater. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go see it again while I was writing through this. But I went. As much out of curiosity as anything else. How would I respond?

There was some sadness. I wiped a tear that rolled down my cheek. The next day I sat down and wrote this week’s posts. Perhaps giving myself that opportunity to feel sad made it harder to write. Perhaps it made the writing better. I don’t know, she says laughing to herself. Somehow, it just had to be part of the process.

I wrote this poem over the period of a few months toward the end of 2008. I remember that same sense of opening myself to the remembered pain. Not really present pain any more, but remembered pain. Remembered with some sadness. Remembered with some joy, knowing how that journey changed me. Remembering the healing that finally came.

I’m not finished with the story yet, but I needed to remember those last things today. Maybe you do, too.

ALLISON


1.
Skin, stretched membrane thin,
refuses an answer.  Where
is the bony heel?
Her fingers question,
restless across her belly.

Head pressed to the frozen pane,
she stares into the silent
night, pondering
the child.

2.
Ten fingers and toes,
each tipped by a tiny nail,
she strokes them gently so
they lay curled across her thumb.
Wisps of brown hair stand on end,
lips curved in a half-smile,
lashes and brows rest on closed lids-
perfect, but for breath.

3.
She flinches at the odor of ashes.
From the kitchen counter,
an open cookbook mocks her.
Someone moved the cradle.
She breathes a silent thank you,
a silent curse,
and avoids the yellow blanket.

The impulse to hurl a dish
grows with each plate, saucer, bowl,
until she reaches the cup.
The impact shatters
the fragile thing.
Coffee, half-drunk,
pools on the floor
where she crumples
amid the shards,
pulls the blanket to her chest,
and moans herself a lullaby.

4.
Give the sculptor no tool
to free the stone-bound pieta.

Bind the singer.
Leave him gagged,

engorged in silent song.
Deny the painter his palette.

Cuff his hands while he mourns
the interrupted canvas, and images bleed,

ignored, on the floor.
Then watch him grieve,

like a childless mother
who cups her breasts,

hands taut against fevered glands
that run with milky tears.

5.
Bare wood awaits
a ram, or a heifer.
Maybe a pigeon from the poorest -
those blessed ones who see God.
She is blind,
drawn to a bare altar
by the odor of burning myrrh
with nothing to offer
but questions
and pain.

Take off your shoes.
The ground here is holy.

6.    
A high place
demands she climb the face,
risk an uncertain step,
scale the crag,
shout her name to the wind,
reach out her hand,
spread her fingers,
grasp the ribbon of cloud,
claim the mountain.

7.    
Wind shimmers through falling leaves.
Oak and aspen raise
silent limbs
toward an indigo sky.
The clouds open.
She stands on tiptoe
and strains to reach the edge of night,
to see beyond the reach of sky
over the rim of here
into after.

© Doraine Bennett, 2009

Published in the Birmingham Arts Journal