Where was everyone at our Coffeeshop Writer's Group? - Poems: Eating Pistachios on the Front Lawn - Meditation Upon Falling Asleep

Jovon Belcher and Beatriz Moisset and I were the only ones to show up. Linda Barrett dropped off her poem God Walks with Me earlier in the week for us to critique it. Everyone loved it.

Since I write my poems at the last minute I changed it while reading it.

EATING PISTACHIOS ON THE FRONT LAWN

Have one on me. Simply toss the shells with their inner lining
on the grass for the squirrels, the deer, the woodchucks, and the
jealous cawing bluejays. Be sure to thank Mother Sun for warming us all
on this day in April, the birthday of Gramma Lily who
is 120 in her grave. I toss her a particularly
succulent ripe green nut, unsalted, always, for our health.

She liked cottage cheese and mashed prunes, wore beautiful
dresses on her size four body, nothing today but a tiny grinning
hominid relic. A gardener like me she would have loved the
pink bleeding hearts I transplanted, a surgeon in gloves
saving plants, in lieu of grandmothers.

Did she, like me, feel disheartened when the moon didn’t shine
in her lonely widow’s bedroom? Her dresses swinging
silent in her closet?

I spread wide my drapes. Let the full moon’s
glow caress my body as I watch its dappled surface
until sleep captures me unawares, so many sleeps
until I am called to enter the exciting Kingdom
of Forever.


MEDITATION UPON FALLING ASLEEP

Four foot eleven and a half since I was twenty
no shrinkage observed at sixty six
I am the same girl lying down to sleep
but this time I sleep alone.

Alone save for the unseen
bugs and their hidden nests
the flowers on the windowsill
an orange teapot and black rocks
that show me the age of the earth.

My bed is high up
I’m not exactly the Princess and the Pea
but a stepstool would help.
I launch myself onto cool
gray sheets and lie face up
underneath the ceiling fan.

This is this way I experience
myself here on Earth
one among billions
white eyelet quilt pulled up
to my chin
toes pointed
toward Mecca.

In and out I breathe
feeling the sheets
and the quilt
my closed tired eyelids
eyebrows at rest.

The wide blanket of the universe
watches over me, the moon and
the stars and the constellations
billions and billions
all mine for the night.

Mindful too that if I disappear
my granddaughter Grace is too
young to remember her Bubby
and the way she snuggled in my
lap when I read her Goodnight Moon.