Coffeeshop Writers' Group - Les Trois! - Poem: A Home of my Own - Dinner for one

Linda Barrett and Margaret sat opposite me. Margaret's parents own Hunan Village in Abington, PA.

Linda read AN INHERITANCE OF LOVE, written for her mom's 84th b'day.

Beautiful! I wouldn't change a thing, I said to Linda.

When I call Linda, I often talk briefly with her mother, Jane. "She treats me like a queen," sez Jane. "I really don't deserve it."

I'm wearing a Ralph Lauren lightweight sweater I bought at the now-defunct Le Coffee Salon in Hatboro, PA, when my friend Yin Liu was the owner. Just discovered it at the bottom of the heap.

I gave Margaret an assignment to write a poem - or a prose poem - for next week's meeting. She smiled in her shy way and said she can't write poetry.

Then, I said, write about something you really enjoy. First of all, look at her gorgeous purse! She could write about that! But, nope, she won't take a chance.

Here's my poem. I read it to Judy Lipstick over the phone and she did not like the ending at all. Then she called me back. Ruth, you have so many beautiful things in your house... that Richard Parker tiger... and on and on she went.

BTW, Judy is the only one who 'got' my literary references, including the title, which I hadn't realized was similar to VA Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

Herewith:

A HOME OF MY OWN

Apartment living offered
roaches, who squirted
tobacco juice on our books,
the sounds of pig-bellied
Donna who yelled at her
husband for jerking-off
in the shower
and a kind-hearted family man,
a felon, across the hall who
carried my grocery bags
up to the second floor
before their ouster for
nonpayment
posted prominently on the door.

We were happy there,
the three of us, Sarah and Dan
in alphabetical order of their birth.

At Goddard College in Vermont
I kept cowbells on the door
I can still hear their Arnold Shoenberg dissonance
from my home on Cowbell Road
with the almost palindromic zip code
19090.

My house has become my child.
For Sarah and Dan have fluttered away
The architect is unknown but he had a
sense of humor, slanting the roof,
so that in the living room we cry,
“Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenter!”
and admire the dust abstracts glimmering
like Pollacks from the fake wooden
beams, yes, my very own cathedral in
which I dare not pray to a Creator who
does not exist,
but do.

Let me lie down on the soft cream-colored
carpet in the Quiet Room. This, too, is my
child, chosen, not conceived. Architect
that I am, I designed this room like the
Creator his universe, Let there be light,
with transparent white lacey curtains and
a halo of life’s bounties.

It’s the room I choose to die in, hopefully
not a brain tumor like Dad’s – oh, he withered
up into a ball and was gone
just like that. The Quiet Room will steady me
in my descent – or should I say ascent? –
to the billions of galaxies beyond our view
where perhaps I’ll meet Richard Feynman and Einstein,
Dad will be there with his arms out, calling
Ruthie! Ruthie! How long I have waited.   


Judy had mentioned the J D Salinger docu which we both watched on PBS. Praps that's where I got the idea of Raise High.

Making my Butternut Squash Soup. Wanted to show you the Butternut Chunks. They'll get so soft you can Squash them with a spoon, instead of pulverizing em in the blender.

I had two bowls. Seasoned with cinnamon, black pepper, and pulverized garlic. Also has the usual peppers onions and mushroom.

Marvelous!