Author: Kay Foley

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Challenges

Are you ready? Am I?

For the next big challenge

the unexpected loss coming

at any moment

the sudden change in circumstance

disrupting daily life

the lucky break, even

the windfall

some fortuitous happenstance.

Are you ready are we ever ready

for those events that interrupt and

forever alter Life As We Know It

and if we are if we maintain

grace and equanimity in the face

of shattering change

stretch our spines

rise to our full height

grow and expand

along with our universe

what then?

Do we get a pass for whatever

might have come next?

Or do we just move on

to the next level, each challenge

more difficult than the last?

Or somehow easier?

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A Question of Memory

My sister’s best friend in high school was born

on this day I always remember Groundhog’s Day

a plain girl with thinning hair even then

exceptional wit, a jester’s sharp humor, she hung

Christmas ornaments from her glasses, worked on

the school newspaper a bit of a rebel and I think of her

each Groundhog’s Day though I’ve known nothing of her

for forty years, a girl with glasses and thinning hair

and where is she now what has she done has

someone loved her and would she ever imagine

me fondly recalling an image of her as I do

and is every person everywhere recalled fondly

somewhere by someone and is that possibly what

carries our spirits forward?

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Magnolias

Warm winter tricked the magnolias

into budding out in January everyone

having said the hot summer foretold

an exceptionally cold winter

by whatever logic I cannot

know or imagine

nonetheless wildly incorrect.

Apparently the magnolias

did not listen and have

recklessly gone ahead with

their own ill-conceived plans.

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Time Passing

End of a month another month gone

behind us over and done with a month

of my life and yours filled never to

be lived again every day every hour

a lesson in impermanence and yet we

fail to learn refuse to learn even as we

watch the dawn full of magic slip away

into full sun twilight into utter darkness

night again to daybreak the constant

movement of time the earth ever turning

time flowing onward regardless of our

silly slow reluctance to go gracefully

along as if we in our plodding human

ways could do anything about it.

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Pieces of Me

A million little pieces of me I leave behind

wherever I go flying away tripping over

hillsides traipsing over there under here

under where cells and bits and molecules

words and waves of sound issued from

within me scratchings on paper microbes

on those things I’ve touched and breathed

upon cells and DNA passed on to my sons

a million little pieces that once were me.

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The Estate Sale

At the estate sale we go through someone

else’s things, finger the linens, admire the

silver, the bone china, run our hands over

the smooth walnut table, the lovely corner

cabinet, rummage through the box of

old dance cards–1914!–the baby clothes

stiff with age, the tattered prints, maps,

postcards, memorabilia from so many

events and travels.  We thumb through

the dusted off books, ooh and ahh over

the fancy ladies’ gloves, sort through the

old photographs, try on the hats, admire

the handiwork on pillowcases, tablecloths,

needlepoint. We are on a journey through

someone else’s life with only these

artifacts for clues, no narrative, no family,

no one here to tell her story.  For example,

what became of Mr. Mann, whose name

appears on a February 1, 1915 dance card,

who asked her to save him a place for a

whirl around the floor to “Poor Pauline?”

Did he bow and kiss her hand when the

dance ended, did a romance ensue?

We don’t know the color of her eyes

(or his), the sound of her laughter, her

loves and losses, whether her dreams

came true, how many children she had

(if any) and why oh why they would

have let all these precious things of hers

leave the house with strangers.

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Birthdays

I love the number twenty-seven possibly

because I was born on the 27th day of

August and I love my own birthday and

others’ as well and parties celebrations

anniversaries occasions of all kinds and

I am baffled and displeased by those who

say It’s just another day as if their own

or anyone else’s birth were inconsequential

somehow irrelevant to the fact that here

they are here we are here she is and he is

alive breathing living in the world affecting

others changing the course of things possibly

creating more life, as if to say So what? as if

to suggest that the minutest thises and thats

that occurred at the precise time to create

the exact you that was born on a given day are

nothing of consequence nothing at all and

all of it is nothing at all at least nothing to

be remarked upon acknowledged or even noticed.

Well, I am against it.

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Envy of Angels

If I was an angel I would envy

earthlings with their fleshly bodies

senses of smell taste sight

abilities to paint and feel

the sand between their toes

the bark of a favorite tree under

their fingertips to kiss to smell

coffee bread cookies to throw

arms about each other anticipate

parties round the bend watch

the curtains blow back and forth

across the windowsills of houses

they live in with dogs and children

birds singing them out of bed

out the door into the lush green

stark bare world of seasons.

I would so.  I would so envy us.

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Hawks vs. Owls

Pair of hawks circling over our yards

which means they are likely planning

to nest in the pine tree again which

is all well and good but which also

means that the barred owls will not

which is something of a disappointment

as owls are more mysterious less

common which makes them more

exciting and also easier to place into

a nice story in which they attend tea parties

wearing neckties and spectacles

speak in deep soothing voices of

books and letters and philosophical

ideas about life love and language

and their babies do not screech

all day long to be fed like

the unruly children of

red-tailed hawks.