Tag: Relationships

HOPING FOR ANOTHER ACCOUNTING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

She liked to bite fingers.
She braided my beard.
Her nose and big toe were square.
Her tresses were thirteen years long.

~*~

She devoured the translation like a cheeseburger
and refused to understand me.

She spent her paycheck
on clothes she bought on layaway
while she was one unemployed
good dresser who had to do something.

She said Kayak poetry review
looked like a Sunday school booklet
with a cannon on the cover.

~*~

She didn’t like the antique silver fork
with the engraved W
I’d bought for a dime

– the yellowed marriage
whose bride was no doubt long dead
held no treasure in her eyes.

Why else would we have it?

To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015

SQUIRREL TAXI

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

who knows exactly when it happened
that he realized he held more in common
with squirrels than any of his colleagues?

he couldn’t quite fly, no matter how much
he admired birds, and had climbed
enough trees as a kid to nearly qualify

still, he had little taste for nuts, other than cashews,
unless you mean a strange people,
and he rarely raked fallen leaves

maybe it was all a matter of some vague sense
he didn’t exactly belong in this apartment or house,
except by clandestinely rearranging his peculiar insulation

maybe it was simply a nickname
for the way he rummaged frenziedly in search
of some missing item suddenly remembered

he would dash, then, in and out of the trap
in and out of the trap and, with a snap,
wonder where he was being carried

Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To read the full set of squirrelly poems, click here.

 

FARM GIRLS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

“Those aren’t bulls, they’re steers”
she corrected from the passenger seat.

Now a waitress at the country club.
“I bet you get some pretty far-out passes.”

“More than that!” She giggled.

Here she was living with a man
in a hotel in town. He was a Mohawk

who raised horses and died
two days after landing a paying job.

“I guess I’ll never go back”
– to the farm, to the city –
it didn’t matter.

~*~

Sometimes it’s the Baptist upbringing.

~*~

She couldn’t understand why her parents
were still together. Thought her mother

once had a lover. She’d hear kissing
after being sent to bed, after her father’s

best friend had come over. Now
he couldn’t stand him.

There was a big waterfall on their farm
which they had to sell.

And she told me
she had laryngitis the previous week,

making me wonder
if I should have kissed her good-night

so much.

To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015

ECHOES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

“Jim’s one of our young flashes,”
a production chief told his wife
when all three paths crossed in the grocery.

To which, you might add, “in the pan.”

~*~

“I wish I could have gone to college.
I wanted to be an engineer.”
said the unshaved man in a Salvation Army pullover.

There are a lot of older people in college classes,
his nephew tried coaxing.

“I have no money,” came closing in like a curtain.

~*~

An elderly mother and middle-aged daughter
argument escalated in the sedan
in the doughnut shop parking lot.

They’d no doubt discussed this before.
At last, opening her door, the daughter repeated:
“Let’s go in and drop the subject.”

To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015

NAGGING QUESTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 16 Comments

I’ve been trying to avoid one nagging question: How does your faith make you a different person? How has it changed your life? Followed by: How do others perceive this?

The old Quaker testimonies presented faith as a matter of the way we live. Our “sufferings” for our beliefs. (It matters THAT much!) The days when Friends lived “under discipline” – language and clothing as outward expressions – remaining inescapable.

So what about today? How does being Quaker (or whatever your faith) make you not just different, but a better person than you would have otherwise been?

~*~

Seasons 1

For more of my reflections, click here.

 

THIS OLD HOUSE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I used to like the Public Broadcasting System series, back before I bought an old house. Now it’s too painful. Look at all this old wiring, the plumbing problems, the rot and warping, the fact the bulkhead needs replacing. The flaking paint, again. (Bulkhead? Didn’t even know what that was beforehand.)

What else do you want to know about New England?

 ~*~

Home Maintenance 1

For more on my poetry collection and others, click here.

MAYBE I’VE BEEN LOOKING AT LIFE WRONG

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Let’s be honest. We have days like this. Ones where we wish we didn’t have to deal with these a#!/?\*s. You know the ones I mean, even if you live halfway around the globe. They’re one and the same.

But we’re all in this together. No matter what they think.

Now, what can we do together … to solve the real problems we’re all facing?

Well, that’s how it too often feels. But could another take give us a healthier way of dealing?

Suupose, for example, what if we’re all nuts?

Not just the others, the ones all around us who leave us pondering the rampant lunacy. (Not just in politics or the workplace, either. The highways are full of them. As for the checkout line at the store?)

No, what if we who’ve thought ourselves responsible and sane, are really the looniest of all?

Might we enjoy life more if we joined the out-to-lunch club?

~*~

Close to home, I’m seeing how trying to cope with an elderly family member afflicted with advancing dementia can put the caregiver in a tailspin. Somehow there must be a better way to span their alternative outlook and our reality without losing our own balance or course of action. Is it possible to enter their world and still stay grounded?

Just why am I here, anyway? What am I supposed to be doing? Or, as my dad used to ask when looking at his nursing home, “Who’s paying for this hotel? Who’s paying for this dinner?”

From my perspective, he seemed to be trapped in a dream that would rarely allow him to waken. As much as I love good dreams, I anticipate and appreciate the clarity of a wakeful state.

But then I write and read fiction and poetry, and maybe they bridge these awarenesses in alternate worlds. And I meditate, which enters other realms as well, at least as far as most people are concerned.

~*~

So here I am, still trying to make sense of it all. Maybe it’s time to reread some of those old stories about celebrated lunatic Zen monks. Think we’d find a clue there? Loud laughter, after all! Unexpected twists in everyday perception!

Stuck with a similar diagnosis, I’d want to be the one filled with childish delight in the trip. Maybe the one lost in a world of prayer for the world and all within it. Maybe I shouldn’t even wait – start now to look at all my surroundings with such wonder.

I’m open to other perspectives and suggestions. Anyone else on board here?