MOMMY

Sometimes I can hear your voice
clear as day in my ear
can remember your soft snort
when you thought something 
was beneath you or not worth
the breath to comment
can see your intense stare
into the cornfields as you
pondered life in general
and your own in particular
and smell the hint of musty
at the end of day when you came
to direct the after-school chores:
you: cook; you: clean; you: set the table
you: bring me some new knowledge
and I can hear your laughter
head thrown back the way you
let go belly shake good for
moments at a time, the way
it seemed like you'd never stop
laughing, and the way that
made us all laugh with you
I can see you bent over
sewing machine or lesson plan
or shelling peas or scaling fish
all with the same care
every switch every word
every hull every scale
given detailed attention
I can feel your body warm
sank into the couch as you
listen to me tell you what's important
today for me, watch your mouth
tighten at its corners, proof that 
you're solving the problem in your head
even if you don't intend to tell me
what's best--see you deciding I have
to figure it out for myself, but still
listening, really listening

Sometimes I can still hear your voice.

© Valerie Bridgeman

May 13, 2013

(POSTED LATE/NEXT DAY)

EYES

Sam rolls his eyes at me
can't take the way 
I don't believe
in me, he says... 
if you only knew
what we all know 
about you...

I don't want to know what
that is, because right now
it sounds like one more
thing to live up to. 

© Valerie Bridgeman

May 12, 2013
Mother's Day

DEAR VALERIE, AGAIN

You have a lot of years left in you
You can cry about it, but you can't
change the past
You can lament
but you can't get anything back
not the words
not the kisses
not the hugs
that lingered on your shoulder
You can lay it down
every now and then
choose not to carry
the heavy of it
choose not to pick
at the scab of it
choose not to brood
the details of it
but you can't change the past
you can't change the past
you can't change anything
You can lay it down, though
every now and then
you can; I know you can

© Valerie Bridgeman

May 11, 2013

DIRECTIONS

She looked lost
it's the only explanation
I have for trying to give 
directions to an old woman--
stout and ruffled, dressed in
red dress with black jacket
signs of years on its cuffs--
directions to a place
I'd never heard of,
in a city I barely know

she smiled a kindness
at my attempt because
that is what we do with
the clueless among us--
we smile at them
recognize our own desire
to help, even when impossible

I pull out the GPS 
start coordinates while
she tells me she lived
on this very street when
it was jeweled with houses
instead of quaint shops
that she recognized one 
of the galleries as the home
of her best friend when she
was ten, that they had run
up and down these streets

chasing each other and their
own dreams, that she didn't 
know now where her best friend lived
For this moment I was glad
for how long it can take for
satellites to line up with
a smart phone--how else
would I have had the time
for her stories?

© Valerie Bridgeman

May 10, 2013

BEEN HERE BEFORE

the gadgets have had my attention
all night; and the un-social media
that glues me to screen, tethers
me to bluetooth, phone, iPod
IPad, Facebook, Twitter,
all things technological
don't touch me in the deepest place
can't make my skin scream joy as
touch light and subtle
overcome my heart... but
I have been here before.

© Valerie Bridgeman

May 9, 2013

SPRING

flowers dormant through winter
push up through soil
hard from cold
push up defiant
make their way
sunward
make it known
they intend to bloom
to pollen
to give their life
to the next season
and be ready
for the brutal cold
that will surely
return, but for now
they just push past
the cold, hard
the hard, compact
they  just say
to each other
BLOOM

© Valerie Bridgeman

May 8, 2013

I BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION

Mommy refused the food put to her lips
the water pressed between gum and teeth--
she did not want the prolonging of an
inevitability... death, she said,
is a part of living, as much as new teeth,
zits, and menstrual cycles
the body eventually rebels against you
or wears out, but either one, you can't
stay in this life in this body forever
you have to move on when the time comes
and the time will come
and it will announce itself with pangs and 
disease that refuse to be thwarted
by treatment, and sooner or later you
will have to quit wrestling death--
you only get to cheat death so often,
mommy would say
and when it was her time, she didn't
even push back much--"growing old
is hard," she said, and "it's rougher
than you know." But when death
became her companion, before she
drew her final breaths, she turned
her face to the wall, sighed deep
longing and prayed in the ways that
dementia and tremors allow--
she shook her moanings to heaven--
she found her way to a thin line
that space between here and there
and crossed it, graciously
she wanted nothing of heroics
of trying to stay on this plane
she believed life would find her
again and told us often enough
she taught us to die as much
as she taught us to live
and when she signed her "do not
resuscitate" it was because she
knew there was something better:
"I actually believe in the resurrection"
she said, so dying was just a stop
along the way

© Valerie Bridgeman

May 7, 2013

My mommy, Bernice O'Neal McKinney Bridgeman (aka da B.O.M.B.), died May 7, 2002.