Ruins
A blind eye
in a stone wall –
looking out on memories
more vibrant than reality –
broken remnants
that once embraced
the laughter of generations.
No fire-charred sacrifice
or tilted wreckage of the wind —
this house died alone.
c. 2004, EE
The sky is hazy, a gray veil over pallid blue, as if dreaming of spring but not yet ready to leave winter.
Like the sky, I miss the sun, and strain toward the new season, knowing it will bring storms as well as sunshine, but longing for change, for newness.
My mind has been occupied with preparations and what awaits: a new house, a new state, a new church, a new city. For someone accustomed to small-town living, I have enjoyed living in the suburb of a city. It breaks the metropolis into manageable pieces. Makes the city not so scary.
In fact, since I’ve been here, I’ve not seen the city proper, just my small radius of comfort.
It’ll be much the same in the new place. However, I’ll be challenged to explore there: old friends live nearby, museums beckon, a memorial stands silent and compelling, history soaks into the very bones.
Once this frenzy passes, and preparation yields to action, then action to settling in, perhaps my mind will quiet enough to see the way back into a novel too long set aside by the expediencies of life. Perhaps I can sit in silence and play the story as if it were a movie hovering in the air before me, and once more populate empty benches with imagined characters.
I remember the plump sound of blackberries hitting the bottom of a metal pail, and the purple-black stains they bled onto my fingers. I ate as many as I put in the bucket, and likely more. Although I feared the bees that nested in the briar patch sweetness, I bore more scars from thorns than from stings, for nothing kept me from hunting the treasures on those broad-leafed vines.
Yet, as I grew from adventurous child to uncertain adult, life yielded less fruit until its vines were bare even of leaves. I continued to search, but the day came when — like the caged bird whose bloody wings can bear the pain of hope no longer — I turned from the briars, hung my empty pail upon a peg, and commanded myself to grow up; to accept there are no magic kingdoms in this world; to realize control is an illusion; to see that love is a deed, not a word; to know happiness is a snowflake, not a diamond. I must weep no more.
Where once I wore thin sundresses in which to gather berries, I now wore armor that grew thicker with each stinging encounter. Even my soul was encased in iron.
The brambles behind me withered, yet their brown thorns honed in death, clawing at Memory, for it could wear no skin tough enough to fend off the sudden ambushes of the past.
Then, longing for days of excitement and wonder, I wept. Armor rusted and fell away. Tributaries of hurt, anger, fear and loss fed the torrent, flowing out to flood fallow ground and dormant dreams.
Green appeared, and hope returned. New vines grew from tangled thorns, for now sun reached golden fingers toward the seeds, revealing an ancient truth that is new only to youth and folly: “to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
Taking the old metal pail from its peg, I went down to the blackberry patch, and there I met life and reached deep into its heart to pluck from it the fruit that grows there, sweet despite the thorns.
— E. Easter
Ever experience a writing desert, when all your words evaporate under the glare of reality, depression, insecurity, fear?
I hate fear. It tells me nonsense–“You’re nothing. You can’t write. You speak what no one wants to hear, and write what no one wants to read. You’re a failure.”
Yes, I have failed. Many times. And many times have I faced opposition and conflict, sometimes of my own making, but sometimes the making of others.
Ever been disliked simply because you exist? There was a time, about ten years ago or so, when this verse sustained me:
Do not gloat over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light. -Micah 7:8 (New Living Translation)
An avid, voracious reader ever since my entertainment-oriented five-year-old brain was forced into learning by parents who weren’t afraid of educating me outside the classroom, as an adult I’ve read less and less. There was a time when a stack of books checked out from the library on Saturday might sustain me until, oh, say, Wednesday. Now, however, with the increase in editing work and other life matters, books have been set aside. I’ve even committed the horrific act of halving my library.
Reading for pleasure has become almost impossible. My internal editor must be quieted, and my wide-eyed reader must be set free. It’s not always easy to keep one distracted while the other plays.
And then there’s the dreamy writer, whose far-away thoughts and unfocused gaze too often is overtaken by the sharpish editor, and creativity stunted by protests of correctness or authenticity.
I hate fear.
I said that already. Well, I’ll say it again.
I hate fear.
It represses accomplishment and ingenuity, quashes free thought and individuality, diverts excellence into monotony. Nothing can shine or rise or be different, because anything beyond ordinary attracts attention, and with attention comes attack.
Perhaps that’s why some creators fear success. With success comes criticism. Perhaps they only want praise.
Wouldn’t praise be great? But with accolades often comes apathy, the sense of arrival, ultimate achievement.
So, I’ll take a little praise to keep me encouraged, a little criticism to keep me motivated toward improvement, and a lot of courage to keep slogging–nay, striding–through the desert until the words rain down once more and soak into the hard, cracked soil of neglected imagination.
This week, I’m visiting family for Christmas, and one might think that, after many months away and long hours of travel to return, I might forego any editing work or writing, and spend all my time in the warm embrace of close kindred.
That embrace has not always been one of comfort, but of control and bought affection. It smothered. It threatened. It even attempted murder.
More than once.
But some of us broke free. We left those we thought we loved, but whom we knew could not love us.
Holidays assayed in their presence often ended in fights and ugly words, and sometimes violence. Our final Thanksgiving with them, my father beat his brother-in-law—not because Dad was spoiling for a fight, but because he was protecting us from an unwarranted and unexpected attack. Thank God Uncle’s head had just been buzzed, or Dad would have grabbed a fistful of hair and beaten Uncle’s head against the gravel driveway.
Lest you feel too much sympathy for him, here are a couple examples of violence against us children: Uncle had tried to hit my infant cousin’s head with a shovel (my aunt turned, shielding her son, and was herself hit with the shovel). Years later, at the aforementioned Thanksgiving, that same cousin’s older brother and I were almost smothered inside a sleeping bag when Uncle wouldn’t let us go.
So you’ll understand why I say, “Thank God Uncle’s head had been buzzed.” I’d rather never see that man again than lose my father for murder.
A later attempt to return for a summer visit—the last time I entered that house, hoping that family could mend—resulted in weapons being turned on us children as a threat to our parents.
That was the first of two times I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun.
Over the years since, we’ve had to learn what love looks like, how it feels, acts, speaks. The old taint tries to creep in every once in a while, tries to steal understanding with impatience, to replace humility with contention. Pride has no place in love, nor does selfish superiority. Love seeks the good of others, not for anything it can gain, but for everything it can give.
It’s a shared laugh, a shared burden, even a shared shoulder. Sometimes it speaks just the right words, with or without tangled tongue, and sometimes it holds its peace.
One of the most well-known, oft-quoted definitions of love, one we can all embrace:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
(I Corinthians 13:4-8, NIV)
This holiday season, I wish you peace, hope, and much love.
* * *
UPDATE (12-21-12): In an ironic twist, who should call this afternoon but the uncle mentioned in the post above. He wanted to speak with my mother, but she was at work, so he chatted with me. Yes, chatted.
Thirty years, thousands of miles, and a great amount of both reflection and forgetfulness can lead to mutual Christmas wishes. Crazy. And full of grace.
The following short-short story was written October 10, 1995, in a journal I kept beside the bed in order to record thoughts and ideas, even dreams. I still keep a journal by the bed.
This little tale came just as I was falling asleep, and I haven’t done anything to it since, except for transcribing it to the computer. It came to mind this Thanksgiving as I considered all the things for which I’m grateful, and how sometimes blessings come in disguise.
Treasure
One day, the young boy’s tutor tried one last time to show him the unimportance of physical beauty. The boy, handsome and groomed and well-deported, was nonetheless reluctant to follow his tutor’s request to enter the small, out-of-the-way room.
“Very well, then,” said the tutor, calmly closing the door and dropping the heavy key into his pocket. “We shall leave these treasures for another time, and immerse ourselves in a sea of mathematics.”
The handsome boy shook his curls and thrust out his chin. “No! Show me this room!”
The tutor’s brows arched. “Oh! I’m so sorry, Master. I thought you were not interested in this room.”
“I’d rather see this room than study more numbers!”
“Then mathematics, it is.” The tutor tucked a large volume securely under his arm and proceeded toward the library at a quick and deliberate pace. Reluctantly, the boy followed, scowling and far slower than his teacher.
Later, while laboring through a particularly intricate piece of poetry, he looked up suddenly and demanded, “What is in the room?”
The tutor shrugged and twirled his pen. “Oh, nothing much. Then, again,” he leaned across the desk, “it could be something very much indeed.”
He held up a mirror that lay beside a lamp. “Look into this.”
The boy did so, and smiled. It was a pleasing sight, he thought, adjusting his collar and smoothing back his curls.
“Is it you?” asked the tutor.
“Of course, it is!” replied the boy, astonished yet sneering. “What would you expect?”
The tutor smiled. “Oh, no! This is merely an image, a reflection of the real person.” He brought the key from his pocket. “Are you ready for the room?”
“Oh, yes!”
The boy kept himself in check by squeezing his hands together behind his back. The tutor seemed to take an eternity just to unlock the door. It finally opened quietly, falling back to reveal shelves full of old money caskets. Some were plain, some were carved; some were of wood, and some of gold or silver. All were covered with dust.
“Now,” said the tutor triumphantly, “choose the casket with the treasure.”
The boy’s eyes brightened, and he walked toward the shelves slowly, almost reverently. He reached out to open a beautifully embossed casket.
“No, young sir, do not touch. You must go by appearance alone.”
The boy moved down the row. Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he saw the glitter of a jewel-encrusted lid. Eagerly, he reached for the casket, blew off the dust, and turned to his tutor.
“This is the one!” he crowed.
The tutor just smiled. “Open it.”
The boy threw back the lid, then exclaimed in disgust, “Why, there’s nothing here!”
“Of course not, dear boy,” said the tutor, unruffled. “Try again.”
This time, the boy chose a gold box. Nothing. He picked a silver casket. Nothing. Soon, all the most beautiful caskets were piled on the floor, open and empty. The boy turned to his tutor, eyes flashing.
“What kind of silly game are you playing?” he asked, his face flushed and teeth clenched. “There is no treasure here.”
“Oh, but you haven’t looked yet!”
“What?!” The boy gestured at the pile. “What is all this, then?”
The tutor smiled. “Do you recall a Scripture passage about a treasure hidden in earthen vessels? You would never expect water to come from a wine bottle, nor wine from a common pitcher, would you? I thought you liked a good battle of wits, lad. Try again.”
The boy looked around the shelves one more time. In a spirit of vengefulness, he grabbed the plainest, most scarred casket and flung it open. Inside were lumps of hard black wax.
“Here’s your treasure!” he mocked, thrusting the box at his teacher.
“Why, so it is!”
“You can’t be serious!”
“But I am!” The tutor reached for one of the black wax objects and broke off a piece. Suddenly, an emerald and a patch of gold glittered through.
“What does all this mean?” asked the bewildered boy, gesturing at the caskets surrounding his feet, and indicating the beautiful ring that now lay in the tutor’s palm.
“All that’s gold does not glitter,” the tutor broke open another wax ball to reveal a pearl and diamond brooch, “just as beauty does not indicate goodness.”
He looked the boy straight in the eyes. “So, tell me, did you see yourself, or merely an image, in the mirror?”
[The above story was written just now, for the first time, so it is quite rough. However, I had to write it down before it was forgotten.]
c. EE
The writing is a bit pretentious and awkward — hey, it was scribbled down in a rush! — but I may clean it up someday, maybe compile an anthology of my short writing (essays, poems, stories). It’d be nice, too, if my photography skills had advanced enough that I could enhance the text with photos. Someday. Right now, I’m working on a novel-length manuscript, and then there’ll be another two novels (at least): one incomplete, one not yet begun. I’m not sure which is more difficult: a sprawling novel that allows me room to explore the characters and the setting, or a short story that forces me to keep the narrative pointed and contained. But that’s fodder for another blog post.
A scheduled writers meeting could have gone awry Sunday afternoon. We arrived to find a sign on the door: the cafe was closed due to maintenance issues.
When we retreated to our second option, the establishment was full to overflowing: no parking, no tables.
The weather, however, was beautiful. November eighteenth, sunny and mild. An unexpected blessing.
So we pulled two of the metal outdoor tables side-by-side, ordered food and drink, and commenced writing. Only as the sun slanted westward and cast us in shade did we finally go inside. By then, however, the cafe had emptied, and we could spread out our notebooks and computers, and warm ourselves by the fire.
In one of our writing lulls, when we shared ideas and quiet conversation, I recalled this poem, written extemporaneously on another autumn afternoon:
Those Times Between
Thank You, God, for mild spring
and autumn,
those times between when we can catch our breath
and stand
unhindered by extremes of cold or heat,
and recall
there is a rest waiting
for us
if we will but let go those things we clutch
so tightly
their spring colors transform to autumn hue.
Life is
only truly lived free.
March 25, 2007
c. E. Easter
Written for a contest several years ago, this story was also partly the result of a dare among fellow writers: who could write the best romance? According the strangers and friends alike, my name sounds like that of a romance writer.
Unfortunately, I write more in the fantasy / adventure vein, and romance among characters is difficult for me to write well. This time, however, was one of those rare instances when the story wrote itself.
Enjoy! And if you don’t, well, an honest critique is always welcome. It’s how I learn and improve.
By Honor Bound
She does not kneel. She does not bow her head. She does not utter frightened allegiance. She does not beg. She could be one of the Northwomen, strong, proud.
Bearskin cloak broadening his shoulders, the chieftain strides forward.
She does not flinch.
He strikes her with the back of his hand.
Her head snaps sideways. She almost stumbles but she stands, chin up, eyes defiant. Touching the red trickle running from her mouth, she licks the blood from her fingertip.
Watching from a short distance, Soren feels a surge of lust.
He smiles at his father’s frustration. The chieftain towers over her, his fists clasping and unclasping as if clutching for stolen power; in silence, she robs Asgard of control.
Long waves of honey-brown hair hang down her back and over her shoulders, falling past her hips. Despite the bruise blackening her cheek and jaw, her skin glows golden. She is accustomed to the sun. Through the tight-fitting sleeves of her silken kirtle, her arms show the sculpting of one to whom physical labor is not unknown. She is not the usual prize.
At her feet lays the pierced, bloody body of her betrothed, a fine-clad stripling with more heart than skill. Soren feels little pity for him. Better to die in glory, sword in hand, than to die slowly in the shadow of a woman stronger than he.
The chieftain growls an order, and men bind her hands behind her. “Put her on a horse!”
“On whose horse, Asgard?” one warrior asks. “We lost no men this day.”
A wicked eyebrow cocked, the chieftain grins. “Choose.”
Fighting, immediate and brutal, breaks out around her. She will belong to the man with whom she rides, as his slave or his wife.
“Soren? Have you no desire for her?” Asgard asks. “A woman in need of breaking?”
Soren considers her calm face and uncowed posture. “Not broken. Won.”
Asgard grunts. “Then win her. And bring the blood.”
Soren dismounts his sturdy north-bred horse and strides through the fray. Fools! To fight but leave the prize unguarded.
He hoists her over his shoulder like a sack of grain, and takes her to the only building still standing in the ruined village—a hut clinging to the hillside like a goat clinging to a mountain.
The fighting fades. A hush follows. He knows the men watch.
Kicking shut the door, he stands her on her feet, cuts her bonds then crosses his arms, studying her in the dim light sifting through cracks in the hovel walls.
Hands at her sides, she again defies the expected, not rubbing her wrists where the rope chafed them, and breathes in quiet evenness beneath the fitted silk of the kirtle. Gray-green eyes, the color of the sea under a stormy sky, gaze at him with unnerving steadiness. A plain leather belt girds her hips, the tongue of it falling between her thighs, a suggestive circumstance that stirs him once more.
Won. Not forced.
“I am Soren.” He is irritated at the unsettled feeling in his stomach. “Asgard, my father, gives you to me.”
“My betrothed is dead”—her voice as detached from emotion as the sun from the earth— “I belong to no one, nor do I give myself to any man.”
“Pride will not save you.” Soren uncrosses his arms and steps forward. Her posture makes her appear taller than she is; the top of her head does not even meet his chin.
He fumbles to find his argument. “Those men will take what you will not give, and your pride will diminish with each taking until the woman you are now will not know the woman you will become.”
Her smile, small though it is, curves full lips into rosy sarcasm. “The barbarian speaks with gilded tongue. If more of your kind wielded such skill with words, your wives would come more willingly to bed.”
He speaks more mockery than truth. “We take them fierce, and breed strong sons.”
“Who yields the strength?” Sea eyes glitter with battle. “The forceful fathers, or the long-suffering mothers? The wind howls against the mountain, but gentle rain carves the stones.”
He reaches for her. She spits in his face.
Dragging a finger through the warm spittle running into his beard, he places it into his mouth with deliberate mockery.
Her lip curls.
“Highness,” he wipes his face with a battle-stained sleeve, “there is only one way out of this hut. Only one way my honor remains unchallenged. Only one way your pride remains untouched.”
Fear crosses her face for the first time since the body of her beloved was tossed at her feet. As if to calm her fluttering heart, she raises a hand to the low neck of her kirtle—and draws a knife.
He flings up his forearm, hears the blade drag across the leather vambrace then twists the knife from her grasp. Hand to her throat, he pushes her back against the center post of the hut.
Her nostrils flare, her eyes narrow. Her pulse is warm beneath his palm.
“Clever, highness, but now what will you use? Teeth? Claws? Kicks? Those have never prevented me before.”
The shadow of sorrow behind the contempt in her eyes, and the slenderness of her throat beneath his broad hand, checks his anger. He nods toward a stool in the center of the floor and releases her.
Back as straight as a ship’s mast, she sits, smoothing the kirtle over her knees, turning the tongue of the girdle so that it drapes at her side.
Pity.
Tapping the knife against his leg, he leans against the crude stone chimney. “The coastal kings are known for their prim ways. Oh, they have their secret lovers, but they have their public queens. And great price is placed on the purity of those queens.”
He pauses, searching her face for understanding. There is only hatred.
“You are pure, else no marriage contract would have been sealed between your father and that of your beloved.”
“Beck is not—was not—my beloved.” Her hands clench on her lap. “He was more brother than lover. He was kind. Brave.” Grief does not overcome her. Lifting her chin, she looks up at him, devoid of tears. “No matter what you do to me, Beck will be avenged.”
The man who wins her will never truly be the conqueror. Yet desire flames in him. He must have her.
“My father requires proof your defenses are breached, highness. Either you give yourself willingly, and I present the blood to Asgard, or I take you by force, and still present the blood to Asgard.”
She seems not to hear, her eyes thoughtful where once they were angry. “How is it you speak so well? You could almost be a noble in my father’s court.”
“Osric and his court are dead.”
“I am aware of my loss.”
How can she sit there, so calm and controlled, while everyone she knew or loved lays dead in the ruined streets?
A wild horse, anger gallops through him. He reins it in, slowing and deepening each breath. Whether angry at her stillness or at what was stolen from her, he refuses to surmise. Such thoughts are not for warriors.
“My mother was, like you, the daughter of a coastal king. It is her speech you recognize.“
“Did your father love your mother?”
“He named her wife.” The tendons in his neck tighten. “You seek to turn the point, highness, but—“
“Why did he give you me?”
“Perhaps you remind him of her.”
“Then why not take me himself?”
“He has women enough.”
“Will you strike me as he did?”
Soren shoves the knife into his belt and yanks her up from the stool. “You are mine.” He bends until their faces are a breath apart. “If you shame me today, I will shame you every day hereafter.”
“Gone is the silver speech,” she murmurs. “Without it, bedding will be an empty thing. For us both.”
“If words are what you want, I’ve words aplenty.”
She tugs at his belt. His body responds, hot and urgent. He reaches for her other arm to draw her to him.
Steel taps his chin. She holds the knife to his throat.
Slowly, he releases her and steps backward.
“I care not for your honor or your shame.” She retreats, placing only a wall of air between them, for he stands before the door.
Fury wars with lust. He says through clenched teeth, “You will regret those words, highness, after my father’s men have had you. Many times.” He forces a smile. “Drop the blade. Take pleasure in the inevitable.”
“It is you who will regret.” Her knife does not waver. “If I do this thing, none of the coastal kings will ransom me.”
“No ransom will be asked.”
The knife tips in her slackening fingers.
“Even if Asgard sought treasure through ransom,” he draws his war-sword from its battered leather sheath, “what is your knife to this?”
He burns, wanting her to come willingly to him, but his persuasions are at an end.
“You are a harsh suitor, Soren Asgardson.” She turns the blade toward her breast.
A chill stabs him. No warrior contemplates self-murder, for the soul is then doomed to wander forever, a dark haunt without hope of peace.
“No!”
He leaps forward, sword thudding to the floor as he reaches both hands for the knife. Its tip scrapes her skin before he wrests it from her. He flings it to the floor. It lands with a clatter, crosswise to the sword.
She stares at him in unspoken combat. Soren gives way first, unable to batter against the despair in the sea-colored eyes.
“This takes too much time.” His words are sharp. “My father’s men expect to hear your cries by now. Or see me return with you across my shoulder, tamed into submission. They already question my honor.”
“If I do what you ask, do you swear to be kind to me from this day onward?”
He stares at her. Kind?
“Will you protect me from all others, and treat me as you might one of your own women? With the dignity accorded their strength?”
He sees again the black bruise left by Asgard’s hand, feels emotion he cannot name.
“Will you call me by name?”
He nods.
“You swear to all of it?”
Voice hoarse, he replies, “Yes, high—“
“Rowena.”
“Rowena.”
Her name on his lips both disturbs and pleases him. Some captives fight, some go limp. The latter he does not want, and the former are often too much trouble. But this one grants him a gift that is already his by right, and gives it so humbly he is undone.
His body clamors for satisfaction; his self craves her esteem. To have the admiration of a strong woman only adds to the honor of a man, for her strength girds his.
Kneeling, he grabs the knife and draws the blade across his upper arm, where his sleeve hides the wound, and lets blood drip onto a dirty blanket crumpled on the broken-down bed.
“This will be Asgard’s proof.” He keeps his gaze on the blanket.
Rowena kneels, taking the knife from him, the touch of her fingers sending lightning bolts along his skin. Slicing off a piece of her kirtle, she binds the cut and pulls down his sleeve to cover the bandage. Only then does he look at her.
Her eyes watching his, she slides the knife back into her bodice.
He can scarce draw breath.
Leaning forward, enveloping him in her honey-colored hair, she takes his face in her hands and kisses him.
The kiss soft, her lips softer, when she withdraws, he is lost.
After a long gaze-locked moment, she takes the bloodstained blanket. “Honor what you swore, Soren Asgardson”—she hands him the war-sword as if she is already a wife preparing her husband for battle—“and your bed will never be cold.”
c. 2007, EE
I wrote this essay a few years ago for a contest. The entry didn’t win, but it still expresses my thoughts:
Paper Mountains
I believe many things, but what I am seeing clearer each year is this: life is too short to be blunted by the notion that what is difficult should not be done; that only what is easy should be attempted; that even noble ends, if they cannot be achieved instantly or with minimal discomfort, must be set aside and replaced by what requires little sweat, little patience, little sacrifice of any kind.
I am a writer. My publishing accomplishments are few: essays, articles, short stories, poems. However, I want to be a novelist, and to that end I put one word at a time on paper until I have a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a chapter, a manuscript. Some of my fellow writers tell me I am creating stories no one wants to read. I am doing what cannot be done.
But how does anyone know what the end will be? I am still climbing the mountain, and have not yet seen the view from the top. If others cannot see the mountain, is the mountain no longer there? Because others are weary, must I be content to sit beside them? If they seek another way, must I go with them? Must I convince myself—as some have—that half a journey is the entire trip?
Life so rarely happens as we would wish it. My teachers and friends were convinced that I would publish my first novel by age sixteen. That might have made me a novelty—no pun intended—but it might also have made a shallow book.
Now more than twice sixteen, I still have moments of doubt, of youthful uncertainty that anything I write is worth reading. Greater than my insecurity, however, is the knowledge that what makes me a writer is not measured by how I compare to others or how much money I make or how many people know my name, but by the fiery words that blister my brain and boil my dreams until the only way to cool my burning fingertips is to write. I am a writer because not writing is not an option.
Artists draw simulations of life. Photographers capture time. Sculptors push clay into action. Writers create movies for the mind.
The characters that people my thoughts are alive and very real, but they will remain in my imagination—unseen, unheard, unread—until I do the hard work and mold imagination into words on a page.
So the journey will pass—one word at a time, one page at a time—until the day I stand on top of the mountain and see that it is made of paper: reams and reams of it covered with words; wads of it tossed in to wastebaskets; some of it retrieved and smoothed out again and found to be not so bad after all.
This I believe: my greatest challenge is my greatest joy, and I would not have it otherwise.
c. EE
Several years ago, I wrote poems about my paternal grandmother and my maternal great-grandmother, both hard-working women I admired. (Good cooks, too!) They survived troubling times and circumstances I don’t even want to imagine, and they still smiled. Well, they complained a time or two, but what I remember most is their work ethic and their humor, although my great-grandmother’s was less apt to come out to play.
Both loved this country. One grandmother became pen pals with a president and his wife, and another came from “t’ Old Country” and never lost her accent.
Therefore, in honor of those strong women, and as my own nod to my rights as an American citizen on this Election Day, I offer these poems — not high literature, just simple, blunt tributes.
Elsie
Despite a generation’s haze,
her smile still shines
from the photograph,
a girl laughing,
grey head tilted,
audacious youth
in my grandmother’s face.
c. EE
My grandmothers died many years ago. Why, then, do they still seem so alive?
Immigrant
Ellis Island saw her come,
and Lady Liberty lit her way
across a continent
to the logging camps
far from the Old Country,
and something hopeful grew
in the muddy ground
she slogged while cooking and washing
for sawdust-covered timbermen.
Widowhood could not uproot the dream,
nor could a daughter’s disdain.
Faith’s fruit was bittersweet,
but she dwelt beneath its branches,
leaned upon its strength,
and tilled its seeds into my soul.
c. EE
There are times I still want to write them letters, or call them on the phone, or stop by for a visit. What better legacy than that?
Penworthy Press 