Poems of Michelle by her mommy
Poetry by Martie Odell-Ingebretsen in loving memory
of her beloved little daughter Michelle Lee Jameson.
Born Oct. 28, l965 and died Feb. 21, l974.
INDEX:
Coming Around Again
Remembering
A Conversation With Michelle
The Anguish of February
The Victor
The Faith of a Child
Someone’s Child
The Flowering Peach
The Weight of the Butterfly Flower
* * *
Coming Around Again
Michelle,
fall has found me again
on the day when I screamed you
across the white room
my breath a boil
you ruptured
with your beginning
Scrunched and squinting
and slippery I held
you across my wonder
that had never been that big
with love
and now you’re coming around again
like you do each year
to tear me to tear me
with your crib of pictures
for I cannot bring you to mind
most other days
or remember the sound of your laugh
or how you wrinkled your nose at me
when you thought I wasn’t looking
I cannot see how your shoulders curved
or how your dresses grew too short for your legs
cannot see you turn your head fast
so your hair hits your cheek like sunlight
but you come around again with October
and lay your curls
across my lap then I can feel
the press of your head there
and if I close my eyes
the silk falls through my fingers
I see you stand alone looking back
at where you left the road
and think how brave a child can be
to one day deal with the hard truth
of coloring between the lines
and the next with death
Today you come around again
with your hand holding the hose
that waters the gardens in heaven
and you stop and smile
and beguile me with balloons
that I cannot hold
you come around again
spinning to me
across the chasm of time
and hit me with
a hand full of October
gift wrapped on the 28th
Remembering
Rock the cradle
hums the silence,
swaddle the aching story
in soft memories lullaby.
Push again
the breath of morning
into the arms
of waiting listen
before the wail
and stench of dying
digest the offering
of my needful retrospect.
Become the giggles
and glee of summer’s lasting
when again
you are my whimsy
and I your wisdom.
A Conversation with Michelle
Remember Michelle
when you took my hand
and led me up that path
where your imaginary friends lived
and you called them names
that came from birth of language
those names ancient and preserved
that were always there
inside your head when you were two
then still walking across the meadow
of your three years
rolling with the dogs in shadowed sun.
You let me see them light up your face
and I could listen to your
one sided conversations
your brown eyes crinkled up
and I saw you before the laugh
filling up and then when the sun
hit your hair the light was so radiant
that my breath would catch
and you would shed your clothes
like a nuisance that was not part
of the feel of the air against your skin
and the fabric of dog fur and porch railings
that touched round belly and sturdy brown legs
and once I caught you looking out the screen door
at twilight in naked silhouette
when the first coyote had barked
his hunger into the canyon
and the dogs clamored around you
sniffing the air and something in you
was so wise and wonderful and wild
and you would throw your cares down
with passionate howls when you were five
said that you wished that you were dead
and I could not see what dark storm
touched your spirit
and took you so violently from sweet
when there was so much love for you
and so many wonderful things to discover
and then in your pink flannel with your cheeks
flaming and so much bravery you
found the jumping running grass
and glee became you and you touched me again
in magic with listening
there to fold me in your small arms
embrace when I was sad for you had vision
and the air around told you feelings
and you struggled so with the sanity
of girls that tormented you
with their pulled back friendship
and schools and neighborhoods were outside
your imagination’s control
and you drew cats and dogs from far and wide
to our doorstep with some inner whistle
that took in all lost and lonely things
in your eight years you took me
and rearrange all my feelings
and threw them up like feathers
to dance around you
and then you were gone
and you were no longer a breath
and it was like your mother
went with you and what was left
was only part of me
missing you.
The Anguish of February
Why this melancholy
I think to myself,
blaming the rain.
Surely time has
eased the anguish of February.
So many years have passed
since that night that lasted.
February fourteenth
feathered into my year
unexpected this time,
when I usually dread
its irruption into
hot tears from a cup
I can never empty.
This day
when love gives to itself
this child crafted
a hand made heart
on red construction paper
not knowing
it would be her last.
I have raged at heaven
for years for explanation
that catalogues a reason
and have only learned
that love does not die
and loss always hurts.
So February has again
torn my heart, it’s true,
and time is measured this way,
each year the same,
with sadness
and the rain is not to blame.
The Victor
I dream you die again
night after night,
then return to say,
"it was just a joke."
My memory twists
and I don’t laugh,
the jokes on me.
Oh dream,
I could have lived you!
The mornings
I fight with day light
I know
time will be
the victor.
The Faith of a Child
"God knows what infinity is."
Faith from a four year old.
I wish I was so sure.
Do your colt limbs race
down streets of gold?
Were you forced again through birth?
Do you float somewhere in limbo?
I ache to know
what lies down death’s
dark halls,
around the corner
of this life,
just to see
if God knows what infinity is.
Someone’s Child
I read there was a miracle child
undead
I saw her smile from the newsprint
her dark hair curled
I could not read
the screams that had rained on her spring
with no sound
her heart slowing to almost stop
again and again
and sleep far deeper than night
Those who loved her must have wished
her free of life
in their secret souls
lost hope to weight
that crushed inside
till death was in their eyes
But
she lived
through the scream
the unimagined soundless terror
and found her way
in darkness
with no breath
fought her way through chance
and lived.
My own gamine girl
took to death so quickly
that same year
that same spring
holding the same soundless scream
inside her.
Oh I would be the mother
of a miracle child
and not me
The Flowering Peach
Michelle sleeps
her features cloudy
and just the slightest trace
of light where
the fine hair's curled.
Michelle sleeps
receding into air
that blows fragrance
from the grass
to recall
how specks of sun
colored her eyes.
Michelle sleeps
I see her smile only
when the peach tree blooms
in February.
The Weight of the Butterfly Flower
The flowering peach,
a daughter’s bloom.
Each February
she lived
in tiny pink bud,
her tree fed my memory,
flitted across my vision
with nectar so sweet with sorrow
that the sky wept.
Oh, such weight
the delicate pink
butterfly flower held.
It took her place somehow
and lived for her each year.
A tree-gift from the fluttering
girls and boys of second grade,
now almost middle aged
with children named
Michelle, perhaps.
She will always be eight,
the bright and moving child
of my youth,
so spark and full of fire.
The first that captured my heart
and held it,
she holds it still.
She died again this fall, Michelle,
her leaves turned and bid a final
tremble to the ground.
The tree no longer lives,
just a sentinel stark and bleak
its gamine trunk.
But
under the canopy that burned
my heart again
from brown and rotting leaves
emerges the everlasting
circle of creation,
a fragile new beginning
strong with claims of yes.
All poems (C) 2000 Martie Odell-Ingebretsen
All rights reserved.
Also registed with this site
"Coming Through The Fire"
in the year 2000.
Custom Frames by Dale Wayne
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