11 Lifelines for Your 50th
A zuihitsu of sorts: for Michelle
1.
Those amber squares stitched with snake blue threads offer such possibilities: we watch the sky gods -- Hoping they will be appeased-- not throw us so far from above into the enticing ground patterns-- from these heights -- each region, a kaleidoscope --the life we speed through; three meals and a movie-- the tenuous time it takes for deliverance.
2.
Each reunion is a feast. How can we live so deeply without each other? I keep refilling the dessert dishes; whetting my palate, or the conversation in my head - talking to you as truffles sprinkled with bittersweet chocolate cover my tongue.
3.
“It is better to be loved by great poets than to be a great poet.” Our creed, that first Bennington summer--we attracted men like bees to wildflowers I could never name. Twenty years later, that same passion-- all we left unnamed-- haunts us.
4.
I have earmarked the poems I must read to you. But, cannot part with the book. What kind of friend am I?
5.
Why do some things take so long to write about? It was such a wonderful dawn meeting at Starbucks. The biscotti’s one-day stale. Lattes and caramel frapucinnos spilling over birthday gift-wrappings. The silver bracelet with fifty butterflies –I remember how the thick silver weighted my wrist. How I counted each engraved butterfly because you promised there would be fifty, and there were.
6.
And now I am reminded of coffee. How you and Steve could talk for hours about the bean and grind. When I cannot love this man--my husband, you rescue him by offering him a mug. And he sits and drinks with you, becomes rational; your conversations, never bitter like the refillable black cup that brings you together. And I am tempered by the moment, knowing that if he loves you, as he does, he can love me, too.
7.
There are things I should have done. A Morong memory has me walking away from your house on the edge of the South China Sea— leaving the next day for New York. The 16-hour plane ride brought me to my roots and a few states from yours. Half way down the red clay road, I shouted back—should I call your mother? I could not hear your response, or see your face, as it was bathed in dusky streaks inkling through the mango trees. When she died a few weeks later, and you called me from Pittsburgh content that I had spoken with her—how could I tell you that I had never called?
8.
October, this is the season we are never together, your birth month— Here you would scarve yourself in purple silks to enter the drizzly day. I write about mums blooming; about bike rides through rice fields, about my son growing into his winter – your memory of him is his saucy hands on your ankle length carousel-colored skirt. This son, whom you have seen in your dreams all grown: strapping and fine-- despite not having grown into my dreams.
9.
Your sons are the men you love. Having birthed them out of a passion of friendship and lust. You live the dream that every mother has for sons: Tender men, loving well, laying a woman in a rainbow skirt down –and gently lifting it off.
10.
Today on my shelf I saw Rexroth’s collected poems. I bought them for you this summer. An old bookstore in Massachusetts—how it reminded me of Bennington Days—old books, farmhouses—so many men –a question of desire—then the book—. Memories not sequestered to the tyranny of fading gray matter. What matters is this-- I found Rexroth for you. Your favorite, and we can meet at Starbucks, and as crumbs flicker from our fingertips, I can read:
The world is immovable and immaculate…
The reeling breath, the colored leaves,
the white stone…
We are unaware that we live in the light of lights because it casts no Shadow.
11.
I am your shadow. I reflect off your goodness. Left alone I waltz with the browning wisteria. You are the water that will green it in spring when leaves begin to turn toward an emerald heart pulsing purple eyelet buds.
If thee does not turn to the inner light where will thee turn?
I still cannot part with the book. What kind of friend am I? But here is your birthday present: these words— the promise I never break. It is as it is; we are who we are.
Laurie Kuntz
Laurie Kuntz worked in a Vietnamese refugee camp in the Philippines for over a decade. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Maryland's Asian Campus in Misawa, Japan. She also teaches High School Language Arts for the Department of the Defense Dependent Schools. She holds an MFA from Vermont College.
Laurie is the winner of the 1999 Texas Review Chapbook Contest and her chapbook, Simple Gestures is published by Texas Review Press (2000). Blue Light Press published her chapbook, Women at the Onsen, in 2003. Edwin Mellen Press published her poetry collection, Somewhere in the Telling in 1999. She is the author of two English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) books, The New Arrival, BKS. 1 &2(Prentice-Hall, 1982, 1992). She was the editor of the University of Maryland's Asian Division's literary magazine, Blue Muse and was a contributing editor to Hunger Mountain Magazine.
Currently, she is a contributing editor for Rock Salt Plum online literary magazine, (www.rocksaltplum.com). The Uppity Theatre Company out of St. Louis, Mo. performed her poem, “My Son Has a Sleepover while Bush Deploys Troops” as part of their 2004 performance of Peace Out: An Artistic Resistance to War. This same poem was chosen for Poem of the Day by Poets Against the War, and published on their website.
In 2003, three of her poems were nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. She won first prize in the America’s Review political poetry contest. She won second prize in the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society’s Parnassus Poetry Competition. She is listed in Glimmer Train's Top 25 Poets, 2002. Two of her poems won honorable mention in The Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. She is a 2003 finalist in the Emily Dickinson Contest sponsored by Universities West publishers. She holds an honorable mention in the Sheila-Na- Gig Featured Poet's Prize and in the Atlanta Review's International Poetry Competition. She was a finalist in The Nation\Discovery Contest, 1992 and 1997 and in The Sow's Ear Poetry Contest, 1992 and has won honorable mentions in the John Foster West Poetry Competition, The Wildwood Poetry Contest, Negative Capability Poetry Contest, Amelia Poetry Contest and Chester H. Jones National Poetry Contest. Her full-length book manuscript has been a finalist in the Journal Poetry Award, Ohio Univ. Press, the Larry Levis Poetry Book Competition sponsored by the Four Way Book Publishers, the Cleveland State Univ. Poetry Competition and the Brittingham Competition.
Her poetry has been published in The Bloomsbury Review, The MacGuffin, The Louisville Review, The Charlotte Poetry Review, The Roanoke Review, The Southern Review, The Eleventh Muse, Poetry Miscellany, The New Virginia Review, Crosscurrents, The South Florida Review, The Contemporary Review and other magazines.
She read her poetry at Barnes and Nobles in New York and at the Poetry Reading Series at the University of Evansville. "The Poet Speaks,” a one-act play, written by Dr. Sharon Vanderveer, is a tribute to Laurie’s work as a poet and was performed in Japan for Women's History Month. Laurie also collaborates with the renowned flutist, Nancy Janoson, and Laurie performs her work set to various flute ensembles.
She lives in Misawa, the apple growing capital of Northern Japan, with her son, Noah and husband, Steven, and their two dogs Sage and Merlin, named for wisdom and magic.
Visit Laurie's website here.
