When I found the cookie rock
among tumbled, decorative stones
in our side yard, around the downspout,
I had secrets with it, its cool smell of earth,
its fit in my palm. I bit it at least once.
I still have it somewhere — it’s not lost,
just packed away, and someday I may find it
when I’m looking for something else,
and then I’ll swear never to lose it again.
I know I showed it to Helena Bolen,
and she gamely pretended to be fooled
when I told her it really was a cookie.
Helena Bolen, my adopted grandparent
on Grandparents’ Day at school. Her house,
the plastic runner to protect the carpet,
her cat named Tweety, one time jumping
on my back with claws out, kneading.
I think I had privileges there, to knock
and always find her, Helena Bolen,
happy to see me. Even her name
is solid, a kindness that is
not lost to me, only
packed away.

Did she mourn them privately,
the chain-smoking drinkers of
black coffee or Constant Comment tea,
wisecracking knowers of my mother’s
secret heart? Did she grieve in her bedroom
while my father was away, maybe in the new town?
Did she miss them before we even left, because
her daily friends would soon become
Christmas card friends, maybe a phone call
now and then? When we moved, we really moved:
Nashville to Seattle, for example. Seattle to Minnesota.
Too far to visit, and besides, the magic was in nearness —
a kitchen table, an ashtray, a curl of blue smoke,
a child or two to shoo away, to let the real talk begin.

___________________________________________________________________
2 (will be explained eventually)

I’m sorry that when we lived in Seattle
(OK, a suburb of)
and my parents would ask me to go outside
in the evenings, in my nightgown and bare feet
to salt the slugs,
I would do it. I didn’t know, somehow,
that when they foamed and flipped and writhed,
disappeared,
it meant I had killed them. I didn’t know.
somehow, that they were living animals at all —
it made no sense, my parents giving me a salt shaker,
if it was to kill something as the sun went down
behind the fir trees and inside Mount Rainier.
Once I realized, I stopped. I was probably four.
Around that same age, one day when I was playing
in the front yard, I couldn’t make it inside in time,
so I squatted at the end of the driveway, peeing
in the suds where we had just washed the car.
I’m not sorry. I stand by that decision, even now.

Miss Scarlet (the one in Clue)
will never be the same. At your new house,
eventually, you’ll open the box to play
(they have rainy days here, too, it turns out)
and the horrible brown packing tape
will remove her cheek, one red lip, her entire
fancy cigarette holder. It has a certain smell,
that tape — the acrid skunkiness of leaving,
perhaps, the panicked knowledge that
once you go, you can never come back.

________________________________________________________________
13 (to explain later)

For reasons I still don’t understand
and can no longer ask, my mother
wouldn’t let me pull my mattress off my bed
and put it on the floor. So, of course, I did it anyway,
and just made sure to put it back every morning.
But in the in-between, I would listen to
“Music from the Hearts of Space” on NPR,
on my boom box,
look at the moon through dark trees,
and spook myself and soothe myself, both,
over not knowing how long I would be where I was.

___________________________________________________________________
14 (I think)

Hollowing out the shell of a day
a wash of warmth, a tumble of
leaves dirt acorns, then snow

Where are you now? We used to play
duck, duck, goose
or was it duck, duck, gray duck?

I was only a Minnesotan for two years;
some memories fade away

but I remember “Jaws” on a snowdrift,
joining in even though I was a stranger
and would be again, and am now.

In 1979, it was glorious, escaping
the movie shark with you, or maybe
you were the shark. But it was glorious.

That much I know.

__________________________________________________________________________
1 (counting will be explained eventually)

Touch me not,
you Pepsi challenge of a —
well, we all have challenges, don’t we,
every one of us fighting those tiny Twilight Zone aliens
from Earth, each of us alone in our dress in our farmhouse
on an unnamed planet of our own?
Pepsi is the national drink of those aliens — I mean,
does anyone really prefer it? Many of us said we did.
Many of of were shocked, a veil lifted from our eyes, a label
(black on white, Cola A or Cola B) sliding off the can
to reveal our secret choice. I know I took the Pepsi challenge
and wanted it to go a certain way, and it either did or didn’t,
but I forget what I wanted and what I chose, and how I felt
when the truth was revealed. I know I have certain challenges now.
I forget what I want and what I choose and how I feel, and the truth.

Billing into the tree
to insect itself enough
to survive, while I
garbaged down the alley
in my pajamas, then
staired back up to my son,
who was oatmealing
and buffalo plaid bathrobing
while once again kneeing
up over the table, but I
hated to lecture the stillness,
so I peaced it, this time.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write a poem in which we did a lot of verbing (making nouns into verbs). It was harder than it looked — I kept thinking of nouns that already are verbs. I kept “lecture,” in fact, even though it’s on shaky ground.

And with that, we’ve reached the end of NaPoWriMo. Thank you so much for following along! As for what happens next month (starting tomorrow), I can’t even speculate … yet.

Don’t make this one about your mother,
how you saw an anniversary card she wrote to your father,
and it made no sense, her mind slipping under the pain meds,
about six weeks before she died, as it turned out —
but you didn’t know that then,
visiting as if it were any other visit, only with
artificial voices, bright and cheerful, and then terror
at the wrongness of everything, the slipping of everything,
every night in the guest bedroom,
alone. (Or was your husband there? Were your children there?
Funny that you don’t remember — the almost-last visits blur.)
Don’t write about how when she reached over one night
on the couch, to rub your neck and shoulders, you were startled that,
after all, you were still the daughter and she was still the mother,
and still strong enough in her hands, still wanting to do
something for you.
Don’t write another poem about your mother
and how she was sick and how she died.
Don’t write about grief.
Don’t.

________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write about the moment just before something ends.

Like a curl of vanilla ice cream
coming in fast from the north,
washing over everything you know.
The wall of your mind is now
eggshell or ecru — or greige.
Neutral for pleasantness and
resale value, and also because
you used all your colors
yesterday and 26 days back.
It’s a 28-day cycle, you know.
You’ll be replenished soon.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
I had to break a rule. I said I wouldn’t jump around among different prompt sources during this year’s NaPoWriMo, but I was stopped by the one at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (form is not my strong suit, and I’m feeling tapped as this month draws to a close), so today I used the one at Poetic Asides, which was to write a poem titled _______ Wave. I took it literally because I feel the blank wave coming.