Main Street

Chilly frigid afternoon so welcoming like your welcomes
This town is smaller than I remembered
when my tiny legs walked to the corner bakery
for jelly doughnuts and bear claws.
We’d watch the Christmas parade on Main Street
From your second floor office window
the front door is still red as it was 20 years ago
the river still cascades beside the red mill
where we trick-or-treated and fed the ducks
during some October along time ago.
Long enough ago to have my face painted
when I was small enough to sit on your lap
and too young to appreciate any of it.
Main street seems shorter this Christmas
when once it was a never ending path
I was never brave enough to venture alone
until today some decades later
when the wind is swirling my long blond hair
around its indifferent frigid fingers
ushering everyone into the warmth
of nearby antique shops and cafes
while the street is silent in my reflection.
Would he recognize his first granddaughter
standing at the red front door 20 years later
still blond and blue eyed and smiling
looking up at his second floor office
from a Main street I’ll always return to
in your memory.


In loving memory of Richard J. Wisniewski

From Autumn to Winter

There is a certain calm to be found in the seasonal decay of the earth. The cool season of autumn where the world around us slowly begins to die as it celebrates its own death in a festive macabre ritual of orange and red leaves. I find peace in the fading beauty, as it reminds me that nothing stays beautiful. No, it’s not me being a downer, its reality. Autumn is a reminder of all that which is good must pass. The shorter days and crisp crunch of leaves beneath our shoes is just an omen for the dark cold winter months a head. At least Mother Nature gives us warning of the dark times. At least we can rely on the ritual of the earth changing colors, changing temperature. Nothing else in life will give us such a guarantee.

Where I once mourned the lost days of spring where I was reborn, the endless days of summer where my childhood flourished, I solemnly accept the autumn as the inevitable passage into the adult world with new responsibilities. I know by winter I will have endured enough this year to be a withered old woman, tired, dried up and senile. However, when the New Year comes around and the trees begin their budding and the birds come north again, there will be a new infant waking inside of me, opening her arms to a year of experiences and adventure.

I knew perhaps 2010 would be a different year. The gradual evolution of our souls in accordance with nature puts our existence in harmony.

I’ve made mistakes and fell in love. I hurt others and gained new scars (tattoos of experience I call them). I traveled to distant lands and met people I’ll never see again but who I’ll always remember. I graduated college, started a new job, started graduate school, watched new shows, read new books, ate new food, made friends and lost friends. Winter is here and the year is almost over. I won’t wait until next year to promise myself I’ll be stronger.

The only revelation that pulls me through my days of weariness, through the icy façade of winter, is the reminder that though others have continued to hurt me and take advantage of my love, I still have the ability to love. I hope one day I can harness that ability to bring change to a world of constant darkness and sadness.

There are many things I am grateful for each day of this passing year. Once again, everything I have experienced this year has participated in the evolution of my being, whether good or bad. I’ll know better next time or I won’t make the same mistake again. Though the days of fading sunlight may shrivel my energy and my soul will hibernate in the warmth of my studio, I’m still blossoming inside.