#POETRY 1 of 30

For now something small
like life requires patience
for good things to grow.

30 Ways to celebrate National Poetry Month

These are not my ideas you can find them here:  http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/94

But I am participating.
1 poem a day.
Did it last year and had great fun.
#poetryrocks

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

Oh, sounds so mysterious and threatening doesn't it?  But sadly it's a tale of irresponsibility and harassment.  And pure stupidity.  It goes something like this.  The Saturday before Thanksgiving, my husband and I were awakened by loud crashing noises upstairs.  Like luggage being drug up the stairs.  Having had weeks of construction going on upstairs previously, we assumed that someone was moving in.  And moving in at 11:30 pm on a Saturday night.  My husband went out there and asked the two women what they thought they were doing and if they didn't stop, he was calling the police.  Logic set in at that point and they stopped.  But that was the last time logic set in.
One of the first things we found out about the new upstairs neighbors were that they had dogs.  They had two.  Starting barking at 4 am or earlier.   Every morning.   And they would open up the sliding door upstairs and let the barking dog out to relieve themselves on the patio upstairs.   After about a week of this, including me going out at 6:30 am and confronting the woman who left the barking dog inside while she took the other one out for a walk, we did a little research.  I contacted the woman who owned the property to find out that she had sold it.  (On a side note, we've lived here for 10 years, had a great relationship with her, bought her muffins that she was selling to raise money for cancer, etc, which is why I had her contact information.)  We located the company that bought the place and I went and paid them a visit.  I got the man's contact information and the receptionist assured me that he would contact me and he did.  I had also contacted our Home Owners Association because it is a nuisance to let your dogs relieve themselves on the patio.  It's not just a nuisance, it's disgusting.
One bright and early 3:30 am Saturday morning in December the dogs started to bark.  At 4 am, I called this man's cell phone and left a message.   At 7:30am I received a call from the man's wife.  It turns out, her sisters are who lives upstairs.  She insisted that she would take care of this and that she would be checking for urine smell and such.   Because if you're leaving a dog to bark all day and night, they probably are relieving themselves somewhere if they can't go outside right?  Later that day she left a message stating that she was getting an anti-bark device and that she didn't notice any sign of  dog mess.   I chalked this up to denial and stupidity on her part, if they wanted to let all the work they did on cleaning up the condo get ruined by their sisters so be it.
The behavior of letting the dogs out on the patio continued.  As did rain.  Until the rain stopped for a couple of weeks.  And the smell began.  The flies began to circulate on the patio.  We had the Association come by and they could smell from the sidewalk what had been going on upstairs.  And then there was the poop waterfall.  Yeah.  Good times.  So the Association sent the maintenance people out.  First guy obviously came and saw and decided that he wasn't going to jump right in and clean up.  That happened after we called about poop waterfall.  Then the boss came.  He took pictures.  His employees began the horrible job of cleaning out the gutter which was full of feces that the upstairs neighbor had been sweeping into the gutter.  But while he was taking pictures one of them came and stood on the balcony.  He informed her that she can't let her dogs do that, her reply was "we don't have a dog."
Really.  Seriously.  I don't put question marks beside those words because it takes a special kind of person to blatantly lie to someone who knows that they are lying.   Later that month, at the Board meeting for the Association I showed up.  Because they fined the upstairs neighbor.  And she and her sister, the owner of the condo, showed up for the hearing.  They tried to engage me in some sort of conversation and I did not respond.   You can swim in that river of denial but I'm not going to let you piss in my ear and tell me it's raining.  So the Association asked what the status of the dogs barking was.  I stated that apparently some anti-barking device was being used and it was working.  And I informed them that the smell had been cleaned up and during the cleanup the Maintenance company had taken pictures.  The sister-owner piped up and stated she wanted to see those pictures.  They then proceeded to share their side of the story which was that the sister-dog owner took those dogs for walks 3 times a day.  The Association informed them that there were multiple parties witness to what had been taking place and that they didn't believe them.  They left.
So the dogs started barking again.  My husband called the sister-owner.  Had a long conversation with the sister-owner.  She was swimming in that river.  Told my husband that she would have to take side with her sisters and that we had just gotten off to a bad start with them.  That her sisters were living there because their mother had died and that they had lived with the mother and her mother's dogs.  It was her mother's dogs upstairs and that one of them was "gonna die really soon."  Like that's some sort of relief for us who can't sleep now.  Or that it's a logical reason for their barking.  No, leaving a dog inside for 8-12 hours without relief is a reason for barking.  But it gets better.  She then said that her sisters thought that it was our cat, jumping up to the second floor balcony and relieving himself in the gutter.  If you believe that a 20lb cat can jump up into a gutter and not bring that gutter crashing to the ground, or that he suddenly decided to start doing this after 5 years of living here, and couldn't even jump up onto our balcony anymore, I have some ocean front property on Mars to sell you.  Cheap.  Maybe we could move your sisters there? Oh, and by this point, our cat had been dead for over 2 months.  He died December 10th.  Maybe he was coming back from the dead to do this defecation in the gutter?  Instead of poop waterfall we now have ghost poop.
So nothing for a couple months.  Then this week.  Hearing the dogs barking at 7:30 am on Monday.  My husband left angry messages but not his phone number.  Then Wednesday at 11:30 pm.  He calls and it goes straight to voice mail as they've turned off their cell phones.   Barking.  Until 2:30 am.  Then one of them came home.  Last night  I called.  Several places and people.  We were up until 2:30 am again.  We waited but no one came home.  But the dogs got quiet.  A little relief.  
I usually write poetry and post here.  Or about life in other aspects.  Or short stories.  I'd like to return to that please.  Perhaps when I actually get some sleep.

The Bench

http://promptsforwriters.blogspot.com/

They had tried to spruce up this part of the park, planting trees to replace the one that had been burned but it continued to be a sad space.   A space that no one really visited except those with spray paint and bad intentions.  Winter had covered the area with a blanket of snow on occasion but it was as if the very ground was infused with a longing for something. 

In other parts of the park, people walked their dogs through trails, children skipped rocks on the pond and rangers emptied trash bins unless the racoons had already done it.  They would hide out sometimes, lurking in the shadows, waiting for sundown until they could come out and scavenge.  They were there that night, watching as the tree went up in flames, scurrying into the woods to avoid the screeching sirens and flurry of men in uniforms.  But none could save the tree and what they found.  

Not far from the site, covered in soot, rambling she stood.  First reports were that she was strung-out and deranged, like she always appeared but it was far from the truth.  It had been that park, that tree, many years passed but she never forgot while everyone else seemed to.  Haunted and stuck, like a ghost who didn't know they'd passed into the afterlife, her memory clung to that horrible afternoon while her life whirled by.   One of the officers remembered but couldn't offer her anything that time and space might have created but never did.  It was too late for his institutions to offer help when it had failed so miserably the first time.  Instead, the death of the tree forever changed the landscape of the place and now she wouldn't have to remember.  There was no longer a tree there, and that empty space could hold something different. 

After the place was cleared, they decided to put a bench up and plant some new trees, to infuse some new life into the area and a new purpose.  But the ground refused to accept that.  The first few trees died and they were forever replanting.  But when these last trees were planted, and lived, it was as if the ground wanted something else.  A place for everyone to remember what had happened here, not to remain in sadness but as a testament to what happens when we try to forget and move on when we've left someone else behind. 

Rabbit

Tonight is a lunar eclipse, I think, I'm not sure.
Dates are hard to come by and keep
when you're out of your world or even in it.
They say you can sometimes see the man in the moon
but all I can ever see is the rabbit.
A rabbit with his head tilted towards the top
ears back, gazing up just like we do
when all our tears melted the ice
and drowned us in the rivers of our sorrows
we have no choice but to look up.
There are no free flights on this voyage.
Your frequent flyer miles will not give you a free ticket,
and while some of us may upgrade to first class
you will pay to check your bag and for your package of peanuts.

Tonight we speed through space in a traveling machine
that a human invented but most humans don't understand
including me.
I don't understand flight.
Planes, I don't get it.
Cars I sort of understand.
Boats float.
And sometimes there are trains run by engines of steam
I sort of get it.
I'm not that kind of smart.
But what I do know is that we all travel on this thing together
no matter what method we choose,
wrecking on the highway,
full barrel four legs flight on a horse bound for no where,
two wheeled hot steel between our thighs.
Slow down open road
come slowly wind
arcs are necessary in this kind of hurricane
that goes too fast for scantily clad rabbits
hurrying to find shelter, comfort, warmth,
a place to lay down and die when the road is too much and the flight too long.
They missed me during beverage service.
I had to wait in line, got some drops from an empty can
but won't wait for some perspective on why I drive,
drive, drive, drive, drive and drive some more away
from stained shirts, broken wheels and heart beats that stopped too soon.
Found behind prison walls, institutions and closed doors
of rooms contained in hallways of places that should be called hom
and what we're all looking for
A little peace
A little quiet
A little safety
But we don't always find flying on the freeway of broken dream bottles,
shards of ungranted wishes by grey-bearded wizards who never visits
but his words dripped by acid tongues,
too twisted to spell reason
too forked to speak truth out of either side of their mouths,
perpetuating tales that didn't exist for anyone claiming to be related to love.
Love, the unrelenting and most powerful,
love, the most sought and least understood
the thing we all wait for but don't realize
that when we look up
like rabbits
ears back
faces bright towards the moon
and we see the deep breathe of the rabbit,
shining back from the moon that,
like the light reflected,
so do we
like the moon reflects our light back to us
we can catch this and reflect it back to each other
we are what we've been waiting for
ears back
face up
lighting up the night sky
shining
almost bright enough to outshine the sun.
@2012 Jennie Olson Six

A Winter's Night - a short story

The solar security light was triggered as he crossed the yard.  He paused for a moment and then regained his sense of purpose as he approached the cabin.  Out here things like cellular service, electricity and phones didn’t exist.  Out here, a certain level of respect was garnered for those who chose to live out here.  But this was someone who did not live out here.  This was someone surviving.  And if you survived out here, you were at a whole other level, that few lived to tell about.

She slept soundly, like she hadn’t slept for weeks or months.  The cabin was as they had left it in early summer.   They had come out for a weekend, a chance to get away before it all began.   The start of school, new jobs, new town, new life gave them a chance to begin again and renew what had been lost.  The cabin, an investment property, something that perhaps they could retire in part-time, a place they planned to visit on the weekends, something that they could afford.  It was all that was left in six short months.

His steel blue eyes peered into the window of the cabin.  A plush cabin built for endurance and for the weekend warrior.  It disgusted him, these people who invaded the land and built these structures, no respect for nature or the life around them.  These people who came and didn’t respect, he hated them all.  He would teach them a lesson.

Her breath was shallow, like she was barely breathing.  But it was only a deep sleep, something she hadn’t experienced for a long time.  She came for the peace and tranquility of the snowy mountains.  She thought as she had drove up that perhaps this would be the place that she could feel again something other than anguish.   She had filled up the car on her way up when it had started to snow again.  There was nothing more peaceful than falling snow but it did not give her the peace she was looking for.  Instead, conflict over what she was doing and why she was there.  It was too soon, or it wasn’t too soon, it was irresponsible or reckless, people would wonder, people would worry, but she had gone and wasn’t coming back. 

The living room hearth had embers of a fire, a big braided rug and long couch.  The walls were decorated with old snow shoes and old tin pots, as though someone were trying to decorate it to look older than it actually was.  The exposure to the elements made him older than he actually was.  At 38, his sandy blonde hair had started the graying process when he was stationed in Iraq.  By the time he returned, it was hard to distinguish which was blonde and which was white.  He had no interest in talking to anyone about what he had experienced.  He had no one to return home to except the mountains.  He felt at one with the wild.  The cold of the winters were harsh but he survived.  He had survived much worse than a little cold.  By this time, his hunger was taking over and he hoped that the cabin had supplies that would get him through the next few months.  As he crossed around the corner of the cabin he saw the small glow of a nightlight.  This small foolish notion only incensed him more.  If these people were so scared of the dark they had no business being there, and he was going to give them an actual reason to be scared.

She stopped at the little store at the base of the mountain.  The few provisions she had, she knew she needed a little more in case of more snow, in case her stay lasted longer than a day or a week.  But she didn’t really want to make any future plans.  Her future had already been decided in a freak accident, taking them all, one by one, slowing, over weeks at the hospital.  He was the last to go, hanging on until one day, after sleeping for weeks next to his side; he stopped breathing for the last time.  But really, she had stopped breathing long before that.  

He peered into the window of the bedroom to see the light source, a Minnie Mouse nightlight illuminating the bedroom.  It was a child’s bedroom, with a small twin bed frame, complete with Minnie Mouse bedding, a large trunk overflowing with toys and a small, child vanity with mirror.  He sneered at the luxury of it.  Most children he had seen had nothing but rocks and barely a roof over their head and lived in a place where everything had been destroyed.  He thought of the effort it took to get something like this to this cabin and how much effort it took those he left behind to just get some water and shelter.   He then noticed the figure in the bed.  Upon closer inspection, he saw it was a grown woman.   The darkness began to cloud his thoughts. 

The snow clouds continued to release their bounty as she approached the cabin.    She pulled the car up to the garage and got out to open the door, nearly jumping out of her skin to discover the family of raccoons living there.   They scurried off and she parked the car, quickly unloading and getting into the cabin.  It was much colder in the winter.  Luckily they had supplied the cabin with lots of firewood, anticipating much more use, many more weekends, the fun and joy that adventures in the wilderness would bring.   But today, this was a refuge, a memory and nothing more than a place that she would decide whether or not this was a life worth living for.   The grief counselors had suggested she get away, maybe spend some time with friends or family.  The prescription for prozac had gone unfilled.  Grief was the word used, but almost felt like a stupid word, as it couldn’t contain the emotions she was feeling.  She wasn’t even sure that it was emotion, as it resembled nothing she could compare it to.  It came in waves, in came in sharp pains, and it just kept coming.  

When she unpacked the food she had brought, she almost laughed, marshmallows, chocolate, cupcakes, bacon, eggs and a bag of salad, a box of wine.  She made a fire and thought she should eat.  She hadn’t eaten much for months, nothing fit anymore and she had little interest in clothing or anything else.  She didn’t force herself to do much, except eat once a day.  Coffee, a bagel was most of the faire she could keep down and keep going with.   She found an expired package of graham crackers in the cupboard and decided to make a smore.  She burnt the marshmallow but ate it anyway, watching the snow fall.  There wouldn’t be anyone around to stop her if she decided to do what she wanted to do anyway.  It was then that the fatigue hit her.  The fatigue of six months of making an impression at the new job and driving the kids to soccer and ballet, of making late night dinners and early morning meetings, of making an impression by attending all the meetings and events and fundraisers.  And when the accident happened, the sleepless nights at the hospital before gripping hands and turning off of machines, of hoping and praying and giving up hope and resurging hope and losing it all anyway.  She wanted to sleep.  And never wake up.

He saw her dark hair frame a small face.  Small curls and a bare shoulder stirred him in ways that he hadn’t allowed or experienced in a long time and was looking forward to it.  Alone, she was alone and there was nothing to stop him.  And he wasn’t planning on stopping.  But her face, something familiar about it, he held it in his gaze searching for what was detracting him from his intentions.

There was a big house ahead, she walked along the path in her dream and approached the window of the house, looking in she saw a man staring back at her, eyes wide and frightening, a peak of sandy hair under a wooly hat.  She froze, unable to move, fearing for her life and yet unable to run, her legs would not move her eyes unable to break their hold of his gaze.

He had seen that face before, too many times.  It was that pained, pinched face, with wrinkles around the eyes that were earned before the body had aged enough to earn them.  It was that face that so desperately wanted relief that looked to him as if he could do something, rescue, respite, relieve and he never, ever could.    He knew that face.  He knew that sleep, of someone who had barely slept and so desperately needed sleep.  He saw it in the face of his buddies, long ago gone, in the faces of people who he couldn’t help.  He saw the sliver of relief that sleep was giving her.  It was enough to make him disappear into the woods and never return. 

She opened her eyes.  The light of the nightlight illuminated the room.  She looked out the window seeing only darkness, the peace of the night.  She knew snow was falling but couldn’t see it.   She thought for a moment of all of the creatures that lived in the woods around her and wondered if she was safe and then squashed those thoughts. She closed her eyes and pulled the blankets tight before she fell back asleep.    

@ Jennie Olson Six 2012

The Yoga Teacher Nightmare Dream

This one was actually funny too.  Funny after I woke up.  So I'm in a room filled with my teacher's students and my teacher turns over the class to me.  I then revert back to a sequence I was taught somewhere else, and when I look around, half the room left and the rest were apathetic to say the least about continuing the class.  When I looked to my teacher, he just shrugged.  So we all called it a day and left, like we had better things to do. 
I am at this in between phase.  This phase where, I'm releasing things from past ideas and accepting new ones.   And questioning what I've learned so far.  What I am is more discerning.  And listening more to intuition rather than blind adherence.  
The ancients learned from their gurus.  The teacher-student model is how yogis were passed information and learned under direct supervision.   We don't always do that now.  In fact, it took me almost 9 years of practice before I found my guru, primarily because I hate the term guru.  Actually sneered at it.  Thought it was ridiculous and could even lead into a situation where one could be taken advantage of.    It wasn't until I took a class with my teacher, and he saw things about me, observed, and took me into a posture that I hadn't experienced before, but my body was ready for that I realized what that dynamic really is all about.  The careful observation that as a student, I can't see from the inside out.  And the wisdom and knowledge of that teacher to be able to discern whether or not I was ready to do that and how to approach that posture. 
I began to appreciate his knowledge from that point on.  It's been over the last two years of more intensive study with him that I have figured out that you can't get this kind of knowledge in a few years.   Daily practice and observation is great but without a person that has been down the road for now just a few years, but decades is priceless.   But beyond asana practice, which is only 1/8th of the practice of yoga, having the person who knows the philosophy and history and can share this information in a way that makes it a discovery, something new and fresh but also accessible.  When my teacher talks about these things, there's a light that goes on and it's exciting to him.  He wants to hear what his students think about it and facilitates great discussions about these things like the yamas and niyamas.  So it's not just words on a paper or a commandment handed down. 
So back to this dream.  If I had to interpret it would be what am I hanging onto about this first experience in learning to teach and what can I let go of about it?  What am I resisting about integrating this new way of teaching or even in my own practice?  And the apathy part:  asana practice, without intention, without philosophy is just aerobics.  And some people want that.  But eventually, it stops working for some people.  Especially when you have an injury and can't do the practice that you're used to doing.  Hmmm......