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Best Poems Written by Rita Janice Traub

Below are the all-time best Rita Janice Traub poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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E Is For Ecto

Maud dreamed by the fire, her blue eyes half-closed,
While a grey cat on a grey mat beside her reposed.
Then she wakened and watched as the fast-falling snow
Was whipped into drifts when the sad wind would blow.
The moments that make up a life span are fleet,
Passing by with the stealth of a kitten's soft feet.
Since then, many winters this old earth has turned,
And I can't even guess when the last embers burned.
But where the hearth warmed, a computer now stands,
And someone's been typing with very cold hands
And piling spreadsheets on a table all day
On the very same spot where a grey cat once lay.
You're alone, so stop turning -- you won't find a trace
Of the blue eyes and smile of a little girl's face;
But when winds start moaning and driving the snow,
Maud may send you a ghost-mail from long, long ago.

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The Raven Who Croaked

The raven who croaked
Exclusively "Nevermore"
Was one astute bird.

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What Life Is All About

I can tell you that life consists of rush and wait.  
That’s all there is to it, nothing profound, don’t look for meaning.
Our parents wait wait wait for us to be born.
Then it’s rush rush rush to keep up with the other kiddies.  
We wait wait wait and rush rush rush all our lives, alone and with others.
We wait wait wait to be enrolled in school.
We rush rush rush through grade after grade,
And going to the bathroom, to the movies, on trips,
And I could write a book on going to hospitals and doctors!  
We wait wait wait to get a date.
We rush rush rush to fall in and out of love.
We rush rush rush rush rush to turn into grownups!
We wait wait wait to have a vacation and fun
Only to rush rush rush so we can prepare for the next school term.
When we grow up, the wait wait wait continues.
We wait wait wait to find out how we did on that tricky job interview.
If we get hired, we wait wait wait to be approved by our supervisor.
If we don’t get hired, we wait wait wait in long employment lines.  
If we’re good at our jobs, we rush rush rush to get promotions.
If we’re mediocre on our jobs, we rush rush rush to shape up.  
The more successful we are, the more we rush rush rush and wait wait wait,
Attending seminars, catching planes, trying to meet deadlines.  
The less successful we are, the more we rush rush rush and wait wait wait,
Applying for more loans we can’t pay off,  tackling more jobs we can’t handle.  
Sometimes it’s rush rush rush to marry, wait wait wait to be divorced.  
Everyone knows traffic and phones are totally wait wait wait and rush rush rush.
In having our children, depending on circumstances,
We either rush rush rush or wait wait wait. 
Then we go through the same routine with them that our parents did with us:
Wait and rush, rush and wait -- that’s what life is all about, believe me.

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The Survey

What have you made of life?
What has life made of you?
That silver spoon you were born with,
Is it tarnished or good as new?

Did you use it to feed another,
Someone hungry and down and out?
Was the path you trod always level?
Did you ever know pain or doubt?

What has life made of you?
What have you made of life?
You were a have-not at your birth.
Was all the rest struggle and strife?

Did adversity harden or soften you?
Was your journey a sorrowful one,
Or filled with such loveliness and joy
You regret it will soon be done?

Have you been mostly friend or enemy?
Were you blessing or were you curse,
Or both, or neither?  Because of you,
Is life better, the same, or worse?

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Ellay

On the Coast, in the semitropics,
We feel strange with deciduous trees.
There's something about their nude branches
That reminds us of elbows and knees
And the bones of our bodies generally
With our organs, blood and skin.
We rely on Botox and banana trees
To lock our youthfulness in,
To ensure that we haven't a wrinkle,
To keep every season at bay.
Here we don't count the minutes or hours.
A year is the same as a day.
The Pacific fog rolls in at night,
And to glimpse the sky is so hard,
We prefer to admire the stars below
That are carved on our boulevard.
Throughout the Los Angeles basin
We do our aerobics and jog.
We are young, we are lean, we are healthy,
We intone as we gulp in the smog,
Which we wrap around us like a blanket
For security plus a disguise.
If sudden tears flow, nobody will know:
Heavy sunglasses shelter our eyes.

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Remembering

She lay on the sofa,
Two arthritis pain pills nearby, 
Holding a thin romance book
With a thin plot involving
An empty heroine, an empty hero,
Explicitly but tastefully making love.

I’ve heard, she said, closing the book,
Marking her place with a folded handkerchief,
That books with graphic sex  
Can be awfully boring.
What are those tall trees across the street?

Georgia pines, we told her.   
She asked:  Is the tallest one the father,  
And the other two son and daughter?   
We laughed.  All siblings, we replied.
She looked doubtful.  Then she said:  
I’m convinced trees talk, I wish I knew what about.
Since I'm eighty now, I suppose 
I'll never understand tree language.
I also think each tree has a soul,
The way people do -- don’t you?

What’s the glossy dark green tree on the left?  
A magnolia, we said, almost an evergreen.
Remember magnolias from Maryland?
Smaller ones -- we called them sweet bays.

Yes, she said, and smiled.  Beautiful small magnolias
With creamy blossoms, up on the hill.   

There’s a weeping willow, she went on,
A happy bouncy willow.
Look how gracefully it bends in the breeze!  

March had a cruel surprise:    
Four inches of icy snow, bitter winds..
The willow perished.  
Later a bush appeared in its place,
But we kept on picturing the willow.    
Next they replaced the grove of pines 
With a tire shop.
A year later, the magnolia was felled, 
And the house behind it, too.
Six condos were quickly built, 
And marketed for a million dollars each.

Still, we'd see when looking across the street, 
Superimposed on the replacements, 
The willow, the magnolia, the pines.
Lovely tree ghosts:  They had greeted us kindly.

By then our mother wasn't on the sofa or reading.
She was bedridden, and couldn’t focus on books.
Despite her dying heart, we all three 
Changed our residence -- an enforced move.

We hope the tree ghosts are still intact and active,
We'll always think of them with affection,
But my sister and I don't plan to visit that block again.
 
Our mother is not alive any more, either,
But we doubt she’s a ghost, like the trees.
We consider that she is
Bound up forever in the bonds of eternal life.
All the same, at times we’ll be overcome
By a wave of goodness and warmth,
Amazing beauty and strength,
Incredible devotion.
Then, puzzled, we'll discuss what happened,  
And the only sane conclusion we can reach
Is that Mama had paid us a fleeting loving visit.

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Lines To My Brother

I thought I knew you, William Kane.
No sooner did my world begin
Than you were peering down at me
And I acknowledged you as kin.

I thought I knew you, William Kane,
No matter how thick your disguise.
I was both prey and pet to you,
Someone to fear yet idolize.

We ran together in our yard.
You clasped my hand tight in your own,
And I was glad to feel its warmth,
Yet glad when you stole off alone.

“Able,” they called me, but I knew
That you possessed the keener brain.
When praises came my way, I thought:
Credit should go to William Kane.

You thrust me forward like a shield.
Not one soul saw you tug the chain.
I was your spokesman-advocate,
Your buffer brother, William Kane.

You were a man that people liked,
Tactful, good-humored, not profane,
Affable always, much admired,
Coping heroically with pain.

When illness ripped your mask away
And all deception was in vain,
I tried to pull you from your hell
But lost my balance, William Kane.

The grass grows slippery and red
Where I am lying in the rain.
Once more your troubled gaze meets mine.
I’ll never know you, William Kane.

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The Young Ailanthus

The young ailanthus tree grew in a narrow yard
Behind a rowhouse in a block facing the boulevard,
And anyone could tell it never would grow tall;
Only its shadow loomed immense at evening on the wall.
It trembled in a breeze.  It tottered in a blast.
I'd see it battered to the earth after a storm had passed.
Yet always it would rise, and to its limbs would cling
The thick white snows of wintertime and half-grown cats in spring.
In summer, lush and green, it dreamed and seemed to smile
As though it were a jacaranda on some tropic isle.
With hand-like ferns it reached outward and ever higher
Until one day its growth was stopped by the high-tension wire.
And still another day, urban renewal came,
All of the houses with their trees leveling in its name,
So you would never know, in viewing the debris
That over here stood someone's home and on this spot a tree.
Together we were young, in many ways akin,
But I do more than mourn the void where once a tree had been:
I pray that when life's storms torment and buffet me,
I find that power to survive I first knew in a tree.

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Reaffirmation

Sorrow may not suffuse my face,
But daily deeper churns within,
And I would give up all I have 
To comb your hair or sponge your skin..
In sudden vivid dreams you come 
And reach for me with radiant smile.  
Though tight and real is our embrace,
Vague doubts distress me all the while:
These arms that hold me -- are they real?
Behind these kisses, is there breath?
Or are you truly in that land, 
That next dimension, we call death?
The clock’s alarm trills on and on
As logic bellows in my head:  
She neither knows nor loves nor cares;
Accept the fact that she is dead! 
I force myself to glance at where 
The small box with your ashes lies.
And then your voice alone rings clear:  :  
The soul, my darling, never dies!

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Thoughts of a Caregiver

I tried so hard, but you were too fast, clicking gracefully on high heels down the 
shady block, laughing at me plodding in saddlebacks:  Can't you keep up?
I tried so hard, but you were too slow, stumbling to a wobbly halt as your walker 
scraped the harsh lobby floor, so the elevator doors slammed shut, and we had 
to endure double the long wait plus the nurse's low-keyed promptness lecture.
Once you bought for me, in the wooded park, a cheerful red balloon.  You 
warned:  Hold it tight, don't let it go.  I obeyed till we reached our back yard, which 
I thought was safe, and then it slipped from my sweaty child's hand.
Up, up it went, evading the trees, hovering between rooftops, red no longer, then 
disappearing from view, me crying, you consoling.
You have sparkled like a precious gem, mostly turquoise and sapphire, in happy 
warm sunshine.  I simply can't force myself to accept the boldly affirmative, 
serenely vivid colors of you fading away to wan pastel, off-white, off-black, off-
gray, nothing.
Frantically I clutch and hug, scolding, cajoling, praying, vainly trying to hide my 
despair and frustration, to filter out the rage from the devotion.
I can't whisper to reach you; you won't hear me.  Nor can I shout; a raised voice 
invariably means anger.  I am muzzled very well.  My brain shrieks silently.
You watch me intently, your fine mind intact, deep in thought, before you doze.
You wake from your apathetic nap in pain, a defiant fighter, and, God forgive me, I 
briefly welcome that pain for restoring your animation.
There!  I just felt warm sunshine, saw a flash of turquoise and sapphire.
Now it's over.  We both want you so much to be yourself, but you're pastel again!
I wish I could turn myself into a balloon, red, rubbery and soft, fastened to a 
string, pushed into your slack hand.  I want to yell:  Hold me tight, don't let me go!
We'd jump over the skyscrapers, then over the piedmont, skirting the green tops 
of magnolias and pines,
Then soar ever higher, mingling with fluffy clouds in pure vibrant infinite blue;
No more clumsy saddlebacks for me, no more scraping walkers for you, 
Just us two, mother and runaway red balloon child, euphorically drifting off
Toward freedom.