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Judy Haas Poem
The steel birches shone
So tall in the global wood,
And then clear-cut rent.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
Lightening bugs flash,
like the worn celluloid images of old movies,
I sit beneath a great Greta Garbo moon.
I am the heroine of this short.
The dew point drops,
Mists rise.
Crickets chirp.
Muskwats buzz.
Loons ululate and wail.
My dialogue,
The click and whir of my spinning reel.
The glug-glug-glug of the Hula Popper lure.
To prepare for the climax,
Bring out the proven method acting.
I taste the dirt on my fingers,
Licking and twisting monofilament.
The savory sign of night-crawler trails.
Add the bobber, the weight.
I smell the algae and rotting leaves.
The sweet stew of the lake.
My nose tingles from the life motes it captures.
I cast.
This night, I ad-lib.
There never was a script,
No stupid fish.
Fade to Me,
The Garbo moon,
Clever fish,
Loon interlude.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
I ride my “Women Inspired” Schwinn up to my friend’s path.
My bike is magenta and the path is chartreuse,
Swathed by the spent spring buds of a tree.
I see Mister, who I call “Meester the Dog!”
My friend slides her door open,
Mister jumps to greet me.
He is like a little, bright, brown pierogi,
Boiling between my friend and I like we were the sides of a kettle.
He is so happy, he pees on the patio and we smile and laugh.
I see my friend standing by the door,
And her great chocolate eyes and effulgent smile,
So comfortable in her soft grey top and her soft grey pants.
So comfortable in her skin.
We talk of the mundane, of money, the funny,
Tigers and Appleby’s, bogies and birdies.
We are absolutely ourselves in each other’s company
And she gives me delicious tea.
I put my magenta bike into the wind,
Pedaling happily home.
I love this woman.
Tomorrow many will observe a resurrection.
The holy will stand in church and celebrate the power of a god.
Today I stood on a bud strewn path.
Today I saw my friend.
Today I saw the sacred.
Today I celebrate.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
Plodding, trodding, onward I went,
Through a life of self-targeted perfidy.
Onward, outward, straight up and bent,
Toward Second Half-Century City.
Finally lost, with nothing but need,
Flailing, wailing, and sick,
I sat myself down, drank the last of my mead,
And saw a gecko, sunning on a stick.
Its eyes were opals, skin of amethysts,
Garnets and emeralds, square and round.
When it spoke, the air danced in fits,
And out came a euphonious, female sound.
“I’ve been waiting; at last, you finally came!
Though you’re more worn than you should be.”
Shocked though I was, I asked for her name,
And she laughed singing out, “I’M ZANZUSIE!”
You’re a female, I cried, I didn’t understand,
And feeling just shy of frenetic!
“Of course!” she replied, “I need no man for my plan.
I’m a gecko. I’m parthenogenetic!”
“I am mother, sister, daughter and aunt.
I am every tear that you have ever shed.
I am truth, repose, raving and rant,
And I know the loneliness that you have fled.”
“Oh, I am so glad to meet you,” said I, “I’m not well prepared.
There is little but dust in my pack.
Up at yonder gate, when they see how I’ve fared,
I’m afraid that they’ll turn me back!”
“Well let’s have an accounting,” said she, “of just who you are,
Where you’ve been, what you think, what you’ve done.
Tell me all, sweet spirit, banal and bizarre.
Oh quit sniveling, come on, it’ll be fun!
So I told every tale, every deed, every woe,
I had wrought, from the sane to the sick.
I purged out my life from a place far below,
To a gecko, sunning on a stick.
At the last, I was spent, gasping for air,
Not really sure I was through.
She reached out Loves touch and pushed back my hair,
Saying, “I have two things that belong to you.”
She opened her pack and took out pure light.
“Here is your Love, which you left behind.
You had to let go, during your plight,
To keep from losing your mind.”
Then she reached in and took out a song
That exalted every spirit and being.
“This is Forgiveness, its healing is strong,
But you dropped it while you were fleeing.”
“It is Forgiveness that now will make you complete
As you impart it to those who cause pain.
Give it to all, the mean and the sweet,
Absolve them all, again and again.”
Then she bade me go on toward the gate of my time,
And I knew that my life had at last begun.
And I owe it to her, so smug, so sublime.
Zanzusie, on a stick, in the sun.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
S E L F P I T Y v I N V O L V E D
u v o r e n i e e n e o v i a v a
c e a a r s l l r s e l e s c e y
k n t u p t l l s t d u r t a r
i t h g e i e u a s n e t y
n u s h t l n d s n t m n i
g a o t u l o t o e y i n
l m a i b l f e n g
t l e w t n o y r s g
h y i i g d o i c i
e b t n y a t n h w n
a e h g d c h g e i d
e l h i n k e m t i
n i a c d s o n r m e h f
e e v r r t t o s y s f
r n i i a r i w i e
g a o s m u c l h n r
y t r i a s e e e t e
i s t d d a e n
f n g r n c
r g w i t t e
o h n
m e e g
v n
t e t
h r I h
e y e
o
r n
o e
o
m
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
I am Magma.
I am of the Earth, created in a furnace that I did not ignite.
I am found at mountaintops and ocean depths,
Hot springs and black smokers.
The furnace at my core is my guide.
It generates the Force through which I flow,
Uniting me with the Earth, Its Beings, and myself.
It thrums in me, forcing me forward.
Sporadically I spew forth in great, frothy flumes.
Most often I ooze, ever up and out and back upon myself,
Recreating my features, my history, my gifts.
I am becoming an island,
A place to visit and sing songs of celebration or lamentation.
With sheltering places to heal and hope,
And salty, sugar beaches to dance upon and shout in joy.
Some may come, simply to hear my song.
My duty is to be here – vibrating, shifting, yielding, demanding,
Yet always here, welcoming my visitors.
Listening to the sighs and songs of spirits,
Acknowledging the teardrop and the raindrop,
Making way through the mantle, that others may find their way.
Beginning an archipelago of Spirit, a landmark of Honor,
Where travelers find Succor, Enrichment, and Love.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
I sit, at night, on the concrete pad laid before my door.
My buttocks chilling through the fleece of my sweats,
My knees and hips aching from a day well traveled,
sitting at the threshold of the second half of my century here.
The moon is elsewhere, involved in its business of
Gaining on and fading from its apogee.
Dragging deeply on my cigarette,
I stare up and out, into the mottled sky.
I see something to my right, I adjust, but it is not there.
I see something to my left, I adjust, but it is not there.
Right and left, left and right, the stars dance truly only
In the corners of my eyes.
Now I know.
My undiscovered love is like movement in the dark.
When I search for him, when I bring all my focus acute on him,
he dissolves.
One day, perhaps, he will saunter up, and I will see him,
In the corner of my eye.
I can at last see EVERYTHING,
In the corner of my eye.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
The refrain was so soft I almost didn’t hear,
When the essence of WOMAN sighed in my ear.
“It’s safe to go back” were the words that were said,
And they roiled in my head while I lay in my bed.
So I gave my mind over to this quiet assurance,
Passing backward through drapes of practiced endurance.
It’s safe to go back.
It’s safe to go back.
Silently slipping through descendant days,
The 90’s and 80’s, a booze soaked haze.
The 70’s and 60’s, with no place of my own,
Finally the 50’s and my grandmothers home.
From a place so unique, empowered, serene,
I cast a new sight on the places I’d been.
It’s safe to go back.
It’s safe to go back.
I saw the men strike out in unrighteous rage;
And others doing things, so wrong at my age.
There is my mother with her alcohol breath,
With a pillow on my head, romancing my death.
Stern faced women in stiff, white wimples,
Me in plaid, burgeoning breasts, and pimples.
It’s safe to go back.
It’s safe to go back.
There’s my grandmother, with switches and belts.
There are my legs, all bruises and welts.
There’s Cousin Nancy, who thought I was grand,
And Grampa, the one who could stay Grandma's hand.
It’s safe to go…
It’s safe to go …
At last to a time, so long ago,
Before shame and guilt and the pain I would know,
A time I believed in a god in the sky,
And Mary Martin convinced me - I really could fly!
It’s safe to…
It’s safe to…
I lay there and saw this and breathed it all in.
I melded my past and purged away sin.
Love rushed in during a quiet, night hour,
And Acceptance took away all of fear's power.
It’s safe.
It’s safe.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
I think of you, mother.
I think of you, grandmother.
Only three castings forward of our mitochondria over 100 years.
I think past you, grandmother,
to your mother,
and her mother,
and beyond.
The unbroken hawser of female to female.
Back so far afore the scouring of mountains,
the rising of seas, the comings and goings of saber-tooths and mastodon.
Back through time, when at one moment we were something else.
Then, in the belch of birth... the human genome.
I think of that vestige of our inimitable femininity that is unchanged...
Woman to woman to woman.
Who was the first who raised her hand in rage and fear,
in this unique humanity,
against her daughter?
Woman to woman to woman.
I am the last daughter, a Y for my X, a son.
Woman to woman to woman
would stand aghast when I said...
I do not know how to love. Take him; I do not know how to love.
I tried, but I am the last daughter,
and I will not succeed.
Mother to mother to mother to daughter.
I do not know how to love.
I am the last, the ultimate daughter.
I will not pass our inimitable femininity.
I am the ultimate daughter.
I will pass abundant amnesty.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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Judy Haas Poem
STOP!
Shhhhh!
Not another word.
Nope, nope, nope! Shhhhhh!
Do not tell me what you think I should be doing.
Do not express what you feel is lacking in my spiritual life.
Do not continue to couch your prejudice of me as earnest concern.
No! Stop! Shhhhh!
Be quiet.
Be still.
Listen.
I do not believe as you do.
I do not perceive as you do.
I do not want what you have.
I do not need what you crave.
I do not long for your mores,
Your solutions,
Or your standards.
They frighten me.
I honor you.
I respect you.
I accept you.
I will not be you.
OK. You may go on now.
I am gathering my friends,
Collecting my spiritual marbles,
And going to play in the sun.
I’ll leave you with your god to figure it out.
Copyright © Judy Haas | Year Posted 2007
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