This Week's Crop

another personification piece:

The wall outlet screams in silent shock.

Writings on an outrageous thing I did, first in prose and then as a poem.

The kids who lived in the Berkeley hills rode the same number 7 bus to school each weekday morning. We knew each other, and we got familiar with the back of the driver's head. For no reason we could see, he usually parked the bus on University Avenue and stepped outside of it for a minute or two each morning.

I watched closely as he opened and closed the door for himself, and one day I left my seat after he left the bus, and closed the door behind him.

He yelled at me to open it up again, and told me that if he hadn't set the parking brake before leaving the bus, it would have rolled downhill when I closed the door. So now I know that a separate brake engages when the door is open.

I've occasionally wondered why I did that. I'm usually a goody two-shoes, color inside the lines, kind of gal. Only now, nearly 50 years later, do I have an idea. I've had abandonment issues most of my life. And I think that his leaving us alone in the bus frightened me a little bit and angered me a lot.

Step away from us, will you? OK, we don't need you either, so there.

-------

Abandonment

The 7 Euclid bus
took us to school each day.
We made it ours.
The driver, not so much.
For some reason,
he stepped out of the bus
for a time
each morning on University Avenue.
This didn't sit
well with me.
I studied the controls, and
one day
I closed the door
behind him.

-------

Limbs Dance

Trees thrash in the wind,
their green and brown
arms telegraph the speed
of the air moving from
one place to another.
They bend, but any
sound they make is
barred by the window.
Some moments
they don't move at all
and I think maybe
the wind has died.
Then the whole tree
shudders in renewed response,
and I sit inside
cozy and warm
and applaud.

_____________

I write because my mother and brother wrote novels and short stories. It may be a genetic predisposition.

I write because I can - because grammar and syntax and spelling and organization all come easily to me.

I write to cement my memories, so I can be reminded of them when they've faded from my mind.

I write to get down what I'm thinking and how I feel about some sticky situation.

I write to record achievements, accomplishments, and other good things.

I write because reading has given me such pleasure and insight, in the hope that I can do the same for others.

I write to leave something of myself in the world after I am gone.

I write because something may pass unnoticed if I don't write about it - something good I want to remember, or something not so good that I need to confess.

I write because minds live on in the written word, and mine deserves its time in the sun.

I write to encourage my friends to exercise their political power in good causes.

I write so others can recognize themselves in my struggles.

I write to make folks laugh.

I write to fill the many journals that I've bought because their empty innards seduce me with the possibility of filling them to the betterment of myself and the world.