heres' a poem for me
I have sat in the same judgment seat as my sisters
my sisters' are all a part of me
we all have breathed the same air of discontentment
we have all lived with the same people
growing up with the same thick air
sometimes you could slice with a knife
sometimes as soft as butter
and as light as air
the distant sound of 'grown up talk'
laughter as we all went to our own private dreamland
the distant smell of dark bitter wine
so comfortable
the world we knew
and so different from the world then
the little ones knew
when the air stayed thick and never lightened
the bitter grew out of the wine and into the very
being of our parents
and wine stayed dark and red
bitter and loud
and happy times were less and less
often
until in Barbara's time
they disappeared altogether
I always wondered what kind of world we were bringing the last two up in
where there was never light laughter and bitter wine
in the night
but the very air was bitter and nothing was light
I worried about those younger ones
without parents' to weave thier pasts together
they seemed like orphans
and perhaps they grew up as such
it certainly explains their present
the anger they both seem to harbor unrelentlessly
I do not feel they hold at me
I was just a child too
after the bitter wine won