Poems of the Season

I don't yet know how to attach a poem as a file attachment (not as a link) so I will try to put them as block quotes. These poems are not new, but I still like them.

COUSINS PEELING ONIONS

We stand together at the stove.
It's late, night, the kitchen dark
only a small light shines on our work.
The boiled onions in the pan still warm
yield gently as we peel away
their sticky paper skins, reveal
translucent globes of greenish white,
soft and wet, the size of grapes
some like plums. Tomorrow
we'll make the sauce my father loved.

These sweet onions smell like family
as we pull the skins off tenderly
and talk. Hands busy, our minds go free
in the timeless way of women. I've known
this cousin off and on for fifty
years yet only now we're working toward
a deeper friendship, getting to the
heart of understanding. We talk
of karma, reincarnation -- whether
we can talk to God and will he --
or she -- talk back. We laugh
like girls -- why not? The
onions do not make us cry.

copyright. November 16, 1998
Sara Jameson

* * Here's the other one, and I hope the formatting remains right [I see that it doesn't quite because my lines are long and the margins here are too narrow]

Poem Written the Day After Thanksgiving

Decide to open your eyes each morning, look through Venetian blinds.
A few remaining maple leaves and purple mums linger in the dawn to
Greet you.

Every piece of creation – the sleeping sun unseen in thick morning fog, the full moon
sliding behind bare branches at night, making the leaf littered yard look like snow,
two bright stars and a planet piercing the blue black sky – all
Greet you.

Celebrate the miracles: roast turkey left over in the fridge, pumpkin pie spicy
with ginger, family and friends holding hands around tables, all
Greet you.

Each day gets darker, yet strings of white lights line the eaves, dangling
like icicles, neon angels and reindeer grazing with bells and stars in the yard
Greet you.

Memories of childhood – sledding city streets and school yards piled high with snow
in those days, pine-scented Christmas trees sparkling under red blue green glass balls and gold stars –
Greet you.

Before you forget, before you let these memories go, picture yourself at five,
and seven, at twenty five and thirty, you at fifty now, the eternal
child dancing in your heart. . . Let her
Greet you.

Each of us here in Oregon, America, on Earth, those of us cuddled on couches
with purring cats or shivering on street corners in Portland or New York,
laughing with friends or dying in jails in any country, in any century, all
Greet you.

Remember each other. Hug and hold hands, smile and phone home.
Say I’m sorry, I’m glad, I need you, each of you.
Love is why we’re here. Angels are everywhere.
They greet you.

copyright Sara Jameson
December 2000