Poems by Brenda (Galloway) Conway

Seeing

It used to be
That I saw through
eyes more innocent
     - corneas glazed with hope cells
Not so now
for I see that sometimes there is
no chance
for a happy ending;
no assurance that everything
no matter how brutal
will bring Sunday school good if you but let it

I cannot be soapbox sure
that it was not always this way -
perhaps it's that I was a reality virgin
believing in protection from pain
when truly there is none

But, now
I know no
sentinel - earthly or divine
stands between my soul and
the cross cut shredder of seeing
without wavering
for I have seen him step to one side

My hope hymen
burst by the clumsy, savage penetration
of the changer rapist
     - and I cannot escape the day
     - or forget, or put it in a box on a memory shelf
     - or trust my old sight will come back
     (and more sagely)
     with time

I cannot hold hands with today for fear
it might be a shadow
or a disguise
or a mutation of that
one yesterday

I will suffocate rather than breathe out what little trust
is left in me
because I do not know
that there will be more to draw in

My eyes, the same
eyes that once shot out like
sparks from a welder
to find the good, to find the why
now furtively
search for the second shoe and the third
(for tragedies are three footed)

I used to throw my make it better
into a canyon
completely sure I would hear
the echo
     - faint as fog sound or sure as a train in your living room
it did not matter the decibel
only that I heard it as I knew I would

Now I fear that my sound
is absorbed before it finds its ear
     - a swimmer with no place to turn and push off at the end of the pool
The hope holocaust is here
my death camp rages behind the gray green of iris and pupil
and in front of lens and Visine whites
I stand when I long to lie
thin as epidermis
between

© Brenda Galloway Conway


My Old Skin

To some, I suppose, it is like wet crepe paper-
thin and blotchy and folded on itself ...
but I love my old skin better than any skin I've ever worn
In the folds and wrinkles
are tucked years of living learning
     - some things useless to me now as a push up bra but,
     mine nonetheless
In the age spots and kaleidoscope complexion
are the smells of wood smoke and camphor,
the warmth of a ripe, vine strawberry and forgotten hot flashes

I concern myself no more with the world's pursuit of pretty
and am glad of it
I concern myself with hummingbird nectar, garage sales, lost reading glasses
and the obituaries
Like the mockingbird in August, I have neither mate nor nest to sing to protect
but, unlike him, I sing just the same

Seventy six years of world war and men on the moon and lovers
     and jump ropes and a husband buried too soon
hang from my bones
and I have never been so comfortable as in my old skin

© Brenda Galloway Conway


Winter Sister

Winter sister
her purpose and beauty overlooked
her landscape still at best
brutal more often

She brought the death cycle
that was the catalyst
for another sister's bloom
and another's ripening
   even though the gift was shunned
But, even she, early on
was repulsed by her hollow sky
frightened of the jagged metal edge of her climate
Not so now
whether or no anyone else is
Her barren limbs raised
in tortured beauty
Her bitter cold the very power to gestate
her howling winds the mating call
beckoning change
That she feels her purpose
and cannot help but see her stark beauty
is enough

© Brenda Galloway Conway