Poetry: Selections from Justine McCabe

Lament

Because

time after time

you don’t remember

Clifford

or the nearness

of me

or

someone

to watch over

your funny valentine

when she

fell in love

with her sweet,

embraceable

you.

 

Blame it on your youth.

 

Especially

when autumn leaves begin

to fall

somewhere over the rainbow,

and you teach me tonight

a stardust melody

so tenderly

in the shadow of your smile.

 

Will your body and soul

never let me go

in moonlight

in Vermont,

or in

a place for us,

Somewhere?

Lady of the Wetlands 

In the dying season,

a beatific lady

appears

before her

marshy flock.

 

Statuesque,

she emerges

from a

desiccated

woodland

home.

 

Unmoving,

she parts

the golden

rushes

nestled

around her.

 

Somehow

she endures

beyond

the woebegone

sticks

that

envelop

her

like a

lichen-tattooed

stockade.

 

I gaze across

her wetland

plain:

multitudes of

khaki reeds

cluster

in throngs

of teetering

long

necks,

silent

until

breezes stir

their

feathery heads

to whispering

chatter.

 

Farther away,

rugged cattails

crane

their

velvety pods

for a glimpse

behind

more

lofty neighbors.

 

My feet fly

along the water’s

edge

where

the least among them

have collapsed

from

cold and rain

into

flaxen tents,

bent

in lachrymose

devotion.

 

The lady’s eyes

follow

as I pass by.

Comforted,

I fear

this transcendent encounter

will vanish.

 

Why this

sudden

apparition

after

running by

for years?

 

Have dreams

of a mother

departed

flowed into

wetland visions?

 

Have nocturnal

visitations

from a carousel

of memories

evoked this

sylvan madonna,

hands folded

as if

in prayer?

 

Her witness is haunting,

a presence

summoning

radiance

amidst a bog

of sorrow.

 

She beckons me:

Feel the pulsation,

the eternal membrane

that survives

beneath us all.

 

Deus sive natura.

Appearing, disappearing

ascending and descending

 

Floating in and out

on a silky track

that moves

while

standing still.

(Silence) in the Time of Pandemics

silence:

please don’t

leave

 

NOISE

 

Of dissention,

division, and strife,

circling wetlands

of splendor with

civic blight;

suppressing

the music of

bullfrog

strummers,

exhausting the buzz

of cicadas (dusk-singing)

in summer;

smothering the rustle

of enlightened trees

whose dappling leaves

grow under

my feet.

 

silence:

please

don’t

leave

 

NOISE

 

Of combustion,

retaking the streets

and warehouse

floors where

fulfillment essentials

sweat

wage differentials

while maples and ginkgoes

in concrete containers

fend off exhaust(ion) and—

tremble, tremble.  

 

silence:

please,

don’t

leave

 

NOISE

 

That clutches

my chest,

seizes my gut,

and heaves

my body

in two;

that sucks breath

from

my cage

of panic (and rage);

chokes off

respirations,

incites palpitations

while

blaring

despair,

sorrow,

and

uncertainty.

 

silence,

please.  

Back to the Future 

I awoke today

from my first COVID dream.

No one wore masks.

It was Election Day.

 

The whole world

on a ballot

though they

couldn’t vote;

missing liberal

(dis)order,

no reason

to gloat.

 

They’re

wringing

their hands

like those of us

here,

with

Lady Liberty

yearning,

and

walling

out

fear.

 

We’re supposed

to be lucky,

perhaps even saved,

if we just

could return

to establishment

ways:

When

the planet was burning

and resistance

controlled;

 

When

bloated

defense

left people

starving

and out

in the

cold;

 

When

Palestinians,

workers,

and

health-

care

refugees

still

yearned

for

a scrap

of relief

from

exception(al)

dis-

ease.

Heartsong

It’s good you have that big chest

to hold a heart too big.

 

That chest that thunders

ba-boom, ba-boom,

and rouses us from sleep.

 

How does a heart

become

too full?

 

Did it give

too much away?

 

Did it shed

too many tears

for broken hearts

bled by hearts

too small?

 

Does that

swollen muscle

pump

too much

heat,

fuming

at what’s wrong?

 

Its lifeblood

leaking

heartache

for an earth

that gasps

for air?

Should your heart

grow

too big

and need

a larger home,

let it nestle here (where it belongs),

in the cradle of my soul.

Justine McCabe is a cultural anthropologist and practicing clinical psychologist with several academic publication credits. She enjoys doing play therapy with children, walking in nearby wetlands, and writing letters to editors, several of which have been published in The New York Times. Her op-eds have been published in The Hartford Courant, The Litchfield County Times, and The CT Mirror as well as essays in Green Horizon Magazine. Her poetry has appeared in Evening Street Review, Flights and Avalon Literary Review.