Just a sampling of my writing.
I am not a poet.
Who Am I Now
Sept, 2019, P.Fern Phillips
I am the leaves trembling with the wind
I am the autumn golden light foreseeing winter,
I am the blind dog caregiver, limited by circuits,
I am an abandoned blue ball in the alley,
Waiting for the sunshine to dry my drops,
I am the framer and painter, looking for dreams
I am the model in the forest, my namesake,
I am the webmaster and writer, seeking edits.
Morning coffee memories, wafting waifs,
I am the story read and the story unread.
The hard journey hard won behind and
Very uncertain misty-seen ‘to come’s.
A meal three quarters consumed
Maybe More?
So many ‘no-longers’ not exactly regrets.
I am a slow stroll in cold mountain dew,
I am the shiver in purple dusk draw,
I am still the fingers fast on keyboards,
I am decades of body pain undiagnosed,
Slow walking me to much anticipated ends.
Potential bursting like seed pods,
Flat, strong, simple, bold, stone and feather.
And here is another failure, yet I thought it was good. This is the original. Each judges differently.
(The ink for the date on the letter appears to have been wet at some time and it is blurred, unreadable)
Dear George
I wanted to send you a gift but I read the restrictions on military dot com. Even sending this letter is taking a risk, hoping it will be forwarded to you. Being deployed oversees means your life is so complicated.
Your photo on Facebook is very handsome and I love the things you say to me. I wanted to celebrate the fact that we have corresponded for a year now on Facebook.
I had hoped we would have met long before this, thinking your deployment was probably ending soon. I even hoped you would see my home and love it and you might say something to delight me, like admire my design talent. Instead Facebook went down for a week. It seemed forever! I wondered if we would ever be connected again. Didn’t you? It seems like this isn’t working, our only contact through Facebook and the original website for those people seeking pen-pals. I am not sure you will send snail mail back to me?
At times I wondered if it was a scam, you hear about seniors being taken advantage of; that was in the early days. You gushed about feeling overwhelmed with affection for me. What army man does that? You wrote a bit about ‘the enemy’. I thought you expressed an exaggerated belief in good and evil. You spent time looking me up on the internet. Well, I am an open book as you can tell from the multiple websites I designed.
I looked up your Sargent’s number on-line, and found you listed in the services. I even phoned to check; they confirmed that you were stationed overseas, somewhere in the Philippines. That’s when I started to let myself believe. That, and you were so kind and supportive. You even gave me suggestions for auto shops and lawn fertilizer and snow removal. Then, if I didn’t follow the suggestion, you were ok with that too.
When I was tired of my TV shows you told me what movies the services provided for your entertainment. I made a pick list. I didn’t like the violent ones or the horror shows, but some were good. I was past the age to want to marry again, I wanted a companion, someone who would brainstorm with me and support my photography and my hiking. But you did provide more than that. I grew to expect more.
Until the day I fell and broke my leg. No more hiking for me.
But that’s when I started building the gift for you. I looked for the good in the accident. My hands still worked. My mind still worked. Recovery was a matter of time.
I knew you planned to settle here, and you would need furniture. I saw an old round table in the used furniture window and had them ship it to me. It barely fit in my entertainment room. The antique table was scarred, that gave me the idea to carve it deeper, use the knife marks to my own end, so to speak! The ideas flowed out of my hands. I can’t take credit, not really. It was intuitive.
I didn’t even know if you would like it. It didn’t matter. I just needed to keep busy and have a sense of purpose. It could be sold if you turned away.
I was nearly finished the gift when I sensed that something was wrong. You stopped sending me notes on Facebook. Perhaps you were just off the grid and on some mission? I did hope you were not dead! Perhaps I had wasted my time after all, making the gift might become a bitter joke.
* * *
I don’t know what made me answer the doorbell just now.
The pen still rests across the paper and the paper rests on your gift. The finish on the oak surface gleams in late afternoon sun. You are taller than I expected. Your voice, just like it was on Facebook videos, wraps itself around me. You are here!
I am celebrating tonight!
Your loving companion,
P. Fern
At first the writer’s group wanted me to present this at an open mic event, but our leader took exception to the idea of shipping a heavy piece of furniture overseas, and I could not imagine changing the table, it was essential to the story I thought, showing the progress of emotions. So I removed it from the presentation. Perhaps a simple word or two might have worked, so I added in the fact that the man was arranging to live nearby. It was a criticism that stopped my desire to read it to a crowd, but now it is a badge, a reject that lives in my heart, that I might write again and again.