Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Category: Haiku/Poetry

March 4, 2020

stripped bare

stripped bare
of unnecessary baggage,
boney fingers
and crooked limbs
exposed,
scarred and worn,
awkward grace awaits
rebirth

Dare I believe that death is like the reiteration of the four seasons? I don’t know the answer to my question. Nonetheless, I identify painfully with this photo and the words I’ve written above.

I often hear that life is a great adventure. It’s also a great misadventure of lows mixed in with highs. Things I would give anything to experience again, and things I’m glad to leave behind.

Today I’m grateful for photos. Simple photos that reach out with whispers of beauty, strength, and faith. Enough faith to keep standing through all kinds of weather. Believing and trusting. Doing only what the skeleton of a bush can do. Taking it one moment, one season, one joy and sorrow at a time.

When the time is right, the gardener will appear to usher in the next season.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 March 2020
Photo taken by DAFraser in March 2016 at Longwood Gardens

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March 3, 2020

Uneasy in my own skin

Uneasy in my own skin
Now turning on me
If not one thing
Then it’s another

I love my dermatologist
Except when the phone rings
and the voracious analysts
want one more piece

of my disappearing body
bit by bit they cut and scrape
burn and stitch so often
I can’t remember when

I was once a whole woman
Or was it a tiny little girl
Fresh from the oven
Ready for sacrifice

To the sun goddesses
And my tan is better than
Your tan even if it isn’t
At least I didn’t blister!

I think the poem says it all. Yesterday afternoon I got a call back from my wonderful dermatologist. Two bits of my flesh passed with flying colors. They’re not sure about the third. So yes, they want more. Not what I wanted to hear.

Still, here’s to outstanding dermatologists who don’t always get to deliver good news. Without them, I wouldn’t be the woman I am today. Not because of nips and tucks, but because of many small and a few larger patches of skin they recognized as problematic.

So…..have you been putting off a visit to your dermatologist?

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 March 2020
Image found at publicdomainpictures.net
Sunbathers at Tybee Island Beach near Savannah, Georgia

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February 27, 2020

yesterday’s dreams

captured by yesterday’s dreams
reflected in melodious ripples of
water, trees and sky dancing
just beyond our reach
we peer beneath the surface
into shifting mirrors of time and space
overflowing with dreams and promises
each small gem waiting impatiently
to catch the sun and explode into life

I love the haunting feeling of the top photo, and the way it puts us in proper perspective. It’s April 2006. We’re at Longwood Gardens with our twin granddaughters, just below the eye of water (see below). Trees, water, grassy lawns and blossoming shrubs are welcoming the best part of Spring, accompanied by the sound of cascading water in the background.

Since 2006, our lives have taken paths we never anticipated, and sometimes didn’t want. Nonetheless, speaking for myself, it’s been a great adventure. The kind I hope and pray our granddaughters and grandson have as well.

Thanks for visiting today!
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 February 2020
Photos taken by DAFraser at Longwood Gardens, April 2006 

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February 24, 2020

On a cold morning

Like clockwork
On a cold morning
in February
the air comes alive

Fluttering wings
and hopeful
wannabes
strut their sweetest songs

A maybe pair
of small song sparrows
flits from twig to twig
male in patient pursuit

While nearby
streaking through air
landing on a dime
and taking off again

beak stuffed with
twigs and detritus
a tireless common pigeon
weaves a crude nest

Fragile hope springs
from the ground
sending up small fireworks
of purple and gold

All seen in my backyard this weekend and this morning. I think I’ve got the pigeon nest spotted, just outside my kitchen window. They’re not the most exotic of birds, and their offspring look like awkward adolescents. Still, I’m won over by the parents’ loyalty and their remarkable ability to endure all kinds of weather without abandoning each other. All in my backyard.

Happy Monday!
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 24 February 2020
Photo of wood pigeon nest found at commons.wikipedia.com

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February 20, 2020

The distance between then and now

The distance between then and now
Boils down quickly to a handful of
Opportunities lost in translation

Heavy baggage dumped in swamps
Still unopened and never claimed

On-demand smiles of yesterday hidden
Beneath faces lined with sadness and grief

Moments of vulnerability unexplored
In favor of stiff upper lips and privacy

The openness of childhood and youth
Shut down in favor of family reputation

Yet miles of heart-stopping space open
Like the Grand Canyon between us and
old photos tugging at our lonely hearts

I feel sad and happy every time I look at this old photo. I’m sitting on the bench surrounded by my mother, her father, and her father’s mother. Four generations. The poem reflects how difficult I find it to become a human being. Especially when working on family-related issues.

Becoming human may be our greatest achievement. Not wealth or happiness or helping people all over the world, but the ability to become who we are from the inside out. Sort of like the velveteen rabbit, so that by the time we leave this world, we’ve become Real human beings.

Here’s to heaps of practice and a few great breakthroughs every now and then!

The photo at the top was taken by my father in 1944. We’re in California, visiting with my Grandpa Gury and my very proper Great Grandmother Gury (an immigrant from France). I’m sitting in the middle; my beautiful mother is on my right.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 20 February 2020
Photo taken by my father, JERenich in 1944, California

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February 19, 2020

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper | Poet and Abolitionist

Thanks to Poem-a-Day for introducing me to Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s poetry. And thanks to Black History Month for bringing it to mind. My comments follow.

Aunt Chloe’s Politics

Of course, I don’t know very much
About these politics,
But I think that some who run ’em
Do mighty ugly tricks.

I’ve seen ’em honey-fugle round,
And talk so awful sweet,
That you’d think them full of kindness,
As an egg is full of meat.

Now I don’t believe in looking
Honest people in the face,
And saying when you’re doing wrong,
That “I haven’t sold my race.”

When we want to school our children,
If the money isn’t there,
Whether black or white have took it,
The loss we all must share.

And this buying up each other
Is something worse than mean,
Though I thinks a heap of voting,
I go for voting clean.

First published by Ferguson Brothers in Sketches of Southern Life (1891), now in the public domain
Published online by Poem-a-Day on 23 June 2019, by the Academy of American Poets

“Honey fugle” means to deceive by flattery or sweet talk, to swindle or cheat. Click here to see the full definition.

I love Aunt Chloe’s straightforward language. Rigged voting machines and gerry-mandering didn’t begin yesterday. Nor did pie-in-the sky promises and ‘street money’ handed out to influence our votes. As Aunt Chloe points out, it doesn’t matter what color your skin is if the money isn’t there to fund those lovely promises. Everyone loses, no matter the color of our skin.

Aunt Chloe nailed it decades ago. Her words are presented in a no-nonsense voice that invites us to believe her and do something about it. Maybe it’s as simple as getting off our political bandwagons and taking a look at ourselves.

So….The next time you hear politicians making promises too good to be true, think of a flugel horn (profuse apologies to lovers of flugel horns). It may sound sweet and mellow. Nonetheless, sweet music and stars in our eyes won’t buy groceries, pay for medical bills, or turn manipulation into truth. Instead, the cost will continue falling on all of us.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 19 February 2020
Image found at Wikipedia.org

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February 18, 2020

Sunday morning musings

Sunday morning
Sitting near the back row
In a neighborhood church
Pondering the reality
That I am now one of the
Old Folks at Home
An aging white woman
Wondering what on earth
I have to offer this generation
Drowning in possibilities
I never dreamed about

A life —
That’s all I have
A life already lived
Partially grieved and celebrated
Now halfway resting
In this odd space
Called retirement with
all the time in the world
yet no spare time to be found

So what’s left to offer?
Just one thing comes to mind —

Smiles
Free smiles and maybe a kind word
No manipulation
No smirking
No hesitation
No holding back
No looking away
No pretending not to see
the child or young person before me
carrying an invisible cup running over
too often with confusion, self-judgment or worse

Smiles
That’s all I have to offer
Smiles that say
With or without a word
I’m so happy to see you today!
Smiles that reflect our Creator’s delight
in each child or young person’s beauty
whether they get this yet or not

Simple things. That’s what I can do. No promises made. No lists of things to do after this moment. Just a smile and a silent prayer for that child or teenager already dealing with the heaviness of being in this world. Who can’t relate to that?

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 18 February 2020
Photo found at pinterest.com

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February 17, 2020

February’s lightness of being

Looking for just the right words
To convey lightness of being
Descending through rainbows
To the ground of our heaviness
Bent beneath cares and sorrows
Though the sun shines brightly
This first and only Monday morning
Of week three and counting down

How do we live with sinking feelings
As friends and strangers known
To us if not by us wither and pass
Beyond veils of mist and ashes
Dying quickly as lines form
At the rear and out of control
If not out of mind and time
Waiting to hear the bell toll

This isn’t directly about the latest virus. It’s about how we get through one day at a time in a world that seems to be falling apart. Virus or no virus. I vote for rainbows and the Creator to whom they point. How about you?

Here’s to a Happy Monday, no matter the circumstances. Not because it’s cheery, but because this day belongs to Someone Greater than ourselves, who loves us and wants nothing more than our faithful presence. Especially when things seem to be falling apart.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 17 February 2020
Photo found at orcaissues.com

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February 13, 2020

At loose ends with myself

I posted this poem with brief comments a few days after mid-term elections in November 2018. Now there’s another election coming up in November, with large stakes for all of us. My biggest challenge today is to stay on target. Not just with my health and well-being, but the reality of our current state of our disunion. I want to ignore it, and cannot. My poem and earlier comments follow.

At loose ends with myself
Wandering up and down
The stairs of my distraction
Overturning this and that
Within my overactive mind
A clock ticks relentlessly
Counting down the corridors
Of tasks undone and words
Never recorded yet dissipating
Into a gray atmosphere silent
And secretive not yet menacing
Though the thought occurs
to me that I am being unraveled
strand by limp strand falling
to the floor of unknown reality

Unraveled. A word rich with possibilities. Terrifying and welcome all at the same time. Loss of control. Change of direction. Once-blind eyes coming out of misty half-truth and patched-together personas. Fragility unbound and hanging out there. Human. Vulnerable. Out of control in the best possible way.

All this and more went through my mind today. It isn’t just about getting older. It’s about getting real. Becoming a real rabbit, a real human being, a real baby. Not just a make-believe look-alike.

Here’s to more loose ends of the fruitful kind. Those that lead to something greater than you or I could ever become on our own.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 7 November 2018, reposted 12 February 2020
Image of unraveling butterfly found at movestrongkbs.com

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February 11, 2020

Outcomes predetermined

Outcomes predetermined –
No need for witnesses

News cameras keep rolling —
Capturing unwillingness
to accept self-evident truths

We have not administered
justice for all with an even hand

We have not allowed freedom for all
in this land of the free and home of the brave

We have not believed
Each person of any color or religion
is created equal and entitled
to full protection under the law

Nor have we been able to stem
today’s flood of party-line mantras
and childlike temper tantrums
from The White House

Welcome to Trump’s world and
the world in which brothers and sisters
now celebrating Black History Month
have lived all their lives

Thank you Mr. Trump
for this unexpected opportunity
to move beyond our current state
of habitual denial and fear

Now playing in your city or town
Every night of the week
No tickets needed

Several days ago I read a news report from CNN. It was about the farce of Trump’s impeachment trial. The message from black folks for white folks: “Welcome to our world.” Ironically, this is Black History Month. What will we make of it?

The meaning of justice has always been skewed against black people in this country. The movie Just Mercy shows how difficult it is in this so-called ‘enlightened age’ for black citizens to get justice. The so-called impeachment trial simply used the same tactics, this time to the advantage of a white male President.

  • a pre-ordained verdict
  • jury nullification (deliberate rejection of evidence or refusal to apply the law)
  • the judge as a prop, offering a pretense of impartiality
  • one of similar trials in which white men are favored

This is a rare opportunity for all of us. Especially, but not only white citizens. It’s still Black History Month. What better topic than the state of our union?

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 11 February 2020
Photo of Lynching Memorial found at heraldnet.com

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