Photo: Julianna Funk | 123rf.com

Three Chimneys on Lilac Lane

Eileen Beha

If my mother didn’t have Alzheimer’s,
I’d walk up her gravel driveway,
lined with lilac bushes in bloom,
to the brick bungalow with three chimneys,
where I grew up.

She’d be standing on the concrete steps,
waiting for me to arrive.

We’d walk into the cramped kitchen—
room only for a table and three chairs,
the counter covered with freshly-baked pies:
pecan, raspberry, and strawberry rhubarb.

She’d claim to have forgotten my favorite
and baked all three.

She would not be lying in a crank-up bed in a beige room, 
clutching The Lutheran Hymnal with trembling fingers.
She would not tell me about her breakfast: oatmeal full of ants.

She would not look up, wild-eyed.

But even if she did, even if she did, 
Mom would remember my name.

“First Marriage” was inspired by New York City, 1975, a photo by Joel Meyerowitz, from the Howard Greenberg Gallery

First Marriage          

Eileen Beha

Fueled
by the steam heat
of fresh love.
Driven
by the power of
magical thinking.
In spite of
shadows of the past
pressed on our backs
We bought
matching gold bands.
Then Mom said, Marry
in haste; repent
in leisure. And
so we did.

Photo: Jeffrey McGraw | 123rf.com

Upon Reading James Finley in Cabo San Lucas 

Eileen Beha

I get up in the morning and touch my feet to the floor;
the sun rises pink in the sky.
In the distance a pair of flamingos honk, heralding this arrival
And I wonder:
Is this ordinary experience of an utterly ordinary event, 
this press of calloused skin on cool Mexican tile,
the mystery of God manifesting itself
in — and as — this very ordinariness?

I settle into a webbed chair, blue,
on the balcony of Pueblo Bonito Blanco.
In the manicured grass below,
the sun kisses the flamingos’ shell-pink feathers.
With inarticulate certainty in the pit of my stomach
I realize my eternal oneness with God;
the clarity of seeing something beautiful
and immediately knowing:
It is beautiful.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives my be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

* One Hundred Graces, as selected by Marcia and Jack Kelly (Bell Tower: New York, 1992)

An owl in the trees, Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia

Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver, British Columbia

Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver, British Columbia

Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver, British Columbia