Musings and Misgivings
Eagle’s plume,
You dance on wind
And cradle the sun
I am drawn to all Fathers
Who rock the skies to sleep
Sing to me,
Bathe me in affirmations
So I can soak in them
Whenever I am parched
Yesterday my belly swelled with
Your starry smile,
Each tooth a Great Wall
Between your tongue and mine
Today I am older
Happy
To look up but not wish
To look back but not miss
Predation,
Only the empty nests
Where we left the future
To the birds
8/3/21
Did I love you
Or did I love my reflection
Fragmented/Split
I learned how to say sorry this year
I hear children are usually taught it
But I was never a child
And I never had parents
Sometimes I stay in bed
And wish for something unfamiliar
I plant flowers now
When I water them,
I remember to take a drink
You should see the house
Linda the neighbor said it’s lovely
Linda is lovely
Still, dirt stays in my fingernails
So when I hold myself, I feel grounded
I leave messes
Because I don’t want to be clean
I don’t want anything to end
I did love you
04-10-21
Decades of hiding in mirrors,
diving into deep ends
and drowning in drink one,
two, six, eight
I don’t know who I am
Do you hear me?
I never had the chance
When there is never silence
you create it
You swallow your tears and your dreams
and let everyone speak for you
You spend every waking hour trying to piece together
why you are now made of ammunition
explosive and cold
All you want is to be held
but you rip into your own flesh
until you’re unrecognizable
and you force them to tell you
what you already know
Then you lie down
and hope you never find the strength
to stand up
02-07-21
Sometimes I think it’s either Vice President or driving off a cliff
Chapped nipples and overqualified at the front desk
Or pantsuit and laureate
Glass ceilings shatter and
shake the steel shingles above them,
Still the world screams
“See! She did it! She is amazing!”
Yes she is
They are
They always have been
Passed over for a white man
With his trust funds and his racism and his allegations
They’ve all sacrificed their dreams for the good of family, society, self
Preservation
But you never see it
You toast a drink when they’re behind the podium
She swells with pride
Then she drowns in the pillow
1/21/21
The impetuous screeching of cicadas,
suffocating Ohio summers with
their cries for attention
every seventeen years
like teenage hyenas at Head Row
desperately seeking prey
in the shadows
of disheveled baseball diamonds,
dust-ridden and ravenous
We like to believe
we can timestamp
high noon,
radiant and thick
with promise
But we are all bugs
buzzing with life
only to wane at first frost,
leaving crumpled carcasses
and rough drafts
rather than legacies
7-20-20
Mouth running like mascara,
hair tucked securely in the past,
she reaches for me with dewdrop skin
though it’s still not safe
Rest now
He shifts in bed until his feet,
now thick with summer heat,
hang just out of reach like forgiveness
I plant his brittle spine
into a nest of pillows
like a baby bird and he squawks
Rest now
Wiping the lunch from his face,
I think of how we are all children
taking leaps of faith
even after science shows us
that clouds aren’t beds of cotton
Rest now
Fly later
7-9-20
A familiar feeling
A familiar tone of voice
It’s soft and even
As you leave a message
For her to digest later,
As if it’s something she can pass
As if it’s something you’ve already chewed
“Another one?”
Yes. Another.
Another kid turned man,
Cigarette in hand no matter
How many times you tried to put it out
Another laugh rippling through the cosmos,
Ripping through a family like heavy wind and rain
Because even laughter is a storm
Once it’s a memory
It’s all loud and grey and uncontrollable
And no matter how many times you’ve seen it happen
No matter how many ways you saw it coming,
You’re never prepared
6-15-19
can you plead with a knee
when there is no heart above it?
there was a heart below it,
that loved
that lived
that wept
as the world watched
another white man
steal a black man’s life
5-27-2020
bathe me
clothe me
steady my timid feet
before I till the soil
and plant my own garden
someday I will
bathe you
clothe you
steady your feeble feet
and lead you
back to the garden
so you can rest
5-10-20
Tired
the kind of tired
where even your ribs ache
from holding it in
I breeze through a cemetery
where dandelions push
their blonde heads
toward the sun
to remind us
that life goes on
Even though I am not ready to move on
I have already watched you fade
into the old you and grieved
at the foot of a stranger’s plot
I am tired of losing you
So I leave you here, where I can visit
and remember the times when your eyes
kept me in focus
and forget the times when
they pushed me
into the periphery
5-10-20
Gretchen Pleuss 