"Those were hard things for me to come by, and I offer them to you for what they may be worth." - Toby Wolff



Monday, March 5, 2012

Tears in a Vineyard




She held my hand
within the space he left.
She laced her fingers in mine
and after this long absence of flesh
I didn't care what others thought
or if it was appropriate.

Girls hold hands,
at least I heard they do...
and I wondered if I had ever done it?
Based on raw emotion
I'd guess not. Not this comfortably anyway.

But she's a rare gem.
She really shines, you know?
And only God knows the buffing it took
to ease grime into such a glow.
Well...I'm guessing she knows, even better than God.

I lay myself in the tall grass
as it bent the edges of a vineyard toward this
empty shape, of what was once considered a woman
and by many, may still be...
but the wild flowers know there is reformation
and school is in session.

Don't know as I've ever lain myself in the tall grass
and watered it from a lacrimal lake,
but it was good,
like a good death.
A right thing. And so few things these days are right.

And when he came to find me
I was embarrassed, lying there
in the field I soaked.
But the grass stood taller, having been nourished,
and when we waved good-bye
I thought of life as a circle
and I, just a bend in the reed.
.
.
.
.

48 comments:

  1. Wonderful story of images and emotions carried through. Like this way of writing, following through with just enough being said. Nothing here to be embarrassed with.

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    1. Well, the older we get, the less embarrassed we are. Soon we'l be wearing Depends, and what then? Better get used to it :) Jus enough said, is said enough. Thank you Anthony.

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  2. Brave words, we should not be ashamed of showing and sharing emotion.

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    1. We should not. But I have never followed "should" as well as I "should". Oh, see...how it all breaks down? Thanks for reading Peggy. I don't always comment, but I so enjoy looking at your art. How long ago it was I babysat your boys!!!! Who would have thought then, that we'd be blog buddies?

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    2. 45 years ago!
      Poor you had to keep the boys in line!
      they loved you cause you played with them!
      Happy to reconnect and I do love your words!

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  3. yes, girls hold hands:) we should all hold hands and damned be the eyes that judge us.

    you fill the circle beautifully just there near the end.

    xo
    erin

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    1. I really was amazed at her fluidity to reach out. Physically reach out. I want to be that comfortable with other women. I hope...some day. I'm really not all that good with people...and even worse with animals :) I guess that leaves nature.

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    2. it just takes practice...we are shown by some that it's unnatural when it really is quite the opposite...and it's got nothing to do with liking your solitude...you are going to grow, keep doing things that stretch you, that make you a stronger woman, that reveal all your beauty :)

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  4. absolutely we hold hands, and we need to continue to reconnect to each other through touch. i remember one of my girlfriends in my 20's, my photographic muse and someone i miss very much having in my life (things just drift apart somedays and you lose track...), when we would walk down the street we would be arm and arm like we were ten years old. i have found my closest friends these days are very sensory as well and it is such a tremendous comfort to me. there is one friend who is, well, not a hugger, as they say, and i am lost when trying to say goodbye. it is funny, even when i have a really good client visit, if she is female and we have a great time, we instinctively hug. shaking hands is so...sterile. i can't imagine not touching the ones i love, that closeness.

    but my friend, so Many things in this world are right, not so Few...and they will disclose themselves, i promise. (hugs)

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    1. I'm a hugger too. But hugging seems less intimate than hand holding. I don't know why. And shaking hands is simply customary. There is little satisfaction or emotion involved in the transaction. Thanks EcoGrrl. Hug well received :)

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  5. Touching, Annie. You should never be embarrassed by something like that.

    Hope things are better for you this week. Sounds like last was a tough one.

    - Eric

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    1. Thanks Eric. How are things going with that darling baby of yours? The writing? Hoping it's all good Mr. Trant.

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  6. This is one of my favorites of all you have written. Stunning!

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    1. Thanks Liza. It's always nice to strike a chord somewhere :)

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  7. A perfect write, my Annie. My dollies hold hands every day. Annie Marie got a makeover...curly wig, converse sneakers and a radical dress. Will send you a photo soon. Love you, Ms. Poet-Thang!!!!! xoxo

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    1. Converse? Mini-me got Converse? Awsome. I can't wait! Love you too my Marion!

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  8. I liked the journey you described here and how you told it... a soothing salve and warming presence gratefully acknowledged.

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    1. Nature is soothing. I love the vineyards...as well as what they produce :)

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  9. I don't know if it stems from my upbringing (momma wasn't the loving sort) or the hard relationships I endured at one time, but I struggled with this kind of contact for the longest time.

    Emotions were something you dare not let the world see because they (the hard ones) found a way to use that against you. Now? I can't say where the turning point lay, I use my deafness as a visceral reference point - I crave every single emotional sensory I can get.

    When talking to someone I'll reach out a hand and lay it on their arm, letting them know they're being heard. I drink in all the visual details of how a person moves, facial expressions...and I will never get enough. I find myself wishing people weren't so afraid of physically responding to one another - holding hands, wiping away tears, making eye contact.

    Yes, hold hands. Women hold hands, we've always been the emotional founts. (Hugs)Indigo

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    1. What you say makes perfect sense (no pun intended). I have lost the art that you speak of. I remember my guidance counselor in high school. She looked at me so intently. I felt incredibly validated just by her eye contact. Made me feel important. I wish I could do that more for others. I'll be working on it. I can imagine how the loss of one sense would make you hungrier in the others. ((Hugs)) back my friend!!!

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  10. to be embarrassed is human. otherwise, you are divine.

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  11. Hi Annie! I like this piece...
    on to a defferent subject, The scourge of modern society...specialty chewing gumb. That stuff is rotting the very fabric of our lives, this affects everyone's lives! I'm sure you know at least a few people that have a regular habbit with the stuff. If you do...tell me who they are...I am running low.

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    1. Ha! I generally HATE gum. I only chew it if I need to get the gunk out of my teeth and mask whatever onions or alcohol I may have had for lunch. I mean I SERIOUSLY have issues with gum. There is a guy that we run into on occasion and he is, without exception, chomping madly like his jaws have gears and the motor has run off with the fuel. Every time I see him I am tempted to unhinge the damn thing with my bare hands. I don't know how his girlfriend stands it. ARRRGH. Don't get me started on gum.

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    2. I think I already did...that piece that I wrote was so much fun. I have a need to jump into the rediculous every now and then. Ben is good for that. I wrote to him on facebook saying I needed him to put some silly or mind bending pros on his blog and he said he had no inspiration so I sent him a blurb about a nickle in the gutter and he got his post from that, I just had to join the fun...tag you are it, you can be the gum chewer killer, a hater of the jaw smakers( as you like to call them while your ranting about the justifications of offing the chewers!!!

      come on what do you say?

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    3. I do have to say your words have been a balm for me from the time you started following my posts, thank you Annie!

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    4. A gum killer post? LOL. Maybe. Jeeze...give everyone a break from my dark and moody self. Well...that would mean I had to write about a happy gum killer. Can killers be happy? Ah...it's complicated, but maybe I'll give it a shot. Cool back story to the Chiclet posts by you and Ben.

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  12. Yes! Holding hands is one of the simplest gestures we do but it's the emotion that it brings,makes it the greatest. Lovely write.

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    1. Thank you so much. There are many simple things that I complicate horribly!

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  13. first off, this may be my # 1 favorite of your poems and ponders.

    #2, i am so glad you had a good day. how great is that. ♥

    # 3, i touch. i'm surprised that even most of my clients--women, men, children, hug me regularly. i am careful before i take or allow that liberty, but i'm always the better for it.''

    #4 virginia sitar said we need 8 hugs a day for optimal well being: animals count. i don't think trees do but maybe they should

    #5. i relate to your reaction to holding hands with friends. and YET, my partner is a woman and i've worked through that one for a long time. the only restraint i hold on to is one where safety may be a factor.

    #6 did i already say that this post and your poem and your day makes me happy. i like the part about you being in school. good that you know that. keep showing up, annie, you are a good student. yay!!!!

    love
    kj

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    1. Awww KJ...my truancy officer :) I'm glad I'm in school too. Thank you for your constant support. ((Hugs)) Does that count as one? Probably not. Off to find a tree....

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  14. I love this.

    It's a story about something mysterious, slightly forbidden --
    a kind of melancholic, nostalgic joy
    for something there all along but never seen
    until now.

    Blah, I don't know what I'm talking about,
    but this one is really excellent.

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    1. You know what you're talking about :) Your story is something mysterious, slightly forbidden and melancholic...and I hope Somniat will end with joy, but that's not always the case is it? Thank you Matt.

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  15. annie,
    there 'are' few things that are right...and often we will go around them thinking we saved ourselves some embarrassment..beautiful poem that just cut into a beautiful relationship

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    1. Ack. Why not just be embarrassed? It's a feeling. Feelings are valid. I try and protect myself from too many things I think, and then I feel like an open wound regarding too many things. Life is hard. I don't quite have it down yet.

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  16. I sure like a good vineyard. Appropriate for your name, Wine and Words ;-)

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    1. Indeed. I have not blood, but wine that flows the veins.

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  17. This is definitely one of my favorite poems of yours, and it brings up so many excellent questions: What is intimacy? It means different things to all of us, and I find the subject fascinating. I remember once holding hands with my (female) best friend (who dresses in guy's clothes, sports short hair, and definitely falls into the "butch" area of LGBT) in conservative Orange County. People started screaming. I mean - literally - SCREAMING. Shouting insults, screaming horrible words - and we're holding hands! And I realized that for my best friend, she goes through that every.single.day that she wants to hold her fiancee's hand.

    Anyways. Off topic. But holding hands can sometimes be so intimate, and other times so casual - I think you wrote a fantastic poem on the subject (and I love the "grass stood taller, having been nourished" line quite a bit.)

    Wonderful work, as always. :)

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    1. Complicated...yes? Tracy, sometimes I wonder if people avoid complicated for simplicity's sake. Or do I dive into complicated for the sake of murky clarity? I simply don't know anymore, other than it just all seems complicated. But I do think SCREAMING speaks of insecurity with ones own beliefs. When you whisper truth, it is enough.

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  18. here's the thing i'm thinking: are you okay if you pull a C for the day?

    can't get A's all the time

    this happens to be my lesson to myself

    :^)

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    1. C? I can hear my mother now. "A C is average. Average is unacceptable." Well, ya know what? I am average and trying to be okay with that. I'm not an A-grade kind of person. I'm an A-effort kind of person. And how does one be anything but that? So, it's always a struggle. But I get what you're saying. It's called Grace, and another thing we need to learn to self give.

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  19. Annie, thank you so very much for the words that you put on my blog today! I haven’t had a drink or drug in almost three years. The story's I post about me are true and some are pretty ugly, but they are in the past. I had some pretty rough times and now I am capitalizing on them. I am saddened by the loss of your uncle that is an ugly way to go.

    Wander

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    1. I have a lot of experience with addictions. Not my own, but others. I think if it wasn't for the calories I could easily be an alcoholic. I'm too damn healthy to smoke, and drugs are mostly unknown, therefore scary. I suppose we are all addicted to something. I'm addicted to health, like it might save me from cancer, which I'm absolutely certain will find me, because why should I deserve escape?

      Anyway, enough blah blah blah about me. BRAVO to you!!!! (loud hand clapping over here). Through our ugly past we can help others when they lose themselves within substances. Because of our ugliness, we have empathy, and can offer mercy, grace, light, and a hand up. And even saying that, I don't think of it as ugliness. Everything happens for a reason. Nothing is unwitnessed. If I had never have been so wretched, I would not have known that God is good. I'm glad you can see yourself so clearly behind, and so hopefully forward :)

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  20. Oh, how I loved this, especially the last stanza. Reread it twice, it was that good. Hm, yeah, nice.

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    1. I love it when the last bit connects with something else within the whole. I'm so glad you liked it. This was an awkward and heart breaking moment for me. So I'm thinking about what Wander said above about ugliness, and thinking our hardest moments can be the most beautiful in the sense of teaching and learning, and re-learning, and unlearning :)

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  21. A wonderful read. Thank you for sharing. Blessings.

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  22. Touch... so much is transmitted through touch. A touch can say anything... a touch can say everything...

    I hope all is well in the World of Annie...

    ~shoes~

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  23. Just came on board because I just found you making comment at Skylover, Kerry O'Conner's "Wild Coast" and wanted to see and read who you are. Glad I did because your words are wonderful and your diversity in taste of music on your other blog 'musically promiscuous' flows easily with me, also.

    Gracias for sharing

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Thank you for listening.