A Soup of Patience, a poem

Aleathia says:

I forego walking today,
my heart too heavy,
mind too full to push
this body forward.
It has forgotten everything
it knows about the laws of inertia.

In a silent house
I cook soup from my heritage
hoping it will bring my father's patience
to the surface and push back
the haunting whispers of my mother
saying “I told you so”.

The smell of onions fills the kitchen
and the warm sun falls on my back
as I lean against the sink.
The sky is blue and clear
and I am jealous of how easy
it seems to let go of its worries.
I have never been good at that.

But I will try again,
grow stronger and wiser,
to settle my mind.

To live in real time
with all its suffering and joy.
I can do this.
We can do this.
One moment at a time

Aleathia Drehmer 2016

Painted Glass and the Meaning of Life, a poem

Aleathia says:

We walked to the museum in perfect weather.
It felt like an eternity since we had shared
something simple but important.

5 years looming on the horizon
and I’ve forgotten who I was before you arrived.

I contemplate the significance of this
in the grand scheme of life.

Have I lost myself?
Have we grown too comfortable?
What does that even mean?
But I say nothing.
Live in this moment, I tell myself.

We look at sculptures in the white, stark wing
and comment on pieces we love revisiting,
take note of new specimens.

The painted, hazy glass catches my attention.

I am alone in front of it, my body a blur in the center.
I feel lost in the world. You come and stand beside me,
the blur gets larger and changes shape.

It is something new. The piece is new, we are new.
I take our picture, a portrait, I say. You half smile
and say nothing.

I am home.
I am where I am supposed to be.

Aleathia Drehmer 2016

Secrets, a poem

Aleathia says:

I rise to early to another headache,
day three and counting.

My body is no longer willing to keep
its bulk nestled warmly between the sheets.

I lace up my sneakers and step out to the brick steps,
the air is crisp, spiderwebs hold dew and empty lifeless carcasses,
the birds sing a morning song I've not listened to in ages.

I walk. It is what I do these days secretly hoping
to shed this extra body I've collected over the years
of emotional hibernation knowing it is as much a fantasy
as the end of this headache.

The sky is pink with clouds
threading a needle back through pillows of orange.

I had forgotten these moments existed.
I had forgotten my love of solitude amongst the chaos.
I had forgotten what it was like to live.

Aleathia Drehmer 2016

UFO, a poem

Aleathia says:

The late summer dusk
settles in around me,
light fading more rapidly
than I'd hoped
walking the trail alone.

Bats fly low over my head
as if they are the hands
of an invisible marionettist.

A song plays through the headphones
reminding me of another time and place,
so distant and unreal.

I'm distracted by the smell
of wood burning
and the fire inside my hip.

I am back to living this moment
before it disappears.

Aleathia Drehmer 2016

No Time To Lose, Poem

Aleathia says:

The house is scattered with silence,
a passing of air that used to be my comfort,
now fails me.

This feeling chases me,
the sense of loss
and incompletion,
and I've no where to run;
no distraction strong enough.

I read from The Way of the Bodhisattva
and feel like a charlatan
questioning faith and existence
living in a veritable limbo.

A line strikes me across the face:
   "All of us willing to move beyond
our self-importance and find ways
to care for each other are considered
     the Buddha's heirs."

I weep.
Everything I've forgotten wells up
in the heart like a panic.

I sit on the floor
with a lion's heart
and monkey mind
feet together
noticing how old they look,
worn and wise, hands
not far behind.

The late sun falls in squares
on the faded carpet, my love's
shirt flutters in a breeze
as I sit with the demons
I've run from and contemplate
how to make it out alive
and full of heart.

Aleathia Drehmer 2016

Part of Me, poem

"It is our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top"--Virginia Woolf

Photo courtesy of Chloe Drehmer

Part of Me

The house is dark and quiet,
my bedroom feels like a tomb
and for a few seconds
       I am not sure if I am awake or dreaming.

Everything is at once familiar
 but strange as if I'm seeing
 with new eyes.

I reach over
to the empty side of the bed,
remember you are working,
and feel alone.

I say morning prayers
and try to clear my mind.
I read a passage that says
there is no birth and no death.

Part of me says it's a lie
for I have felt both rip
at the sides of my heart.

Part of me understands
the meaning...
We are returned to the beginning
over and over.

How can you give birth
to something that always exists?
How can you grieve
what never dies?

I turn the Christmas tree on
and make the bed.
I need something to remind me
there will be presents and smiles.

The coffee brews and I sit alone
at the table
waiting.

Aleathia Drehmer 2015

Every Road Has An Ending, poem

Every Road Has An Ending

Early morning rain spreads a sheen
over the new blacktop the city laid down
this summer after digging gas lines
through the neighborhood.

It smells of wet leaves
and mushrooms,
of endings and church bells,
of memories best left in the ground.

My legs move me up the hill,
heavy and tired, but still finding
the electrical impulses to fly one foot
ahead of the other. I feel all my years
on this earth in the bones of my grinding right hip.

I'm surrounded by gold leaves
and the sun warms the back of my head
without asking. The hills come alive for a minute,
surfacing beneath clouds that threaten
more rain and this makes me think of you.

You who've I've not consciously brought to mind in months,
you who I can't find in my heart to forgive for both living and dying,
for you who has left me in limbo one last time.

My nose runs and my eyes water
captured here, sun warmed and heart cold,
waiting for the winter gray that will swallow me
whole
again
and keep me from living in the moments
that matter most.

Aleathia Drehmer 2015

Quills and Frills-8/9/2014 Aleathia Drehmer, Poetry

Aleathia says:

This is late.  You may never see it, but my OCD will not allow a skipped date.  I went out dancing.  Here is a poem I wrote this week.

Reinventing the Wheel

The time of laughter
has been few and far between,
life a succession of daily tasks
with little shift to left or right.

Never                        balance
only extreme poverty
of joy.

We used to swim in pools
of spontaneity, never worrying
about the future and the moments
after this one.

It was heaven,
the freeing idea
that each moment
was lived for what it was.

Somehow we landed
on an island and have walked
circles waiting for a ship to pass,
waiting for permission
to swim out past the buoys
into a place of unknown territory.

Now we have stopped.
We have asked questions
and relinquished ourselves
back to a new beginning.
We are reinventing the wheel.

Aleathia Drehmer 2014

Quills and Frills-7/19/2014 Aleathia Drehmer. Poetry

Aleathia says:

Frank Auerbach

E.O.W. on her Blue Eiderdown II, 1965

I live in a river of blue,

my body naked against

the light.

There is nothing more revealing

than the shapelessness

of my heart—

more frightening

than my expressionless face

formed in layered peaked pigments.

How can he understand me so?

How can he scratch out

my existence with better craft

than I live my own life?

I want sleep more than breathing.

I want to drown in this river,

in the contemplation of reality,

in the indistinguishable

melancholy of my face.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Quills and Frills-7/5/2014 Aleathia Drehmer, Poetry

Aleathia says:

Catastrophe

Mother cursed me the day

my tiny fingers

slide the spokes

of the umbrella

up the long metal

shaft, the click of its

mechanism holding fort—

tinny and satisfying, 

as the bright blue

water-resistant

parachute came alive.

She looked at me in horror.

What had I done?

Any number of catastrophes

would surely fall from the sky

ruining everything

she had worked for

in life.

The remaining years

of my life were riddled

with hunched shoulders,

a wet neck, and a body

full of fear.

Aleathia Drehmer