It is You I know

We are old in our love

on a Saturday morn

We have lived a long time together

We move in a smooth dance

through these familiar rooms,

all the steps memorized

from years of practice

even as we change and grow

It is You I know.

Kathie Adams Brown (March 14, 2015)

Happy Anniversary, Gus!

My Child

It is a terrible love

this fierce mother’s love I feel,

for my child.

She does not understand it,

my childless daughter,

she cannot comprehend how I feel,

or why

I would go to the ends of the earth for her,

I would fight to the death for her,

I would suffer any pain for her,

and wash her soul in healing tears.

She is my daughter.

She is my child.

That’s all.

And that’s everything.

~Kathie Adams Brown ( April 16, 2015)

Happy Mother's Day

A Seaside Goodbye to My Son

It was just a

walk to the bay, where

silver water shines, and

steel wool clouds cover the sky

perfumed with the scent of the salty sea,

today it is the fragrance of parting.

You are my son,

Tall man and strong,

I see my son,

I see my boy,

in the man you have become.

I am content with who you are.

My heart swells like the sea,

inflated by this tide of love,

these few moments together

before you fly away from me again,

a free bird.

~Kathie Adams Brown (April 25, 2015)

NaPoWriMo 2015 / 30 Poems in 30 Days

Monday Morning Aubade on a Spring Day in Maine

You wake me and I bandage your toe,

me in my night gown, you already dressed,

I put my glasses on, and shake cobwebs from my brain.

It’s a cold, mostly gray, spring day,

and the sparrows are filling the yard with song.

With my brief glance out the picture window that overlooks the bay

I see the tide slipping out.

It is as if a great silvery silk curtain

with eiders embroidered on its surface

is slowly and steadily being drawn back.

But back to your toe, the infected one,

I clean and bandage it

You dress your feet,

We have a brief embrace at the kitchen door,

then off you go to work

as the lemony sun slides up from the horizon only to disappear

in the shrouded sky,

while I grab my pen to write.

This is our morning good-bye—a tender routine after 38 years.

Tomorrow the details will be different, but the love will be the same.

~Kathie Adams Brown (April 6, 2015)

aubade-music suitable to greeting the dawn or morning; a song about two lovers parting at dawn.

Prompt 6 from the NaPoWriMo / 30 Poems in 30 Days website

Regrets

Santa Rita Mountains in Arizona 8-7-2010

I guess it’s too late to be a ballerina, lithe, graceful and pretty.

I guess it’s too late to own my own horse and ride wildly over the fields.

I guess it’s too late to build a log cabin, all from scratch with my own trees and on my own land.

I guess it’s too late to live in the mountains, far away from anyone or anything.

I guess it’s too late to live in Idaho, a place more wild and beautiful than I could have imagined.

I guess it’s too late to be an Indian princess and live in a teepee and wear a buckskin dress and moccasins.

I guess it’s too late to become a doctor and practice in some faraway place where I am most needed.

I know it’s too late to save my poor dog, the beautiful Irish Setter—poetry in motion. I let him down. He was my friend. He was my heart.

But it is never too late to sing my own song, or write my own story.

It is never too late to love, or forgive,

or to dream.

~ Kathie Adams Brown (4-1-15)

Rain Sounds

The rain sounds

So soothing to my tear-drenched soul

A rhythm

Beats on roof and sod

A song of my sadness,

Of missing you,

“Friend-of-my heart.”

~Kathie Adams Brown (July 7, 2014)

Letting Go

So much of Life is about

Letting  Go.

You cannot hold on,

You cannot keep,

You cannot capture or retain

Another’s soul.

We do not own each other—we must let go!

We set our children free,

We set our friends free,

We set our lovers free, then

We set ourselves free.

We must let go

To Grow.

~Kathie Adams Brown (7-7-14)

November Days

These are November Days,

Gray skies, unsettled weather, unsettled memories.

November skies are filled with longing,

longing for another place,

for the lost past,

for families and for love.

I feel that longing like a skein of wild geese honking out their cries

as they wing across the skies.

I feel that restlessness

Inside

and wonder where my wings are

and why I cannot fly.

The memories of passing years float up like clouds from the deep,

and I remember laughter, and a warm kitchen and standing with my Nana

While she stirred white pepper into smooth brown gravy in her farm kitchen

at Thanksgiving Time.

November days are wild days of longing and families and love.

~kathie adams brown (November 27, 2013)

Poem for a Boy Coming Home

I have waited for you with beating heart

Trembling with anticipation

Arms opened wide for an embrace

Waiting to see your eyes, your face.

How can you know the depths of my love?

I do not think most boys really understand.

Your boyish smile is the delight of my life,

Your desire to protect me is a quality I love,

Your striving for respect is beyond admirable,

And all that you are I love.

I am your mother, your grandmother, your sister, your wife.

I am all the women in your life.

You are my boy, my son, my grandson, my brother, and My Man.

~kathie adams brown (8-16-13)

Questions About Love

Who can explain Love?

How can you understand it,

This thing that grips your heart like a vine

Twining its way around all aspects of your life?

What is the magic that draws one person to another?

Why is it that opposites attract?

Is love a constant thing, or

does it die and get reborn

again, and again, and again?

~Kathie Adams Brown (March 21, 2013)

A Valediction for Trudy

Trudy 2008

Even now I see your face

Faded blue eyes shining with Joy

As you show me the oriole on your feeder.

Long ago you nurtured

-this bird love in my heart,

--this God love in my heart,

--this love for all of nature.

I remember the last time I saw you,

Shrunken and gnome-like

With the pink, leathery skin of old age,

Yet eyes that still shone like a child’s.

Oh how I loved you, and love you still.

I think of you now like a constant thing,

Like birds, and God’s Love.

I knew the last time I saw you

It would be our last good-bye,

You were 102 then—time had run out on you.

I hugged you tight while tears

streamed down my face in a flood.

I could tell I was but a faded memory

In your aged mind,

But, you still loved me,

 you still loved God,

and you still loved the birds.

I wanted to hold you so tight

as if my love could keep you

from the inevitable.

How is it that you are gone from this life,

Yet still so alive in my heart?

In the birds I see everyday

—I  see you,

—I see Love.

If parting is such sweet sorrow,

Then remembering is sweeter still,

And saying Good-bye is but a brief moment in time.

~For Trudy Smith (read more here)

~Kathie Adams Brown (April 6, 2013)

NaPoWriMo2013 Day 6 Prompt: Valediction

How Love Should Be

So I wonder if one can fall in love again,

is there a second chance in life?

Can it ever be as good as your first love?

and I wonder if I love again

if it is a betrayal of my first love?

Or, is my heart and my life

big enough to contain both?

But then, perhaps,

Love cannot be contained?

Maybe it is meant to spill out

and overflow,

and rush joyfully like a river

down the mountainside,

tumbling over stones

with a little gray Dipper

darting into the cascade,

hunting for water insects.

Perhaps this is how love should be.

~Kathie Adams Brown (February 7, 2013)

Reflecting on the Bride to Be

I only have one daughter

so this is new to me

the flood of memories that came rushing back

when she told me she is getting married.

Why is it that this grown girl

makes me remember the babe

all pink and new and squealing?

I put a dress on her right away,

My little girl with eyes so bright,

The day you were born was filled with promise

Of this day, this future,

This letting go,

This remembering of birth,

This aching love in my heart.

(For my daughter, Renee.)

~Kathie Adams Brown (October 24, 2012)

How Can One Heart be Two

How can one heart be so torn in two,

--between two places,

--between two children,

--between two loves?

How can one heart survive

This rending,

This tearing,

This ripping of the tissue

So tender and filled with blood?

~Kathie Adams Brown (July 28, 2012)

You are Always There to Love Me

You are always there to love me,
You are my soft place to fall,
I swim in your love like an ocean

Gently rocking me,
Gently rocking me,
Softly calling me

Home to your heart.

~Kathie Adams Brown 5-4-09