Clearing A Passage

Clearing a Passage

Bumping slowly along a secondary road
through emerald countryside on a bus
customarily used for school field trips

sit countrymen, three abreast ladened
with lunches, children, hot livestock,
nodding heads, and through slit eyes

they see a girl beside the driver, sitting
with her back against the windshield on the engine’s
hump eating grapes alone, foreign and smiling.

Being different is the adventure and I
find pleasure in the rhythm of that uncertainty,
beyond the physical discomfort-

the heat, the wound on my right knee, that I am
much larger than the men, and thrilled
that my boldness and difference am found captivating, fresh.

An anomaly.

Looking rearward at the brown faces, onto the
countryside -- I imagine the day I might return
with a lover or family, leading them with stories and insight.

Solitude drapes my body and I layer it
with coat and hat as I wave to my boys
a good-bye and head out into the fall air

to catch a movie at the Plaza,
a reading and a drink at the Auburn,
my Monday night class.

Returning to house I slip through the shadows
kissing one, two, three boys as they sleep,
sit a moment to unwind before turning in.

I roll over in bed and through the early morning darkness,
see his shape, his traveled suitcase. “Have a good trip,”
I swallow, “I will see you in a week.”

Words and image by Lisa Murphy-Lamb, October 2010

In Turenne, Contentment

In Turenne, Contentment
in the laughter and coffee and plums on a sunny terrace
and the green freedom of a French holiday
with the adjacent rooftops that buckle then rise
again and the great valley beneath deep as a pleasured sigh
fills daily with fog routinely as a morning cuppa. I dream
a little of a sustained life this simple, this happy
gentleness where food and drink weigh
importantly upon our thoughts. The song is foreign, tiny
cigales vibrate as ivy tendrils round our table we recount old
stories and drink champagne by three. Our boys
tumble among the wasps creating their own stories. We
gather more plums and brew another pot and wait for the sun.

words and image by Lisa Murphy-Lamb September 2010

Coffee, he suggested

Coffee, he suggested

and so they met on thirsty soil

at a cafe (a quiet retreat for flirtation).

Across the table he sipped

the inky draught and she perceived

his delight

while outside on the street there

was already a faint chill.

She reached for her coffee,

a golden bangle slipping over

her wrist and a riptide of thought

possessed her mind

while she floated on the surface

of their conversation.

Her eyes wandered comfortably over the familiar

landscape of his face.

The conversation broke-

but she, with the flavour of Coffea arabica

on her lips had no great desire

to make him talk.

Silence, she accepted, was a part

of the general hush and symmetry of things (of them).

The charm of the coffee was drinking it together.

But soon, the early sunset slanted

through windows and across their table

and his hurried dip into her day

was done.

And so he leaves.

(coffee cup empty, quick kiss to the cheek).

She hardly knows what she had been seeking

or why the failure to find it

so blotted the light from her sky.

words and image by Lisa Murphy-Lamb

Portrait

Portrait

Not flattering or moving.

I give you an aspersion.

An overly exposed close-up.

It promises clarity

like a flute’s limpid notes.

Realize.

Its unsettled grace

crevassed

with provocative ambition

and a mob’s intoxicating violence.

I am looking in.

No magnetic warmth or magical allure.

So, I disorder the senses.

Like a skilled photographer

I embrace your stance

off-kilter

Prepare

for my camera’s

close eye.

Manipulate

your warmth.

Be rendered.

To the illusion that intimate study

reveals.

words by Lisa Murphy-Lamb

Interlude

Interlude

You came to me

in the night

midway

in a journy from afar

needing a place

to stay

for your shining self

and your sister. I have

two rooms empty

and only she slept

alone. Free

from repercussion,

I easily wrapped my

body around

yours, accepted

dream caresses

into the orange

dawn, slept

then awoke, expecting

you beside me

but with the dark

you were

gone. With the day’s

routine, you

remain

in me

reverberating. These

are the dreams

to dream.

Lisa Murphy-Lamb, April 2010

A Song in the Front Yard

photo by Lisa Murphy-Lamb, 11a Street, Calgary 2009

A SONG IN THE FRONT YARD

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

Those Winter Sundays

photo by Lisa Murphy-Lamb, Riley Park, Calgary 2010

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

BY ROBERT E. HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?