(Easter)

Easter Sunday
I sit on my end
of the couch, with
a cold. Sweating
in your double-layer
flannel shirt.
Two large pots of sweet
peas all that reveal
the day. And the sun
we had not expected
after 24 hours of rain.
The deck looks down-
right hot, & as soon
as I can I intend
to go outside `to bake
it out.’
I do not feel reborn,
renewed, resurrected.
I am swimming
in the waste,
my body cannot
cleanse away
fast enough.
The weight of my
life swelling up in my
sinuses.

I am Kapha im-
balanced. Because
spring has been
a cold tease.
And I have eaten
French bread with
butter. And candy
to calm my heart.

Kapha the heavy
mother, whose depression
leaves the children
scarred.
No amount of
permissiveness
cures it.
No matter how
many times
I let her lash
out at me,
or how much
the rage is
vented. What truth should
I try to hold on to?
The one thay says
I did the best I
could, the one that
takes a compassionate
view – of the young
woman I was.
Or the young woman
she is now.

The one that just
accepts things
as they are,
and as they were then.
That doesn’t need
to indict myself
again and again.
The one that didn’t
know that difference
was allowed,
(that took myself
at face value)
and no occasion for
defense.

I know had I accepted
myself more then
she would accept
me now.
he remembers
it was my divorce
that made us
outcasts. And then,
not the the poems
I wrote, but the
fact that I wrote
them. And the
controversial man
I lived with, younger
– an artist. Then being
poor in an affluent
town.

My weeds were
never pulled well
enough. The bills a
struggle. I took it
on, like layers of
clothes. A refuge
wearing all I
owned.
And felt the weight
of failure, at all I wasn’t getting
done, as I did
yesterday seeing
the apple betty
cooling on my neighbor’s
stove.
Instead of just
revelling in what
there was,
just me
and her.
And the way she
always knew
certain places
where the Easter
eggs would be every time
and like the clues
I gave
in rhymes.