Treehouse
A treehouse is a dream builder.
A place where you can while away
the hours that engineer the day.
Study wild things like tree creepers.
Listen to the serene woodland songs.
Breathe in the estuary scent.
Forget the troubles and the wrongs.
Focus on the messages sent
by garrulous herons in the reeds.
Industrious squirrels dodging hawks.
Trees rustling to and from, a slow strip tease,
hallowing land where spirits stalk.
Unwary person’s heart stirring…
visions descend on the still soul,
gazing out into the green, meditating,
knowing what it means to be emersed.
Early mornings; late nights,
spending the tranquil moments
outside of time in the dappled light
wrapped in silvery contentment.
.
Somebody’s Nana
Inch by inch until she walks a city block.
On and on plodding
slowly over the crowded sidewalk.
Fragile as filo, a wafer
my nana shapes so
carefully to make her pita bread.
Ever aware that it could
crumble at any moment…
The slightest breeze is cause for the
grey, little woman’s struggle.
Her wiry frame,
leaning ahead of her footsteps,
vainly trying to gain more force.
Old silken scarf of a faded pink
she ties securely under her chin.
Ancient woolen coat that in her youth
fit well and became her
still lovely steel, blue eyes.
Now hangs well below her knees,
hitting her ankles painfully
as each swollen foot secure in
black, orthopedic shoes
pushes onward. Then
Somebody’s Nana reaches the grocery store.
II.
From thought to pen, to reality
a poem once I wrote
about a woman I named
Somebody’s Nana.
Today I spoke to her
on the anniversary of my first poem about her.
A voice rich in timber
not a pale, trembling sort.
Skin as brown as a penny
chocolate eyes smiled from
crinkled eyelids.
A peach scarf tied back her
grey hair not a pink one.
Poetry holds some truth
III
we met in the grocery store.
She was clutching a Sarah Lee cake,
and you know what she asked?
Sweet heart, can I bum a cigarette off you.
.
A former elementary school teacher, Catherine has also taught writing at Emerson College and ESL writing at Urban College in Boston. Her poetry is published in literary magazines, including, The Dawntreader, Visions with Voices, Nine Cloud Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Bombfire, Paper Dragons, Kaleidoscope, North of Oxford, Halcyon Days, Shift, Blue Moon, Jalmurra, Calla Press, Cholla Needles, Last Leaves, Heart from Nostalgia Press, Open Door Magazine, and Loud Coffee Press. She also has stories published in Proem and Quail Bell. Catherine is very passionate about adult literacy.
