Poetry

Crescendo

by Joy Hilsman Thomas

My mind’s eye often sees things my normal eyes don’t see. That’s how I saw the little girl. The one hunched in a corner as if she wanted to fade into the non-color of the light beige wall and crawl into her soul. Apprehensive eyes scanned the room, searching for nothing in particular, except maybe an escape route. Her hair was black as a night without stars or moon and no night light, straight enough to make you wonder if it would surrender if you took it in hand and tried to make it bend. Her ears poked through its thinness. I could tell it was clean, though. Homemade cut. I liked her right from the start of looking at her. I knew that what I saw with my eyes was not what my mind saw in that child and I wanted my mind to figure out the problem and fix it.

That girl dredged up another child from many years earlier, before as much compassion as comes with age. A small girl, I saw hunched in the bed of a pickup truck with a bleeding dead deer for companion. The huge white-turned-muddy Dodge RAM rumbled at a red light while I sat in my quiet blue Toyota behind it watching the deer and the girl, listening to the beer-drinking men catcalling every woman-driven car that sped past them, the way drunken men do. A tiny bony body, blonde hair mussed and tangled, not washed in who knows when, her face trying to hide itself against knobby knees as she wrapped her skinny arms around her skinned and bruised up legs. Shame flared at me that day … hers, and mine.

Some woman who lives in my soul and who screams at times for no reason it seems, this day raged so loud my mind almost burst like a balloon stuck with a pin and I wanted to ram that truck and steal that child, take her home to bathe and put clothes on her that were not torn and dirty. Even with that screaming soul within pleading with me, I waited for the light to change so I could get her out of mind because she reminded me of another little girl somewhere else at some other time. Besides, she looked like death about to happen, or death warmed over as my mother used to say, and death scared me.

Suddenly, the little girl lifted her head and stared straight into my eyes, just before the light changed and that truck escaped in roaring thunderous meanness, leaving me alone with her words. Eye contact lasted just long enough for me to hear what she wanted me to hear, not with my ears which are always hearing but never hearing, but with the essence of who I am, have always been. She knew me.

In her eyes, I heard an orchestra … horns and tubas blaring out to let me know that she was made of brass and not of summer-burned and withered grass. That is when I learned that my mind and my mind’s eye, though one, and the same, were not the same at all.

On the surface, had anyone else taken the time to look at either of those tiny figures of nothingness (as far as the world is concerned), they would have seen the same thing I first saw with two dismayed eyes. Scared little girls, abused in so many ways, by so many people, they could not tell you how, or when, or why they lived those lives, even if you asked them. Feeling lower than a coward ever feels, beneath the feet of everybody else in the world, shy and downcast, alone and lonely, confused at life, and maybe even a little bit angry; that is what we see and pity.

That is not what they are.

My mind’s eye saw on both those precious faces, brazen: bold and without shame, made of brass. I remembered that we use brass for decorating, especially at Christmastime when love surrounds and all is well and there are no little girls in corners hiding or in the beds of trucks with death, depending on adults to keep them safe, to give them love and peace, pretty dresses and shiny dancing shoes. At least, we pretend not within our sphere of influence or protection.

We use brass because of its bright gold-like appearance. It is beautiful and it shines. We use brass for locks and gears, bearings, doorknobs, casings and valves — low friction needs that protect us. We use brass in zippers for closure and in situations where it is important that sparks not be struck, in fittings or tools around explosive gases. It is powerful, but it is safe. We use brass as the metal of choice for musical instruments like the trombone, tuba, trumpet, tenor horn, French horn … the brass within an orchestra.

We use brass for candlesticks. Heat will not destroy them.

I used to check on my little girls during storms to make sure the wind was not frightening them. They would often have either stuffed animals, or real dogs, tucked in bed with them, sometimes pretend-reading to them. They were touching scenes … nothing like the little black-haired girl in the corner or the sunny-haired girl in the truck.

For some reason, though, those pictures of my girls brought those girls to mind. I felt like crying when I realized that my girls were the violins in my orchestra. My orchestra has no brass. It quietly plays without the timbre of metal and, though I have always thought that was important, the way our lives should be, my orchestra misses something very important without its brass section. Crescendo!

As I would stand silently and gaze upon my violins, my eyes touching one by one onto clear eyes, clean hair, pure skin without a bruise or cut, something deep inside softly whispered to me … you are the brass; you are those little girls in the corner and the truck; you always have been; you always will be. Memories may play hide and seek for a time, and to suit your life’s purposes, but they will never leave you alone. You are their very best friend. They need you to remember them, so be their friend.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, music began to play deep inside me somewhere, far away in the distant places of my soul, so that I could barely hear it, but I could feel it. It was an orchestra, softly building in intensity but not in harshness. Then, I heard it, clear and true, pure and real: the brass section. It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard!

I lit the brass candlesticks that waited for me on my dining room table tonight, just to spend some time with them while I listened to the music of the orchestra and remembered a little girl so many years ago, who stared out a window and wondered about her life. I hope I am barely brazen enough that the heat will not destroy me. Either way, the crescendo grows!

Cracks in the Floor

by Joy Hilsman Thomas

 

Sometimes southern nights are cold.

There were nights like that when

he was late and she would cry;

when hearts felt weak and knees would crumble.

I’d run outside and call to God,

but it was late, I guess He slept.

While dishes broke and voices screamed,

bare feet ran down a dark dirt road,

past barking dogs and hooting owls,

tree frog sounds and rambling vines,

to my friend’s house with cracks

in the floor.

I’d sit on the floor and call her name,

cry in my throat, but not in my eyes.

She’d stroke my hair and calm my fears,

and chase the demons and pain away.

In those hard years we were secret friends,

but color was love and love never slept.

On cold, dark nights, the South’s still cold,

dogs still bark and owls still hoot,

frogs make sounds and vines still grow,

and memories break like dishes.

So, in my dreams my bare feet run

to a house with cracks in the floor.

“Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Joy Hilsman Thomas

Has your life ever been so turned-upside-down that you feel an unruly ocean wave has knocked you down and you cannot find the surface for confusion? You roll around in the gritty bottom sand, knees and elbows scraped to bleeding, lungs about to burst for need of air, fear scratching like a cat about to tear you to pieces with its frantic claws. You are lost beneath the real world, tumbling in the deep that seems to have no end. You do not understand what happened; it was so unexpected you hardly had time to breathe a breath before it took you under. You hear nothing; a silence so heavy it crushes. Someone recently commented on a “silence that thundered” … that is what you hear. A thundering silence that engulfs you so completely you are sure that you are dying in this warm, soft, water killing.

Then, as quickly as you disappeared beneath the heavy water, you are upright and staring at the beach and life, reaching for it with your arms, wobbly legs struggling to make their way to dry sand and safety. You … you are exhausted from the tumbling surprise that took you down, still in shock, still confused. It will take some time for reality to hit and safety to surround you again.

That is where I am today. Reaching for the sandy beach, legs still wobbling, breathing labored, confusion wandering around inside me as if searching for something to hold onto but finding there is nothing in me to grasp.

I have lost something I did not have, but so important I cannot seem to breathe without it. I did not see it coming so it hit doubly hard for that shocking reason. This gift, given to me during a grieving time and, thereby, meaning so much more than other gifts could ever mean, left with ease and certainty, as if it had never wanted to spend one moment in my presence.

It had come to me during exhaustion and worry, stayed with me through fear and confusion, death and loss and grief and all the things accompanying such a time in our lives. It, on its own, became the softer part of my soul, of who I really am. I comforted myself in its presence, grew stronger in its imaginary touch, felt one with it, at one with it. I thought it would stay with me because I thought it wanted to stay.

I had my back to the wave and did not see it coming.

It hit me. So quickly, unexpectedly, it left me struggling to understand what I could not understand. Suddenly, I was disposable, no longer needed. My heart tumbled in the depth, its passion and emotions flooded in devastating loss.

Good follows bad, turns itself to pain. I guess I am supposed to grow a little stronger but I do not feel that I will. Like in the wave that takes me down with it, I am not completely certain who I am. I know now, as if I did not know before, that I am old. I am older than I thought, in my strange young-set mind that kept me feeling vibrant and happy as a woman all these years. Yet, here I am, seeing myself for the first time. I must be ugly, not only old. I must have no meaning.

I ponder why it is we bother to care at all, what it is that draws us together, and sets us apart. I have loved this gift since I was so young I could see my heart beating in my chest when I looked down at it. Yet, the years have taken whatever it is that would have kept it here with me. It is free spirited and filled with worlds I cannot quite grasp, looks at life so differently that I cannot understand, but still I love. It must run free; it has no choice. It is young in a way that I never was, will always believe itself young.

I think I was always old.

Two-Timing Two-Stepper

by Joy Hilsman Thomas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0sKRpejEwQ&feature=related

My feet fit just right on the steel-toed shoes,

Tap, tapping, touching feet together,

Tall, dark handsome carpenter . . . moving as the water

Flows. Tiny body whirling, loving, learning,

Heaven here no wait for me.

Two-step this way, two-step that, now

Tap your feet and turn around to

Slide across the just-waxed floor and

Scratch the wood to make more work for her.

She saw the shiny, steel-toed shoes now rubbed, and

Took me from the huge, steel hands

To put to bed, despite the pleas that

Echoed through the house he built.

But, as would happen, I heard tapping.

Slipping down the hall to see who stood upon the shoes

My feet fit on, I came upon them, standing close,

Two-step this way two-step whirl.

My heart was broken half in two, for there I saw

my daddy dancing with my mama, quite

Two-timing his own child.

…previously published

Crescendo

by Joy Hilsman Thomas
 

“To him who is afraid, everything rustles.”

Sophocles

 

　

A voice inside me tugs, incessant rhythms

As continuous as a recycled old woman

Painstakingly tucked away where

Others tend her needs.

It has no words so I let it talk …

I think that it might love me.

It mends my nipped up heart and strokes me like

A butterfly that flutters by me so

Discreetly and so kind it might escape my notice

If it did not whisper love’s true light

With wind that never rustles.

　

Another voice is tugging, too, its

Rhythms harsh in whisper, be afraid … be afraid.

Reminding me a moth has moved into my closet,

Changing clothes and eating mine.

It has too many words to fit precisely

In my thoughts and so, I do not listen.

It chips my mended heart and slaps me

Like the bony remains of octopus arms

Weighing heavily … rattling howls of raging

Fury from the storm inside that always rustles …

I don’t think that this voice loves me.

Previously Published in ‘The Petigru Review’, SCWW Anthology

　
　

 

Blame

by Joy Hilsman Thomas

That yellow cat birthed her babies on the roof and

they slid off the slanting tin.

She bit them

took them to the gelding’s stall and

prowled away to kill their lunch.

Heavy-hoofed

horse mixed them in manure and

all she found was one hind foot.

Cat yowled all night,

reminded me of us . . . prowling

biting yowling

blame.

How you hurt was all my fault and there ain’t nothing

I can do to take it back.

Manure’s dry.

Chablis, You, and Loving Him

by Joy Hilsman Thomas

Emily

　

The two of us (entangled by this man who would not pay attention to us)

popped libation corks,

swallowed bubbles that tickled our noses,

cackled like old hens in hunger.

Unseasoned, fickle from the pulsing

potion that would slice despair away

you were my gaiety, chaste and cogent,

curling grimaces to lechers lives

of distraction.

But, truth slapped,

fury slammed,

time pickled who we were.

Animation suffocated in a briny mire.

He had swerved and left us there.

I hunkered on the rug at cockcrow

isolated, offering in remembrance

to detonate the cork

one night about

a week ago.

The blasted cork was stuck.

　
 
Previously Published … copyright JoyH.Thomas