I Still Miss You Just Because

You were not supposed to leave me
That was not a part of the plan
We were going to go our separate ways
Then in golden years be together again

In a different day and time
We would have maybe had a chance
But fate in her fickle way
Led us an impossible dance

Remember that mountainside house
Resting among the trees
Well, I live in it now
Though the yard is grown to weeds

Our parents thought we would marry
Your sisters did as well
They never accepted your lifestyle
Thought you would burn in hell

I never looked at it thus
And I think you knew this truth
You were more than that to me
In your death and in our youth

I will admit it still makes me pissed
When I remember you broke our pact
Then I will wryly chuckle
Because you were really a class act

You lived your life to the fullest
Drank long and full from that cup
And even in death you stay with me
My memory won't give you up

They burned you and scattered your ashes
Had a blow-out party to boot
I could not (would not) be there
To watch your vibrancy reduced to soot

You ever live in my heart's core
As we were when we were twenty
And even when I have bad days
Those days uplift me plenty

I hope you forgive me these lapses
Into what might have been and was
They come to me unexpected
I still miss you just because

~ Ellen Apple 06/12/2015

Thursday Throwback - One year ago

Spider Spider

Clear and Light

Tiptoeing in 

Bright sunlight

Skipping across

A leaf so green

Your day so carefree

It would seem


~Ellen Apple 06/11/2014

From My Heart You Can Never Resign

I wept for you this morning
Just wanted you to know
To work through your problems
You have chosen privacy to grow

I understand your reasons
How the world can be a mess
And that by exiling for now
You can heal, no more - no less

The world can be so distracting
And people, well we're mean
Everyone has their own issues
Time to wipe a few slates clean

But truth is I miss my friend
The warmth your presence brings
The stories we share from childhood
The way your laughter sings

If love can travel the distance
Between your earthly home and mine
Then know I am right there with you
And from my heart you can never resign

~ Ellen Apple 06-10-2015

Just June

Right now I can hear

Your breath as you sleep so deep 

The whoosh wheeze rhythm

A cadence of life woven

Your breathing sustains me

~ Ellen Apple 05-17-2015

A father's love for his little girl (as drawn by Roger Apple) : 

This picture reminded me of when I was very young, maybe still three. We lived in a log cabin that was located on my paternal grandparents land. There was no driveway to the cabin. Common access was via a path from Granny's yard, between the orchard and grape arbor. There was a small wooden foortbridge across a little creek. To your left was a chicken house and the pathway wound up a hillside and terminated at the side porch of the cabin. Daddy walked home from work and we could hear him coming up the path when he crossed the bridge. My sister and I would run down the path to meet him and launch ourselves at him, so happy he was home. He would sometimes carry one of us in each arm, saying we were like "sacks of taters". 

Another memory from that time, before our younger brother was born, is sitting on the side porch eating breakfast. Oatmeal, toast with cinnamon sugar, and milk. We had  a small metal folding table similar to a TV tray and little maple slat-back chairs. Mommy would let us sit on the porch and eat if the weather were warm and dry.

The cabin was actually built by my father's older brother, JT. He and his wife lived there until they built a larger home. The cabin was small, consisting of a kitchen, bedroom, front room and a bathroom. There were bunk-beds and a single bed in the front room where Mac (he would have been barely school age), my sister and I slept. Mommy and Daddy slept in the bedroom. 

Other memories from living there are hearing train whistles in the middle of the night, riding the wooden kiddie car on the hill and wrecking, and watching the construction of a bridge directly below the cabin that made it more convenient for our household goods to be moved across the street to the Myers house. We moved there just before Eddie was born. I was 4 in December of 1962 and he was born in March of 1963. This is how I know I was 3 when we would run to meet Daddy and eat oatmeal on the porch.

Once, years ago, I read a book titled "Unlocking the Secrets of Your Childhood Memories". There was a suggestion that you remember the earliest thing you can from your childhood, and ask the sibling closest in age to you to do the same. I called my sister who is 18 months older than me and asked her, and she remembered the oatmeal and cinnamon toast breakfasts on the porch of the cabin, just as I had. We agreed that those little moments, the kiddie car, the porch breakfasts, greeting Daddy in the evenings, were wonderful shared memories. 

How fortunate we are that we share good first memories, not trauma. We came up with little, but we had parents who loved us and gave us all they had. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The poem at the beginning of this post was just a short poem I wrote one morning when Roger was still sleeping and I was thinking of how dear he is to me. 

Proceed Now Most Politely

There comes that instant 
(caught unaware more likely)
Perhaps having convinced yourself
Panic was distant
Fear wells up and heart starts pounding
The sheer immensity rather astounding
All of the probables and possibles seem
Grim 
And you ask yourself if you can do this 
Again
Stuck in a whirlpool of swirling
Conjecture
Can one self-implode from such
Specter
As you have just conjured
Gods how you wish you were
Stronger
Drowning in weights
All in your mind
Yet drifting away on currents
Cosmically designed
Quick grasp a straw
or that piece of jetsam
The remnant of hope
or an old chum
Wait out the wave
Ride on the crest
Somewhere 
Some day
There has to be rest
Sleep blessed sleep 
(for more than an hour)
Desperately needed
Then in some manner
Still shrouded in mystery
The fear abates
The dark cloud is lifted
Peculiar and odd the human psyche
Crisis averted
Proceed now
Most politely

~ Ellen Apple 05/31/2015

So here I sit on Friday morn

So here I sit on Friday morn
Dreaming of fresh bread - 
My version of porn

Going through paces in my head
From sponge to final rise
Pillows on a bed

Fragrant and brown feast for the eyes
Dripping with butter
As sun breaks the skies

The mere thought sends heart  aflutter
Freshly baked bread
Reduces me sputter

~ Ellen Apple 05/29/2015

tanka 05/16/2015

grace defined in play
ballet of form in silence
athletes take the field
thwack of oiled wood on leather
personal quest in public

~Ellen Apple