to clean for. Squirrels, front paws at their breasts,
and two titmice wait for breakfast on the deck.
A whole day stretches out, a meadow waiting
for me to lie down to read and write. I fill
the feeders with seed, replenish sugar water
for the hummingbirds, freshen birdbaths,
sprinkle basil and parsley. Easy summer,
no woolens or makeup. No bra. I wear soft
and sun-faded long shirts to let in the breeze.
Before July unfolds its warming blanket
on the day, I pick cucumbers, Swiss chard,
beans, last lettuce, first Roma tomatoes,
wash and sort for soup and salad, pull weeds
and water eggplant. In the simple life of summer,
my garden welcomes and gives, like the woods
in Sound Beach where my sister and I picked
buckets of raspberries and shrieked at dragons
landing on hair and arms. For days, my mother
boiled the jam and sealed the surface of jars
with paraffin, poured from a coffee can
on the open fire. No one helped her.
By afternoon, my minestrone soup simmers,
twelve containers to fill, label and date.
The day skates off on cloud wisps, sealed
with the wax of chores my mother taught.
The simple life is complicated, no time to read
or write until snow falls.
NEEDLECRAFTS
Used bookstore closing, I buy ten books
on fabric arts, fingers tingling to grasp
thread and yarn, needles and crochet hooks.
I yearn for the textures of fabrics—
silky, nubbed, soft or crinkly, sounds as they pass
over one another, tricks to make them drape
or lay flat. In thirty years, I've sewn nothing
more than hems on jeans, but the details
of smocking, gathered threads, and cut-out
work call to me. I drool in the aisles
of textile stores, love animal prints,
rickrack and ribbon, pinking sheers and pins.
In my twenties, I sewed all my clothes: A-line
dresses, polyester knit pantsuits, bell bottoms
and sheaths, spent hours embroidering blouses.
I stitched until the last minute, scraps
and patterns still on the floor as we rushed
out the door for Christmas dinner.
While Anthony drove, I hemmed the sleeves
of a wool jacket that matched my skirt.
I keep those books like scrapbooks.
Joan Mazza has
worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, certified sex therapist,
writing coach, and seminar leader. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming
Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam 1998), and her work has appeared in Potomac
Review, Mobius, Permafrost, Slipstream, Timber Creek Review, Writer's Digest,
The Fourth River, the minnesota review, Personal Journaling, and Playgirl. Her chapbook, Mom's Little Destruction Book, was runner-up in the
Permafrost Contest, and her poem, "When We Were Students" won the 1st
Skyline Magazine Summer Poetry Contest, 2007, and was published in A
Hudson View Poetry Digest, fall 2007. She
now writes poetry full-time in rural central Virginia. www.JoanMazza.com
