Sunday, November 23, 2014

Continuity



On entering, we are assailed by the smells:
sausage and sage, butter, brown sugar,
cinnamon …
commingling, tempting;
then the warmth
oven on long before dawn,
steam rising from various sized pots…
not to mention body heat—
for everyone gathers here in this room.
Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole
echo from the wooden console radio
in the next room,
two sisters croon out their favorites;
a third—younger—swoons, exclaiming once again
how she “loves that skinny Italian boy from Jersey.”
A cacophony of voices and laughter
rise and fall.
The house becomes a budding entity
breathing,  beating with the life
of those gathered here…

We carry these images from our past...
family, friends, gatherings
spinning together as one.
Defining; reminding where we come from,
who we are
...and we pass it forward
to our children,
this gift of unconditional love
in a place we call ‘home.’

©  Ginny Brannan 2014

Family photo, 1956. 

Shared: dVerse Poets Meeting the Bar: Thanksgiving Turkey with a side of Poetry
Also honored to have it shared here by Women's Spiritual Poetry

The image is my family: towards the back Aunt Jane on the left; then my mom, with her back to us, stylin' as always; then Aunt Mary and Aunt Rose, to the far right peaking in with glasses I believe is my Aunt "Butch"(Bernadette); in the foreground leaning over I believe is my Italian grandfather, that baby on the lap, that would be me, not sure in whose lap but it could be Aunt Ginny or one of my dad's sisters. I remember so many Christmases of my childhood, tradition to stop at Aunt Mary's house after church (she lived across the street from the church!). Her stereo would be on playing all the holiday favorites. The reference to "that boy in NJ" is for my Aunt Gin, who adored Frank Sinatra! My mom passed when I was seven, this photo a freeze-framed memory of a very special time.

Monday, November 10, 2014

A Good Man Goes to War

How soft the scarlet petals fall
upon the pale and ashen ground
a shock of red against steel gray
a bit of green naivete’
…we watch the tin men falling down.

Crimson stains on barren earth,
shattered limbs and splintered bone…
only trunks where once life stood;
screams inscribed in human blood,
forgotten names now etched in stone.

On fallow ground the seeds are sown,
on vermins’ back  discourse is spread,
in ignorance disease is grown…
At what price for a name renown
or victory tallied by the dead?

Underneath a pewter sky
still echoing  from engine’s drone,
deep sanguine petals gather ‘round
the young man lying on the ground…
he closes eyes and journeys home.


©  Ginny Brannan 2014

Image courtesy Tess Kincaid/Magpie Tales

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Fence Posts

Image C. Parant, Appetite for Photos, shared with expressed written consent.















On pale November morn,
we listen to the cadence of our footfalls
as they rustle dry leaves
along this old familiar pathway.
We speak in cryptograms,
as we tick the weathered
fence posts of our years.
We pause a moment to linger
in this judgment-free zone,
as we walk familiar path
on this pale November morn.

© Ginny Brannan 2014