P IS FOR PASSAGES

I am not participating in any of my regular "features" while the A to Z is going on. However, Battle of the Bands did happen without me. I promise I will be back at it on the 1st of this month. However, I did want to take a moment and give a Shout Out to the other folks still participating. It's a lot of fun and I hope you drop by and vote on your favorites.

Stephen T. McCarthy

Far Away Eyes

Arlee Bird

Just click on their name and it will link you directly to the current Battle of the Bands post.

 My theme for A to Z this year is a wildly different, but very exciting, HERE'S TO YOU all month long. 26 posts to be precise. The most difficult part was narrowing down the 26. All of you deserve your own post. What you will find here is a post by the featured blogger, with traveling music chosen by me that complements said post, and two links. One will link back to the original post and the other to the main page. This year's A to Z is all about making new friends!

...as in Middle Passages written by Liza Carens Salerno. Liza is one of the first readers of this little old blog. It's hard to believe that we've been reading each other since 2010. Where does the time go? I cannot say enough good things about Liza. Reading her blog is often akin to curling up in a comfy blanket. It's warm and inviting and just so darn pleasurable.

While today's offering is one of my personal favorites from Liza's blog, I must confess that she doesn't usually write poetry. I just think this is such a gorgeous bit of writing, filled with love, and it makes me all mushy inside whenever I read it.

Cue the traveling music:



For My Daughter On The Cusp of  Twenty by Liza Carens Salerno
7/1/13
 

I see in you a 2:00 a.m. face.

Amber light in a wing-back chair,

The talcum arc of rounded cheeks,

Coils of love vining an invisible wire.

I had yet to know we all remain infants.

Even as we grey, life casts us

Into washing machine blizzards,
Snapping limbs,

Marathon bombs and such.

How to explain—

In some way, you will always feel

Two, or seven or ten or nineteen.

At eighty-one my father said
He didn’t feel different

Until he looked in the mirror.

Now I understand.
I sit on the contoured cushion
of that aging chair,
while down a narrow hallway,
you sleep folded into yourself 

like a moth turned toward the wall.

Bound now by compound steel,
nothing is the same.
But nothing changes.

I know only that

You remain every age you ever were

On the path toward what you'll be,

Your nineteen as young as fifty-four,

Twenty as old as my ninety-three.

Liza, you regularly touch my soul with the beauty of your writing. Anyone who follows the links in the blog are signing up for a little blessing. Who doesn't need more of those?