"Without" - a poem

I'm not exciting, not terribly memorable--
even my body seems to know this.
So if my face is marred beyond recognition
in some freak accident
and they need to identify me,
I'm letting you know now--
I don't have any tattoos,
just take my right hand and turn it palm up,
find the mole there.
That's my most unique feature,
a boring mole on my right palm
that's lost its pigment over the years.

This mole is the way I learned right from left as a kid,
like when playing the childhood game Twister.
I'd look down at my palm to see
if it did or didn't have the spot.
This became a habit, checking my palm
for any directional situation.

By comparison, my left palm is smooth.
I'm left-handed, by the way,
and thinking about it now, it's so fitting:
I'm not exciting, even my body knows this,
and though my handedness makes me a minority,
I have learned to identify myself
by the hand without, as the one marked
by the lacking.

--Ellen H.

New Assorted Poems

I finished typing up and working on some poems I've been saving on my phone, from inspired walks and at-home thoughts, from the last year. Now it's time to share them. Enjoy! 

JETS
Two jets diverge in a sky, and I-
I think of my father,
when I would announce to him at sunset,
after examining the wide mountain view from our house,
"It's a two jet night,"
for example, as if the number of jets
determined the evening's destiny,
like lines on one's palm, or
like the sailor's red sky.
We knew secretly that this was a totally arbitrary
judge of the night
but he accepted this game and its pretend omens
and that I was too old to be playing it at all
so now, as I see two jets on an evening horizon
and think of him,
it has real meaning after all.


QUESTIONS FOR BABIES
My baby likes all the toys with tags on them
and I told her that's how we know they're not real:
real animals don't have the tags.
I wonder if she'll ever try to check?

My baby plays with all our household things,
like zippers and shoelaces and my wedding ring,
which she twiddles with when she nurses.
I wonder if she'll have an affinity to that ring
when she grows up, but not remember why?


SNOW RESTS
Fresh, crisp winter snow
sits like a musical top hat rest
on the garden fence wire
but the heavy, wet spring snow
hangs from that wire
like the longer musical rest,
weighted down by
                                 twice the moisture


CHILDLIKE FAITH
God clips his toenails
and I can prove it to you:
last night I saw a curved white sliver in the sky
too thin to be the moon.
And angels have brown lipstick,
here's how I learned:
I have freckles on my cheeks
in the shape of kisses.
And I know my baby loves me
without ever hearing the words:
for she snuggles her tired head on my chest
and says Mama when she wakes.

---

Now here's to writing even more poems in 2018!
--Ellen H.