Artwork by Kimberly A. Laudert

My son, who has Down syndrome, inspires me in all things.

When your eyes
slip into crescent moons,
lashes skidding into shadows,
then warmly
moisture brushes daytime
from memory
from the room, now,
from existence.

Here,
while lingering
I am the tideline
to your calling
my Little Love, oh Tiny Bit.
You milk my sadness
and its sweetness.
Tears
blend the moment
into the waxing of a lifetime.
Yours.

When I lift cup, and tasting memory
am filled and flooded
between the time
and, in that time
in what it takes to hold your hand in mine
and mark the dimples
in each finger’s bend,
there forms a wrinkle.
Once a gaping hole,
now a familiar hollow
just beneath the heart
and ribs.

You,
now,
with covers tucked to chin,
thumb pulled to tongue
caught in time
at night,
as well as day,
I rest a blessing on your cheek.
I close the door.
I say good night.

Birthday celebration in a remote area.

I bask in the sunlight of promises
where warmth begins the day,
where lazy thin clouds
feather their way across the sky.
What golden bliss awaits
just out the window’s mouth
an egg yolk reminder
of Fall in its wake?

Bread rises
And I do
To sing in this first day,
Yeasty and full!

So words come gently to me
and
I welcome each breath
and breathe,
inhaling moments as they peak.
I kiss morning full on the lips,
flirting with each detail:
The breeze
as it swings in the trees
white pine stables, humble and green,
Sweet beets garlic breakfast
And coffee with cream,
join in the celebration of this
The first morning.

Appreciating the whole person I am, not just my disability.

“I am a human being, not a human doing.”

Disability

In the word
lies ability,
a contradiction
to its name
a truth and disclaimer
of the aforementioned.
I am and that is enough.

Sensual, sexual, sassy,
Beautiful, bountiful, bouncy,
a Mother Earth Goddess-type
who can dish it out as
she dishes it up!
Motherly, sisterly, friendful,
Compassionate and mindful,
A thousand love lines follow.

Words whiz by
On “pencycle”
And in principle,
Integrity rains clear.
Then, when beauty’s pansy-like face sprouts
tempered shouts bounce from
brain to mouth
from heart to tongue,
And I sing praise.
That is enough!

Finding meaning in life, even in the hard times.

1.
I’ve reached the edge
where “No”
clings.
Where a swill of
single malt Scotch
warms my mouth again and again
but,
does not relieve
anxiety’s mask which hangs hard and low;
A beam of solid darkness
A black hole
“No”.
Fists shoved into pockets of
Winter’s wool coat.
Cold there. Ice on the window.

2.
Breath
Leaves my body –
This shell for the soul –
a whisper
whose voice clasps
This life and another.
Bitter or not, its taste
Coats my tongue and for a moment,
I die.

3.
Palms flutter open,
longing for Oneness
fills my lungs and
bathes me in
the softness
that is the sacred circle.
Now
The question of who I am
Rests.

The challenges of living with disability and judgement from others.

Snowflakes tumble from
the sky’s mouth
as easily as lies from mine.
Not big clumps of flakes, wet and heavy
that drop,
nor those hurried by the wind.
Instead, soft ones, lazy ones
barely accumulating in the thin layer
over the ground and cars, yet
enough to make the world white.
Jack Frost has been here, leaving lace behind
and still I can see through the windows.
The truth is not bare, or sparse, or spare.

A friend nags at me
An hour running
seeing less than I have in others
in patients whose decayed teeth
she pulls for free.
Compelled to do this for me
she puts a face on poverty
and shines light on the man whose
cane braces his body wracked by multiple sclerosis.

I tell this story:
depression off and on through all my life.
And the Dark Ages, the Great Depression,
in which anxiety nearly scraped me clean of life.
Where sleep leaned heavily,
sleep like the plague,
tipping the day’s balance into six hours.
Where vigilance bore down my back
more than the wind in March.
And physical pain
that will mark this body
each day and the lifetime.
“I am my own full time job”, I explain.

Take less, she says, of my skills and resourcefulness
so there is more for others.
And I balk; this deficit thinking
makes me more sad than angry
as if the poor and ill should
live smaller because we are so many.

Can I live with myself?
Shame rivals integrity as its nemesis.
I do the best I can.