Peanuts, Thanks and Memories

Lots of poetry bliss is dancing about in the blogosphere today.  The Poetry Friday roundup is hosted by the radiant spinner of words, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater down on The Poem Farm. 


Jama Rattigan has been celebrating all things peanut butter this November. I am excited and honored to be in good peanut buttery company on the finale of this celebration at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Go read mine along with the peanut butter spread of poems by Linda Baie, Cathy Ballou Mealey, Mary Lee Hahn Renée LaTulippe and J. Patrick Lewis. 
 
And Finally...
Teaching Authors is sharing the roundup of Thanku today. You can find mine and many other haiku that share a thankful theme.



The tone of my poem today is a bit less peanut butter, a little bit thankful and mostly a memory.

Not a Condiment

I have this bag.

We called it my mayo bag.

Mayo, but not for mayonnaise.

Rather, Mayo, the clinic.

When preparing

to go to THE clinic, you prepare a bag.

You prepare every documentable symptom.

You want every moment to be clear

and you want to look serious

smart and worth hearing.

When I look at the bag now I just see

a bag

expanded by fear.

I was so afraid.

That bag

had a hold of me.

Parts of me want to open it

take out the binder and file folders

the timeline of those years in my life.

I want to relive it through the documents

because I think it might make me

feel more grateful.

But I can’t do it.

Because I don’t want to relive it.

And I can’t get rid of it because

that bag

has a hold of me.

So it sits on a shelf in my basement.

So full it can’t be closed

only concealed by a large flap with dangling clips.

I glance at the bag,

breathe and walk past.

A part of my past that will remain

but is detained.