MoonStain poetry by Ronda Miller
Meadowlark (an imprint of Chasing Tigers Press) meadowlark-books.com P.O. Box 333, Emporia, KS 66801
Copyright Š 2015 Ronda Miller Original Cover Concept: Gordon Kessler Moon Photography: Roy Beckemeyer & Tracy Million Simmons All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0692434666 (Meadowlark) ISBN-10: 0692434666
MoonStain poetry by Ronda Miller
For Vardaman, Apollonia, Jena and Scott - the present and future.
For Lee and Doris Amsberry, may the moon continue to light the path toward all things beautiful.
It isn’t so much about my life as it is allowing myself to have the experiences in which I meet the poems I’m supposed to write. Ronda Miller
MoonStain - i
Table of Contents Blood Moon................................................................. 1 MoonStain ........................................................ 3 Stone Eyed Cold Girl ....................................... 4 What My Mother Didn’t Teach Me ................. 5 Where High Plains Meet Heaven ..................... 7 Creek Play ........................................................ 8 The Year I Went Missing ............................... 10 out of the walls ............................................... 11 Mama Slam .................................................... 13 New Moon ................................................................. 15 Alma Walks Alone ......................................... 17 Barns Don’t Die ............................................. 18 Winter Witch .................................................. 19 Spring Storm .................................................. 20 Phoenix .......................................................... 21 Unspoken Bonds ............................................ 23 Gathering Firewood ....................................... 24 Goodnight My Friends, Goodnight ................ 25 In the Street .................................................... 26 Charlie ............................................................ 27 Ballerina #4 in E Minor ................................. 29 Moon Shadows ......................................................... 31 When MS ....................................................... 33 Embrace ......................................................... 34 Signature Touch ............................................. 35 Spanish Moss ................................................. 36 whose lost child.............................................. 37 untampered untouched ................................... 38 Moonbeams ............................................................... 39 poetry you have to ....................................... 41 jazz sex soup .................................................. 42 vein within ..................................................... 43 a thunder......................................................... 44 falling feather ................................................. 45 desire .............................................................. 46 eucalyptus tree ............................................... 47
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adrift ............................................................... 48 focus ............................................................... 49 for he who lies ................................................ 50 odalisque ......................................................... 51 gifts of love ..................................................... 52 haiku ............................................................... 53 Full Moon .................................................................. 55 Man in the Moon ............................................ 57 Camel Coat ..................................................... 58 Weighing ........................................................ 59 Creative Comeback ........................................ 61 Our Family ..................................................... 62 Murmuration ................................................... 63 Wherever Wind .............................................. 64 Farmers Only .................................................. 65 Be...Still .......................................................... 66 Passages .......................................................... 67 I am the Writer ............................................... 68 Follow the Call ............................................... 69 Coats and Friends ........................................... 70 Cultural Sisters ............................................... 71 A Quiet Man ................................................... 72 One Slip Up .................................................... 73 Morning Dove Aviso ...................................... 75 Lite House ...................................................... 76 Tell God Hi ..................................................... 77 Nor’ Easter ..................................................... 78 Meeting Noah ................................................. 79 I am My Home ............................................... 81 Publication Notes ....................................................... 83 About the Poet ............................................................ 85 Note from Ronda ........................................................ 87 Appreciations .............................................................. 89
MoonStain - iii
MoonStain begins in a barn where a child whose mother has committed suicide nestles in the hay next to a stillborn calf, wraps her arms around the calf’s neck. This is the key to the book—the narrator’s longing for connection—to the earth, to lovers and friends, to herself. Sometimes the search dead-ends in substance abuse and self-destructive sex. But sometimes the search leads to awakening— the power of language to help us understand ourselves, the role of nature as a guide to the same understanding without recourse to language, the truth that illness and mortality can strengthen us, and the fact that being a friend leads to friendship. Throughout, the poems suggest that it is possible to face adversity with dignity and to find equilibrium no matter how difficult our past circumstances. David Romtvedt, Wyoming Poet Laureate National Poetry Series Award, A Flower whose Name I do Not Know
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En MoonStain los versos cambian, como la luna, a veces reflejanluz turbulenta, otras pequeños haces de armoniosos ritmos poéticos. Ronda Miller se hace una con la luna, canaliza y celebra a través de su poesía lo femenino, lo oscuro, la pasión, las sombras, el deseo y el amor. Mas también el aquí y el ahora, los temas de cada día, los recuerdo, y con su poesía, palabra sagrada para la eternidad, en un proceso catártico se cura y renace. In MoonStain, verses change as the moon; they sometimes reflect turbulent light, other small rays of harmonic, poetic rhythms. Ronda Miller becomes one with the moon, channeling and celebrating what is feminine, dark, passion, shadows, desire, and love. What is more, Miller channels and celebrates the here and now, every day themes, memories. And within her poetry, sacred word for eternity, she heals herself and is reborn. Xánath Caraza – Award winning author of the International Latino Book Awards and author of Syllables of Wind / Sílabas deViento
MoonStain - v
In the first and title poem of this collection, MoonStain, Ronda Miller writes of discovering a stillborn calf in the barn. In the second poem she writes, “I am the stone-eyed cold girl cursing her mom for dying.” Her book ends, too, with death, the death of a friend’s son, Noah, who died after only 4 days. She has the poet’s eye for a striking detail: “Two dinosaurs/adorn the front of his headstone.” But this is a book more about regeneration than death, as she is filled by the spirit of her native Kansas prairie: “Let me lie in the/mud, feel the pelt of fresh summer rain,/rejoice as I race beside tumbleweed.” This collection of poems is a journey in which she is trying to escape the hurt of her mother’s suicide and other trauma, until she can write near the end, “I am my home,/I keep house with my heart.” She finds life in the prairie, in her friends, in lovers, in family, and in her writing that connects her with everything: “I think of poetry . . . how it soothes and heals,/invigorates . . .” Brian Daldorph, Publisher and Editor, Coal City Review
vi - Ronda Miller
Ronda Miller harnesses the wild weather of prairie, both internal and eternal, to explore the expansive mystery of the prairie, the roots of grief, and the infinity of homecoming. She writes of “Life’s motion rocking me back to this land I love/ where earth meets heaven...�, the intimacy of touch, the surprise of thunder, lost children, anger set free, a camel coat, the man in the moon and many other landings into the stark, tender and outrageous life that springs up, even against all odds, around and within us. This is a strong collection of poetry, full of originality, daring and its own kind of music. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, 2009-2013 Kansas Poet Laureate
Blood Moon
MoonStain - 3
MoonStain Barn doors pushed shut an indication something worth investigating was within. It took all my strength to open, slide to close again. New birth in pungent urgency led me to the stillborn calf quite warm. I nestled in the hay beside it, placed my arms around its neck. I knew what death was—had heard whispers of my mother’s not long before. I could hear the mother cow’s loud bawling from outside the back barn door. I felt the spirit of the calf lift, swirl around me, disappear. It grew cold; I felt damp fear. I sat in the caliginous stall until my sister came, took my hand, ran with me past my grandmother’s blood moon lit garden of hollyhocks, iris, strawberries, rhubarb, past the spot where a rattler soaked up water from a sprinkler one August day, past the rotted elm where winged fire ants swarmed in balls before they tumbled to the ground. We opened the rusted screen door, tiptoed to bed where I lay crying, because it felt so wondrous, because it felt so good, until the moonstain no longer spread across the floor.
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Stone Eyed Cold Girl Between you, me, the universe… I fear I shall go mad! Still, stars spin their course... I spin mine. I’m the stone eyed cold girl cursing her mom for dying. No bullet sounds, artery to bone to brain to farmer’s wife, under the harvest moon. The crash of cymbals as crescendos on my skin…. Shooting stars surround until I vibrate from their tone. No truths to behold; just a farmer mourning ashes turned to grain to burnt toast. Seed carried, blood stained prairie dust settles, waits to create anew.
Stitch a wing from cardinal to owl to make the switch… disjointed yet alive. I’m an open wound….breathe me back to life.
MoonStain - 5
What My Mother Didn’t Teach Me, I Learned from the Prairie My initial roots were shallow, they had no place to root or grow. I tried once, then again praying it could be so. There was no bosom to rest my head nor covers with which to make a bed. I was a seedling, transplanted here, then there, feeling so alone. Then one evening, down by the Arikaree Breaks, the prairie spoke to me, this is what she said. “The seed to life lives within you. The prairie wind has all you need of touch. Run with it, not against it, you don’t have to be so tough. The wind will caress you, bring sensation to your life. The prairie offers grasses, berries, mammals, all you need to thrive. Prairie creeks run deep, bring crystal waters to refresh your soul, it is thirsty for so much. Notice the colors that surround you, they are a prairie rainbow show. The yarrow brings you gaiety, the thistle hardiness, native grasses spontaneity, feel the tickle of their touch. Find freedom in the tumbleweeds, they teach you how to roam. No constraints
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to bind you, the prairie soil is Harahey loam. Mother Earth will hold you, she rocks you as we speak. Every step you take plants roots deep. You grow through memories, through all of those you love. Your words spread as seedlings, your tears like rain from above.” I dusted off my blue jeans, but before climbing to my feet, I kissed the prairie soil beneath them, Lord, it smelled so sweet. I heard the meadowlark, trickling water in the creek, the wind soothed my fears. I believed what I’d been told. Then I heard this whisper, “You’ve never been alone, the prairie is your home.” _______________________ Arikaree Breaks: a section of dry, rough terrain in northwest Kansas, carved by water, forming a break of rough terrain between the plains of NW Kansas and eastern Colorado Harahey: a traditional Wichita Indian term for “Pawnee Indian” Harahey Loam/Harney Loam Silt: the unique soil type found on almost 4 million acres in 26 west-central Kansas counties.
MoonStain - 7
Where High Plains Meet Heaven An owl’s head swivels in anticipation of a kill. His cry makes my heart stop, reset, breathing begin anew; rebirth of an era past. Pull up the telephone poles, throw them aside, unwanted and unneeded. Rip out massive windmills that stomp as aliens across our land. Toss cell phones into outdoor toilets sitting in abandoned back yards; cousin kin to rusted swing sets. Tractor and push pedal rocket tricycles long for screams of delight. Growing children, sweaty skin burned red by a sun that never stops shining until rain pours down, eagerly await, gleeful shouts mingle with drowning birds, hedge apple sized hail. Gnarled barbed branches loosened by constant howl of wind. Life’s motion rocking me back to this land I love where earth meets heaven, whispers birth, smells of life, stinks of death among the rustle of corn silk. Over ripened wheat as ready to burst toward a new beginning as I was all those years ago. Let me lie in the mud, feel the pelt of fresh summer rain, rejoice as I race beside tumbleweed. Wind catches in my chest like a sob, reaches deep and pulls my soul among the creak and moan of swaying trees. Listen, as it whispers where the high plains meet heaven.
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Creek Play If you look closely, small freckled limbs, not yet diagnosed with MS, make their way boldly up a dusty hill once mountainous in size. A creek, both deep and dry, drew us in season after season as our bodies changed and our dreams grew larger than the sky. Hiding, playing Cowboys and Indians, each passing car a threat from near and far. Years later, shared dates and hope for future plans left less time or attention to the barren, rugged beauty of the land. To climb those hills, fill my nose with the dusty smell of Kansas, sneezing out the ability to be young. We searched for fossils, dinosaur teeth and arrowheads, found rattlesnakes and cow skulls. I became a mother and a writer. You manufactured crack just think about that. If we went back and did it again, would the sunset still inspire? Would our desire to escape have changed? Would my body, spasming in pain, be made whole? Would you still feel the brutal Kansas winter from within a castle prison on the prairie?
MoonStain - 9
The Year I Went Missing I began to live in color. I felt yellow and purple bruises form from cobblestones beneath my bare feet. Decayed treats thrown to me in the street tasted deliciously sweet. Rocks under my head shortened my dreams; made them frequent/vibrant. My scent became that of a wild animal. Tangles in my hair made it thick/luxurious. Every eye watched as I dashed to grab a rotted piece of fruit from vendors who reeked of hashish/nicotine. Henna was placed upon my hands, there was no need to wash them. Winter’s cold/summer’s heat tested my survival instincts. I felt so alive, the year I went missing.
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out of the walls at night she came out of the walls sat beside me on my bed nobody else could see her that’s because she was dead she’d stroke my hair, kiss my hurts take the time to heal my quirks at night she came out of the walls that’s where she lived you know a prisoner of death by day boxed in from head to toe but at night I’d feel her linger cool hand upon my brow when sick I’d drift off hearing a sweet melody of death I tried to stay awake to listen by daybreak she was gone just memories to remind me that at night she came out of the walls at night she came out of the walls held me tight wiped my tears soothed my fears kept bad dreams at bay the boogieman stayed away the nights she came out of the walls by day she came out of my seams could be seen in my eyes and mouth how I wore my hair, filled out my jeans by day she came out of my seams sometimes she bled from my arms I released her with a knife because I couldn’t stand her screams by day she came out of my seams but at night, she comes out of the walls
Thank you for reading this sample of Ronda Miller’s MoonStain.
This book is available for purchase at: Meadowlark Books The Raven—Lawrence, KS Barnes & Noble Amazon and wherever you buy books.
About the Poet
Ronda Miller is a Life Coach who works with clients who have lost someone to homicide. She is a graduate of The University of Kansas and continues to live in Lawrence. She is a Fellow of The Citizen Journalism Academy, World Company, a Certified Life Coach with IPEC (Institute of Professional Empowerment Coaching), mother of Scott and Apollonia. She created poetic forms loku and ukol. She is the current poetry contest manager for Kansas Authors Club (2011 – 2014) as well as the District 2 President. She is the co-chair, along with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, for the Transformative Language Arts Conference to be held at Unity Village September, 2015.