May 1, 2018

A pair of poems, inspired by the "Scots' glorious kindness in 1918 - the year both my parents were born." - Melinda Rizzo

Dear Mom,

For years, I’d look for mother substitutes –
under rocks, in closets, on the Ferris wheel in July at the shore.
Eventually, like hand recoiling from a hot stove burner, I stopped.

At about 15 I realized I didn’t really know what
I was looking for anyway– and the fresh sting of raw burn
slowly began to glaze over, reduced to a dull haphazard ache-

Losing a parent – and I’ve
been zero for two for a long time now –
it’s like a reverse birth:  you are never the same.

Spring’s late this year.
The lilac is still, small, and tight.
They clutch to themselves in cool mornings.

A clump of wild violets – I never planted these -
shimmer in dappled sunlight. They’re seated
up against the fence, fully fledged.

These little ones must receive
some adopted warmth from painted wood,
some sheltering protection from season’s ebb and flow.

I lost you at 11, learned comfort in familiar,
daily routine:  brushing my teeth,
Grammy’s “silver dollar” pancake breakfasts.

100 years ago today, on May Day, the United Kingdom celebrates.
Roman Goddess Flora is feted and rejoices.
Girls wear fresh garlands and twirl around Maypole rites of spring.

They’ve been doing this 2,000 years, or longer!
Everyone gets a bank holiday on May Day,
a return on investment they can count.

Yearly, I promise myself I’ll make a May basket
to hang on my front door knob. Redolent with spring flowers
from my garden and lavender sateen ribbons.

I would do it this year, truly, I would; except
daffodils are sad and spent. Delighted violets, too small,
to peep out from the rim,

and the lilacs – your blessed favorites  –aren’t ready.
Love-

PS-
Pear blossoms and pine, bursting hyacinth
and a painted maple basket- Among reluctant,
white lilac blossoms, I found my courage.

© Melinda Rizzo



Dear Dad,
They’re playing Moon River on the radio,
one of your favorites.

I made myself a soft-boiled egg,
 and got I it right! White just set,
summer sunshine yolk all ooze runny-

And I did soft white bread toast to dip it,
It wasn’t Wonder but it was wonderful-
with the crust a little crisp shattered snap.

Why does a soft boiled egg
and Moon River –
remind me of you.

This year you’d have been 100,
your odometer stopped and
mine still rolling toward 57 in December.

A year longer than Mom got to be-
So on Nov. 7, 2018
I’ll head to Philadelphia,

where you’d first moved from the farm
and married her after the war.
I’ll find an outrageous steak house.

On your birth date I’ll order a Manhattan, straight up,
 with two maraschino cherries on a pick,
and give it a swirl….

I remember now why the eggs matter-
In your 2-room walk up at 5th and Girard
Mom made you creamy, soft boiled eggs.

She told me so – with Wonder bread toast,
and she’ use the traffic light on the corner
as perfect, 3-minute timer.

Love –
PS- In late September I’ll sit in the evening shade, a pony bottle of Rolling Rock
in one hand and farmer’s field at my feet.  I’ll listen to the corn gossip, as the sun
fades while Mandarin moon, as wide as your smile, climbs the horizon.

The Scottish island that buried America's dead

Melinda Rizzo lives, works, cooks, gardens and writes poems in a 200-year-old farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA.

Ravens

I push everything I know off to the side.
For a moment I watch these two predators,
fiddling and flapping, bracing on thick branches; letting go

in the stiffening foliage of my ash tree.
It’s November. They are black as Syrian oil.
I listen to their dialog, caw resonates deep in the gullet.

Like the ruffle of shuffling playing cards, it starts slow,
punctuated by the final fan-slap as the last card folds the deck,
then the quiet roulette of dealer’s hands.

“Caw,” is the end of a sentence.
I do not speak raven, or bird.
But in this aging moment, I wish I did.

I imagine what they might’ve said: Passion, a bargain?
Scolding or rolled eyes over chores - the day’s divvying seed collection,
Fluffing the nest? Who was wrong: who was right?

One to the other, over the fussing,
and how significant or not,
it would all mean, in the end.

I wonder if I could speak raven,
a dialect of Bird, one of thousands,
perhaps, tens or hundreds of thousands.

No. Millions. And if I could begin –
even just begin nothing more for now
– to understand, what new worlds?

© Melinda Rizzo

Syria air strikes: Trump defends claiming 'mission accomplished'

Melinda Rizzo lives, works, cooks, gardens and writes poems in a 200-year-old farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA. She has been a freelance reporter for more than 20 years.

Shouldered

They’re always bigger than you think.

Made stronger with intent and clarity, with purpose.

Like any mother she was frantic, bellowing, eyes wide-crazed

and her size, her color, her shape didn’t matter.

You stepped up. Shouldered her baby from the trench,

too weak from scrambling, unanswered cries.

Had hysterical adrenaline kicked in? What made you

hoist a baby elephant – terrified and trembling

onto your shoulders, a load beyond your own weight?

Was it pity? No.

I prefer to think compassion drove you. A gut-wrenching,

essential need bound to make a difference.

© Melinda Rizzo

India elephant rescue: The forest guard who saved a calf

Melinda Rizzo is a freelance reporter who lives in Quakertown, PA. She loves telling great stories - every story is a great story. Visit her website at www.melindarizzowriter.com

Sunflowers- For Vincent van Gogh

I’ve heard the musings-

the may-be's of your despair:

mental illness, schizophrenia,

bi-polar disorder, OCD.

Now a new book tells all-

more than a century later.

Of cowboys and pretense.

Of a shotgun, lingering death

and your silence screaming,

even now.

In your paintings,

hanging in Philadelphia,

the Louve, the Musee d’Orsay: in these,

I see exuberance.

Hope. Determination.

I see a man who drank deeply,

longed for a love to taste,

touch and smell.

Love that would sustain

despite any coloration of mood-

How we all hunger for this love.

Unconditional, no-strings-attached love,

offered up sweet and straight,

but most of all: unconditional.

You wore a recycled name.

Born after the first-born,

the first Vincent, had died.

Those sunflowers, your sunflowers, say it all:

Cleft petals carved, flourished and stroked,

like the ardent lover I imagine you could be.

The pallet knife digging into impasto,

gently caressed afterglow.
Winding out from floral button cores.
Eye-popping sunshine at the brush mark’s rim.

Ochre, rust, sienna, shimmering verdant leaf. 

Dear Vincent like you, a wild, intense tourmaline sky.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-15328583

Melinda Rizzo is a freelance writer and reporter, living in rural Bucks County, USA. She shares a nearly 200-year-oldfarmhouse with husband Phil, their son Adam and a black Labrador named Caleb.
The large kitchen - centrally located on the first floor - is the heart and soul of their home.

Every summer, she grows a wild-eyed variety of sunflowers.

October Pumpkins

They litter the fields nearmy house.

Decorate neighborly frontsteps, porches,

tumble in wrought wire hangingbaskets,

are gathered up like eggs.

I’ve tucked a few into fadingsummer containers,

along with variegated winterkale. Chrysanthemums.

Flushed with withering frost-kissedsweet potato vines.

Some pile into the back seat

of an empty clay pot.

Others are marker spaced-targets, really,

so many walking paces apart.

Dueling partners, ormigrating robins,

breathing a weary sign onfence posts.

I haunt the local growerswhere in season

I buy coleus, six-packs of celosia,

zinnia starter plugs, and trailingvinca.

Now the vinca is gone.

Pumpkins are hauled in fromlocal farmers:

‘Buck’s Skin,’ ‘Jack-be-Little’and ‘Cinderella’s Coach.’

‘Cinderella’s’ cleavage runs longitudinallines

from stem end to an ample,curvaceous seat.

Deep ribs create buxom hips on‘Cinderella’ .

No Fairy godmother could haveanticipated this,

no Prince Charming in hisright mind could possibly resist.

Melinda Rizzo

New Hampshire pumpkin riot shows US divisions

Melinda Rizzo is a freelance writer and reporter, living in rural Bucks County, USA. She shares a nearly 200-year-old farmhouse with husband Phil, their son Adam and a black Labrador named Caleb.
The large kitchen - centrally located on the first floor - is the heart and soul of their home.

Kitchen Art

Toddler finger paintings – one a blue fish –
another a description rimmed with line cartoons
of a second grade field trip to The Philadelphia Zoo.

 My son’s rendition ofVan Gogh’s
“Starry Night” a tin engraving embellished with
stroked swirls. These hang in my kitchen.

My own mixed media work, a constellation of dappled stars
paper napkin clusters of French waiters,
cast in black and white, carrying trays.

What inspired you? Was it Yellow House fever and
raging colors of luscious fruit, apples and fat grapes
of the Gauguin, maybe painted after his stay in Arles withVan Gogh,

or was it the Bonnard, a languid she relaxing,
the world at once comfortable and just out of reach.
Were these a little too much to pass up?

Once at home, did you settle the kitchen art
near a bright window to catch the light’s
expansive breath across the fruit, just so,
or was it twilight that captured those patinas best.

I imagine your retirement in Sicily:
Soft breezes pushing the olive tree branches,
a little dry-stone wall just outside the snug kitchen

and an herb garden with potted rosemary and bay, beyond.
Here in Pennsylvania, I’d hang those masterpieces
in my kitchen, too, if they were mine.

I’d find just the right place to put them
on sunny yellow walls, if I’d
have been the lucky one to possess them.



Owner hopes to keep stolen paintings on kitchen wall

©Melinda Rizzo

Melinda Rizzo is a freelance writer and reporter, living in rural Bucks County, USA. She shares a nearly 200-year-old farmhouse with husband Phil, their son Adam and a black Labrador named Caleb.
The large kitchen - centrally located on the first floor - is the heart and soul of their home.

For Shirley Temple Black

My aunt was named Shirley, after

The Little Princess, America’s darling,

and both wore tight, adorable, ringlet curls.

I doubt Shirley Temple’s curls were set in rags,

like my grandmother Annie set my aunt’s hair

while it was still wet from washing.

This was during the 1930s.

Aunt Shirley died five years ago, and

Shirley Temple Black died today.

Besides the curls,

I doubt these Shirleys

had much else in common,

although both were charming to a fault.

When my aunt died, I grieved for her,

My last living link to a mother,

who died when I was 12.

So I grieved again for my mother,

and grieved for myself, and for all those

I’d watched died, and buried ever since.

Heart-rending grief takes its toll.

From this deep, resonating place

I decided it was time to stop.

Time to look up, time to move onward.

 ©Melinda Rizzo

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25719377

Melinda Rizzo lives and works as a freelance reporter and writer in Quakertown, Bucks County Pennsylvania USA.The child of older parents who have both died, she grew up watching old black and white Shirley Temple movies. She lives with a teenaged son, her husband of 35 years, and a black Labrador named Caleb in an old, drafty, lovingly restored farmhouse.

And They Came

I’m told they’ll stay the week.
Golden Retriever ambassadors from Chicago
to the heartbroken in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

Who like the Hebrew ancient Rachael,
or the mothers in Bethlehem, Judea,
during Herod’s reign of terror,

wept a constant, wrenching stream,
and would not be consoled.
They beheld the unthinkable.

The modern slaughter of these,
Holy Innocents, more incomprehensible
with each passing day.

I read the endless stories,
blindly weep heaving tears of solidarity
for men and women I have never met.

But still, the furry cavalry comes.
Used to offering comfort to the sick,
and profoundly sad, they come.

They come offering no platitudes,
no will of God admonishments. 
They offer nothing more than now.

Their gift comes as friendly, sweeping tail.
It comes as warm flanks offered as blankets,
 and moist kisses offered as kindness, absolution.

© Melinda Rizzo 2012

Obama calls for US gun proposals


Melinda Rizzo is a freelance reporter, poet and observer of the world. She lives with her family, and a Labrador Retriever named Caleb, in rural Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA.

Good Friday, 2012

In some portions of the world,
there are those who choose to observe
the Way of the Cross.

They bear the sting of a lash.
They crawl on bloodied hands and knees
to a place where they are carefully crucified

to embrace a token bloodshed.
Just enough pain, just enough suffering,
to taste what Christ endured on his final day

among a teeming humanity.
For one Brazilian Judas, it was not enough,
to throw the money down, before a pretend Caiphus,

then turn and run away. We know how his story ended.
For his part, Tiago, 27, must have felt the roughness
of the hanging rope against the back of his neck.

Must have wondered, am I sure about this one,
as the slip knot tightened, then strung him up
and away from the cool firmness of Brazilian soil.

Did the pretend apostles cut Tiago/Judas down,
hurriedly, perform CPR, to the Bee Gees “Staying Alive”
while Robin Gibb struggled to do just that in a London hospital.

Did someone else, maybe Mary Magdalene,
frantically called 911 at the scene,
andTiago was pronounced dead

at the Santa Casa de Itapeva hospital
where an autopsy will be performed on Monday,
because Tiago died playing Judas.

© Melinda Rizzo

Brazil actor playing Judas dies from accidental hanging

Bee Gee Robin Gibb's recovery 'confounds' doctors
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Melinda lives in Quakertown Pennsylvania (USA), and is a freelance journalist, covering local and state news, human interest features, arts and entertainment. Rizzo’s work is published regularly in print and online.