Pam's Poetry

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Today I would like to share a few poems from my favorite poet, Pam Patterson. Her heartfelt writing is drawn from personal experience and never fails to speak to me. Could this be because she is my sister? Perhaps, but I prefer to think it's because she's an incredibly talented person. Judge for yourself with these selections from her chapbook Passages, published through Shadow Poetry.

Circles

Tomorrow my daughter turns nineteen.
A neophyte in the circles of women,
she advances with no pause or turn
to grasp for receding circles of childhood.
She did that last year.

This morning my brother announced
the birth of his second girl child.
I spoke to my six-year-old niece
who had wished for a sister.
One brother was more than enough.
Now she wants bunk beds, a toy box that locks.
She senses the price tags thumb tacked to wishes.

Over lunch, over the phone, my sister shared
the latest day smile and night tempest of her daughter,
three months old, the first child.
When my mother died my daughter was seven,
my sister only seventeen.
Her circles colliding, she turned around a woman
standing in a link where the child should have been.

Tonight I learn of a close friend's miscarriage,
of her brush with death during delicate surgery.
Mother and child, their circles colliding,
were linked for a heartbeat
while passing through twilight sleep.

I look out at the moon
drawn by the sway
as the circle flows into and out of itself.

Passages

As we lose the pieces of our past,

person by person,

as we cut the cords,

one by one,

of our invulnerability,

we are left to wobble

uncertainly

in the vast realization of our own mortality.

Unfinished Business

(For my mother)

I don't think you realized
the force of your words,
the power of negative thinking
that carried you through
until fate granted your wish.

The day the call came
saying you'd slipped away
I'd been watching sparrows
dive into the reflected world
of my windows,
stunned by the force of reality.
After Daddy died
you curled up inside him,
left us, except for your youngest,
her graduation your expiration date.

What of my son, first grandchild,
the one you clutched as your own,
who crept under the wing you spread?
He curled up in silence
when I told him you were gone.

What of the grandchildren who will know you
by photos and secondhand memories?
Three months ago I stood in for you,
held your youngest's first child
through her first night at home,
the warmth of new life against my cheek.
Feeling the tiny wings of her heartbeat
I thought of the sparrows
on the day of your death.

When the phone rang
I knew you were gone,
my sister's graduation
only days in the past.
How many times had your wish sliced our hearts?

The Cancer that severed Daddy
so suddenly from our lives
chewed up your body,
organ by organ,
spit you out of our world
right on schedule.

In that moment before flight
did you turn to confront the love
that couldn't hold you here?
When you severed the ties,
slipped out of your pain,
did you briefly pass through ours?