Memories

All Poems, Anniversaries, Birthdays, Memories, Mother Love, Pleasure, Siblings, Spirituality

Bouquet

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My sister and her husband arrived with a bouquet.

Revealing all the colors of June.

Illuminating the kitchen, buoying spirits.

Daisies, mums, Peruvian lilies.

Snapdragons, Japanese irises.

A toast to our dual festivities.

Birthday and wedding anniversary.

Only last week.

Already marked at the seashore.

But, they persisted.

Despite the cruelty of racing time.

Their own health issues.

Busy schedules.

Sibling and her mate.

Filling the gap.

Where our own mother used to stand.

At the forefront of congratulations.

Making sure each occasion acknowledged.

Duly noted.

Be it with party, card, dinner, gift.

So, there it was.

Perfume in a vase.

Wafting felicitations.

And memories of our mother.

A special visit remembering us

with a floral serenade.

Who expected maternal breath

to help us celebrate?

 

Lynn Benjamin

June 23, 2024

All Poems, Children, For Children, Hope, Memories, Trees

Mulberry Bush

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Here we go round the mulberry bush, intoned Bob.

As we made a wide arc around it.

Not wanting to squish the black juicy berries strewn about.

On Red Oak Drive.

Since moving here, we’ve passed by this tree almost daily.

Always avoiding the fallen fruits in June.

Its foliage towering, green umbrella from on high.

Maybe growing for the last hundred years.

But, not as old as the nursery tune Bob sang.

Each year dropping sweet, seedy berries.

For birds and squirrels.

A few assorted neighbors daring to eat them from the ground.

For the branches are unreachable, even on tiptoe.

So, collecting them, impossible.

Not easy like with a raspberry or blackberry bush.

Both low to the ground.

For some reason, the familiar children’s melody, forgotten.

Even as we marched day after day past the tree.

Till Bob teased my playful child spirit.

The one chanting the song in early childhood.

On the long bus rides to and from day camp.

Then later to her own children.

Never really taking time to meet a mulberry bush.

Till now in old age.

But, as long as I breathe,

there’s always a chance,

I’ll encounter a first time

by glad happenstance.

 

Lynn Benjamin

June 21, 2024

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is an English nursery rhyme and game from the mid nineteenth century.

Adult Children, All Poems, Family, Holidays, Jewish Holidays, Memories, Mother Love, Regret, Shavuot, Stories

Shavuot

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It fills me with song.

To see a pair of Sketchers, size four.

Next to our sneakers on the floor.

Sign that Elias is here, a day or two.

While his mother davens in New City.

He, off from school for Shavuot.

Holiday when Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Marking my own confirmation, sixty years ago.

Right here at Adath Jeshurun, Elkins Park.

The first time reading a poem I composed.

To an entire congregation.

Feeling excitement, anticipation, vulnerability.

A rush, sharing thoughts with others.

Meditation on time, hope, truth, death, life.

Being acknowledged.

By friends, family, rabbi.

My daughter, one year short of cantorial degree, surprised.

When I told her I hold dear this holiday.

For she, at semester’s conclusion, ready to move past it to summer.

Until hired as guest chazan.

Preparing herself to chant.

For two lunar days.

In a blink, it became important to her, too.

This spring holiday, completion of the counting of the Omer.

Unexpected revelation between my daughter and me.

A story I wished I could tell my mother.

Along with appreciation for the party she made me.

At fifteen, after the Shavuot service.

Recognizing me.

Letting me know I belong.

To a larger cosmology.

Something I didn’t know then to thank her for.

Though she knew how to give.

So, I’ll scatter seeds of gratitude,

beseeching she’ll forgive.

 

Lynn Benjamin

June 12, 2024

Daven is the Yiddish word meaning to chant the Jewish liturgy or pray.

Chazan is a cantor in a synagogue.

The counting of the Omer is a period of 49 days from the second day of Passover until the first day of Shavuot. During this time, marriage festivities are prohibited.

All Poems, Change, Death, Memories, Stories

Podiatrist

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It occurred to me I needed an appointment.

To see a podiatrist about a toe.

So, I called the one my father used.

For many years.

Walked there from my house.

Along Old York Road.

To the Plaza at the Pavilion.

Where the doctor practiced.

Also, where my father resided for a year or two.

Distracting myself as I marched.

Listening to a course on line.

But on entering the building, ambushed.

By a slew of memories.

Entranceway, the same.

Consulting suite, unchanged.

I’m sure my father’s old hallway, frozen in time.

Food smells wafting out from under doors.

I took a seat in the waiting area.

Doctor and I, unlike the surroundings, different, older.

He greeted me.

Once in the chair, saying, I remember your father. I used to help him buy special shoes.

I studied this man.

Reminiscing about my father, gone in 2018.

I miss him, I couldn’t stop myself from sighing.

The podiatrist lifted his head.

I miss my father. He died in 2012.

We both paused.

Sensed reverence in the air.

Roles slipped away.

The office filled with prayer.

 

Lynn Benjamin

June 5, 2024

Aging, All Poems, Birthdays, Change, Friendship, Loss, Memories

Discovery and Rediscovery

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How do you feel when you discover something?

Something novel?

A new place, new food?

New word, new flower?

Perhaps it spices up your life.

Gives you a sense of adventure.

Animates, enlivens.

Tickles the spirit.

What about rediscovery?

Something you knew in the past?

Lost, misplaced, forgot about?

A recipe, book?

Song, photo?

Perhaps a person?

Someone you lost touch with?

For the hustle bustle of life.

Career, marriage, childrearing.

And, then, reconnected with.

Finding out you still had much in common.

Adolescent memories.

Values, opinions, perspectives.

Even birthdays.

Exactly one week apart.

A fact I held onto for decades.

After going our separate ways.

Always remembering my friend’s birthday.

Acknowledging it in silence.

Even when apart.

Mourning the loss.

But, also, honoring her, the past relationship.

Despite disconnection.

So, when this year, I could offer her birthday wishes, I did.

Putting a bounce in my step.

Lightening each breath.

Feeling blessed in older age,

rediscovering a person dear.

Now we’ve found each other,

not possible to disappear.

 

Lynn Benjamin

June 7, 2024

All Poems, Animals/Insects, For Children, Memories, Stories

Quiet Neighborhood

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The neighborhood is quiet.

On this Sunday, mid-May.

Everyone, somewhere else.

Parking lot at Salus, empty.

But I, not alone.

First, a meeting with geese.

Scattering cereal.

Self-appointed job on weekends.

When weekday goose whisperer not around.

Next, encounters with squirrels, bunnies, chipmunks.

Scampering among bushes, ground covers.

Listening to tunes of robins, cardinals, wrens.

Flapping from branch to branch.

Catching sight of a furry, red fox.

His eyes peering at mine.

Zipping past, disappearing into a breezeway.

Noticing a brown garden snake.

Slithering through arborvitae.

Some frogs along the edge of a pond.

A lone box turtle.

Whose color honors the pattern tortoise shell.

Brown with yellow, amber patchwork.

Just sitting there in the road.

Lost?

Disoriented?

Displaced?

I feel a sudden urge to save it.

Take it with me.

Remembering turtles in my childhood.

Residing in a grassy pen out back.

But now our house, small.

This turtle needs to roam.

Through grasses, shrubs, foliage,

till it finds its home.

 

Lynn Benjamin

May 20, 2024

All Poems, Emotions, Friendship, Memories, Stories

Dreams Evaporate

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Dreams evaporate.

Steam from a kettle.

Vanishing clouds.

Sometimes, though, they stick.

Like shadows.

Following us around.

Till we stop, pause.

Give them thought.

Attention, time.

For the characters who populate them.

The story, dimensions.

They resurrect the irrational.

A nagging fear.

Visit from a loved one.

Wish for a scene that never materializes.

Like the one holding on to me when I awoke.

Antonio, friend long gone, stopping by.

Dropping in from Madrid.

To have a meal.

Sweet surprise.

Wanting to please him.

Preparing a Spanish omelet.

Though knowing he’d not leave Spain.

Yet, here he was.

Real, life sized.

In my kitchen.

With me, my family.

Transported in a dream.

No tickets, airplanes needed.

Just appearing by my side.

Gift bestowed, not entreated.

Lynn Benjamin

May 11, 2024

Adolescence, All Poems, Change, Cousins, Emotions, Family, Memories, Regret, Wisdom

Then and Now

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That was then, this is now, said my ninety-year-old cousin to me.

At her baby brother’s eightieth birthday party.

The then, my adolescent behavior at her parents’ overnight camp.

Fussing, crying to leave.

Return home.

To play according to my own whims.

Out of step with community activities.

The now, over sixty years later.

Still taunting me.

In the presence of this family.

Wanting to erase this episode.

Delete it like a paragraph in a Word document.

Wishing I could have blended in.

Enjoyed my time away.

Instead of resisting.

Causing a stir.

But, Selma’s words gave me pause.

Perhaps it’s I, not they, making much of it.

Indeed, time to let it go.

Like all things parted with on downsizing.

The now has no space for regrets.

For childhood embarrassments.

Only for compassion, kindness.

Exhorted by a matriarch.

Able to shrink humiliation

with one simple sage remark.

Lynn Benjamin

May 8, 2024

Aging, All Poems, Humor, Memories

I Don’t Remember

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I don’t remember.

A refrain heard often in conversation with age mates.

Those in the senior stage of life.

What is the title of that book?

The author?

The name of the politician?

The actor?

You can see the book cover.

The actor’s face.

You can describe the plot in detail.

Give a biography of the actor.

But the name eludes.

Sometimes popping up a few minutes later.

Sometimes a day.

Sometimes suggested by a companion.

Upon hearing the description.

What is it with the brain?

So photographic in our youth?

Maybe these glitches, like wrinkles.

Reminders of old age truth.

Names get snarled in chaos,

jammed up, unable to move.

What’s the fix from mind to mouth?

Nifty new cerebral groove?

Lynn Benjamin

May 5, 2024

Adult Children, Aging, All Poems, Change, Emotions, Family, Memories, Stories

Antique Shirt

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This shirt is an antique, said Bob.

Remembering when our daughter wore it to theater camp.

At fourteen or fifteen.

A shirt she was not attached to.

Becoming a hand-me-up to her mother.

Always in need of tees.

For exercising, biking, walking.

Over thirty-five years later, still in good shape.

Despite countless washings.

Its pink lettering bright.

Announcing the name of the camp: Stagedoor.

A place for our then teenage child to learn theater arts.

Perform in plays, musicals.

Sing, dance, recite.

Don makeup, costumes.

It surprises me she discarded the shirt.

Repository of so many memories.

While I tend to hold on

to cloth that’s useful, whole.

Souvenir from joyous times

when I, too, played a role.

 

Lynn Benjamin

April 22, 2024