Jacquelyn Markham

 …every night as autumn comes on
pecans drop plunk on the tin roof
proof another season’s past
time to cut firewood
even though the wind is still
like a summer night…

…I want to place myself in these years
between womb, afloat
and space shuttles
when women walk in space
Experiences pile up
I call them back
rewind, looking for continuity
pulling in–uuncertain alliances
false moves and happenstance
deflated dreams
time before memory–
pulling them all
suspended molecules
returning to gravity
parts of my brain, dovetailed
tangible puzzle pieces
yin and yang cut from wood
glued
filled with wood putty
sanded, finished
a complete circle
fissure unseen

Now, as the sun slips from the coral sky
I stack logs split through the center

(“October” by Jacquelyn Markham, first published in The South Florida Poetry Review)

Greetings all!

“October,” the poem, speaks of another time and another landscape with pecans and a cooler climate.  ”River and Marshes,” the painting, now reflects my landscape.  Instead of Pecans dropping “plunk,” acorns from the Live Oaks drop here and there on the wood deck and the marsh grasses transform to a golden hue whose beauty is beyond belief! I made an attempt to paint the scene en plein air  (my favorite thing to do!) as you see in the painting. 

I do “want to place myself in these years” even now. Photographs of the past seem to drop out of books.  Old address books work their way from the bottom of a drawer and fall open to a page that bears the name of a person who once featured greatly in our lives, but now we no longer see or hear from.  A framed photograph of an ancestor falls from the shelf.  A glimpse of ourselves in the mirror reminds us that yes, changes have occurred in the body as well as in the spirit and mind.  This time of year as the days darken until Winter Solstice is a time for reflection and deep thought–a time for “looking for continuity.”  “The opportunity of life is very precious and it moves very quickly,” says Dhyani Ywahoo in Voices of Our Ancestors. 

Have you ever noticed how at this time of year you begin to think of your grandmother, your once close friend, your childhood?  The outer world is ever busier as schools begin and the days cool, but the inner world picks up too.  You really want to just sit and meditate, but it’s soccer, light bills, and school clothes that take precedence! Z Budapest says in Grandmother Time, “In October, this other world [of the dead] comes very close to the world of the living.”  Spooks, masquerades, and trick or treating aside, I hope to honor my own deep reflective time and the visions and messages from the ancestors that may come to me and illuminate the “continuity” that eludes my ordinary self rushing to and fro.  I want to pull in those experiences and connect them to my life as it is today–to see the wholeness.  I wish the same for you. 

Jacquelyn