Our Old Town

 

Our old town

lies at the bottom of a lake

like Arenal and Tronadora

in Lake Arenal.

 

New ones have sprung up

like wildflowers

around it.

 

But, they’re not the same.

 

Sure, they have

their beautiful distractions

like scenes from a movie—

 

views of snakes and jaguars

stretching themselves

near waterfalls,

 

a peacock shimmy-shaking

on the grass,

little pastel houses

clinging to cliffs.

 

But this isn’t what I want.

Never was.

Even back before we had money.

 

You know I’d live on love.

 

I’d sell it all and move

to Nicoya on the cheap

to feel that way again.

 

When I set the table for dinner,

and select a juicy tomato for the salad,

asking you what you imagine

chupacabra looks like,

I’m not just musing at random.

 

What I’m really saying is—

I’ve forgotten the mystery of you,

the wild smell of you up close,

and what it did to me.

 

I can’t even think of it now.

And so, I scuttle about

getting stuck

in the drying cement

of our resentments,

 

drowning for what

the fish only know now,

dancing around

our old town.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

Shay’s Word Garden Word List

 

NPM Day 28

My Miracles Use Cell Phones

 

One calls just because

he was thinking of me.

 

Another, to say he’s concerned

about someone,

is helping any way he can,

and asks if I will pray, knowing I already am.

 

Another to cry, to weep deep,

over children being killed in war

because it’s OK to cry with me.

 

Another to say, “Thank you, Mom.”

 

These miracles care about

making a difference.

They don’t care

about getting a better car

or better clothes.

 

They spend their money on groceries

for someone else,

plan trips to other countries

to do what they can to help.

 

Sometimes I think

the world doesn’t deserve them.

I don’t deserve them.

But that’s what the best miracles do.

 

They show up,

undeserved, because of love,

and make a difference.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

For Mary’s prompt:  Miracles

 

National Poetry Month:  Day 3

 

Becky

 

Photo © 2023 Jennifer Wagner

She’s been gone

for a long time now.

 

A few summers ago

we visited the house in Valpo

where they’d lived as a young family

when the current occupant let us in

 

to look around

in what had been an old funeral parlor

they’d made a home

with a visiting bat.

 

I love that.

 

I wish I could have heard her laugh there.

In fact, I never got to meet her, and

she never got to hold her grandsons.

I’d have liked to have held her hand

when they were born.

 

But, Gretchen gave me

the little book of poems

she’d taken of her things,

all those long years ago,

pressing a flower from her casket

between the pages

never knowing what a memorial it would be—

 

a reminder

of how she still gets inside us

in each of those boys’ smiles.

 

She’s been gone

for a long time now.

But still here.

 

And I love that, too.

 

 

© 2023 Jennifer Wagner

 

My husband’s beautiful mom passed away at the very young age of 31.  When she died, his aunt took Rod McKuen’s book, Caught in the Quiet, from among her things and pressed a bloom from her casket in the pages of the poem “thirty-one.”  She gave me the book, and a way to hold her hand.

 

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