On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago, An Anniversary

On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago
by Stephanie Mesler

Not so long ago, you were a thousand miles off.
I felt you in the night, heard your voice as if in dreams.
The tendrils of your breath reached across miles and warmed me in my dark.  

Not so long ago, shyness prevented me from taking you all the way in.  
I stole glances of you, feigning interest in objects behind and beside.
When finally I looked directly into your eyes, reserve dissolved
and all I knew I knew of you was enough.

Not so long ago, you laughed when I kissed your bottom rib.  
There was nothing at all manly about the ticklish giggle you tried hard to retrieve
but once I knew your secret place, there was to be no un-knowing

Not so long ago,  dawn crept around drawn hotel room blinds.
The clatter of uneven housekeeper’s cart wheels caused you to stir.
I pulled you closer, stroked your arm, whispered you back to sleep.

Not so long ago, my face nestled against your fur,
I fought to keep tears from splashing over your belly,
They came, unstoppable, bathing your body, wetting the sheet beneath us.
Your tears mixed with my own, assuring me it was ok to come apart before goodbye.  

Not so long ago, you kissed my palm,
It was all you could safely reach while riding the clutch in heavy tourist traffic.  
I looked straight ahead, wondering how I could possibly return to the life that did not include you.  

Not so long ago, I left you standing at the station.
Through tinted window glass, you could not know how I trembled.
You could not see a stranger hand me a tissue to wipe tears I could not even try to hide.

Not so long ago, alone again in my dark, I reached for you.
Your laughter echoed in my mind and your embrace took me home.
In your arms, a thousand miles fell away, and I breathed you in.

On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago is copyright 2011 Stephanie Mesler and is included in the poetry collection, Love Lines.

Mother's Reflection

Mother’s Reflection
By Stephanie Mesler

Mother told me Erik Estrada needed to take more baths. 
She said the same of our housekeeper, Lupe, and the boy who took me to the prom. 
His name was Manuel. 

No matter the temperature outside, Mother rolled up the car windows, when we crossed 110th Street.  She told me never to look a black man straight in the eye and not to sit next to a brown one on the bus. 

Mother skipped my wedding to a man who spoke with a Caribbean lilt and never held her grandchild.  Mother disowned me until my brown baby girl was in the ground and the ink on the divorce papers was dry. 

Mother was the only mother I had, so I let her forgive me.  I tried to play the role of returned prodigal daughter.  I tried to do my duty, but she died alone and spends eternity in an unmarked grave, prepared by a man with midnight skin. 

Mother was not white.  Her skin ran from summer tawny to winter taupe and her eyes were the color of dark roasted coffee beans.  Her hair was thick and curly and she carried herself with the straight-backed pride of a long denied akhsó’tha*. 

Mother was afraid to see her own reflection.  She owned only one family photo of her blue-eyed daddy.  I never knew mother’s mother’s face nor the faces of any of the women before her.  Mother bleached her skin and panicked when I turned a rich brown in a Florida summer.

I have to stop myself from crossing the street when I see a black man coming toward me on the sidewalk.  I am not afraid; it’s a habit learned before I knew I was being taught.  I will myself not to share that lesson with my own child. 

I do not scrub my skin until it is raw as Mother often did hers.  I do not drench my hair in lemon juice or attempt to control the brows that grow thick above my eyes.  I look at myself in the mirror and I see Mother looking back.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019


*akhsó’tha is a Mohawk word, for "my grandmother."

Three Haiku

As many of my readers have surmised, I enjoy writing haiku.  It is a form that comes easily, easily enough that I don't have to waste creative energy struggling to keep to the form.  That makes it a good tool for jump starting my poetical processor when it doesn't seem to want to start (or jump) at all.  A couple weeks back, I attended a short haiku workshop.  We were given a very simple prompt, winter, and a very few minutes to write several haiku.  Following are three haiku I created that day.


Roof Leaking Haiku

Monster wind, sky dumps
gallons; front makes tropics cold.
Roof leaking again.



Boardwalk Fog Haiku

Palms bent, sand swirling...
Cold mist blankets the boardwalk.
No clue what's out there.



Night Sky Haiku

Night sky blinks starlight
heavenly bodies zoom toward
morning's dread waking.

Roof Leaking, Boardwalk Fog, and Night Sky Haiku are © Stephanie Mesler 2019

Now Haiku

Now Haiku
By Stephanie Mesler


Courage is needed
when change is the choice, starting
out in the dark - now!

Itching to begin
destination uncharted
first steps, first breaths, buzz-

Energy mounting
scenery changing within
quick as without- now.

Mystery beckons,
offers diversion from then,
slam shut the door - swoosh-

The past is not real,
the future not yet, being
transpires in a flash!.

No point in wondering
what will come next, when all you
can know is the now.


© Stephanie Mesler 2019

Scarlet Woman

Scarlet Woman
By Stephanie Mesler

Painted toes
beneath undulant
hips, swathed in
counterfeit
coins sway the siren's rhythm.
Red, blooming motion.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019


Poetic Form: shadorma 

Be The Sea Fair Or Foul

Be The Sea Fair Or Foul
by Stephanie Mesler

Floating separate, idly chatting, side by side over the glassy pool,
lazily stroking, we move forward in tandem, no need to look at one another.
We trust in forever and focus on fluffy clouds, imagining the heights,
We do not notice our feet are no longer parallel.

Drifting apart, the distance grows between us as the the water roughs.
Reaching, unable to clasp hands, we rise higher and drift farther with each swell.
We see one another only briefly when we both crest at once.
For a while after you are completely out of sight, I hear your cries.

Sinking alone beneath the waves, I fight to rise above the tumult.
Grabbing at spume that vanishes as my hands slice through it, I bawl out your name.
Down I go, spiralling with the maelstrom until my back slams into sand.
And there you are, already lost, eyes black, skin pale, not the friend I thought I knew.

Drowning, underneath 326 million trillion liters of water, we are reunited in stillness.
I take your hand, allow one last look at you, the friend who abandoned me to choppy waters.
A gasp before the sea goes still and the world goes dark… And then there is nothing.
We, two, are no more.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019

Deep Breaths

Deep Breaths
by Stephanie Mesler

Breath is an entitlement,
reward for being born,
for waking up each day,
putting one foot in front of the other.

Breathing is to Deep Breath as being alive is to living.
You can do one without the other, but will it be worth the effort?
Breathing begins with a baby's first cry
and continues without ceasing until it doesn't any more. 

Deep Breaths are a luxury
to be found in the silences
between the movements of concerti,
before largo gives way to prestissimo.

They do not like to be found.
Deep breaths hide behind Aphrodite
and under Hokusa's azure wave,
within the well of O' Keeffe's second Petunia.

Deep Breaths are not obvious.
They are not givens, available just for asking.
One must make room for deep breaths,
clear out the clutter that makes us pant.

Deep Breaths can be found in the window seat
or under your grandmother's quilt.
They are in the wide open, beside rivers,
and in musty caverns kept sacrosanct in the dark.

Deep Breaths take a little effort,
sometimes a steroid pill or two. 
They require a slowing that doesn't come easily,
and patience to clear out allthe crud.

© Stephanie Mesler 2018