Judith Adams Poetry

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Featured Poems


The Devotee

Don’t drag your
cushions all over the place
with much fanfare,
chanting in your
colorful pantaloons,
flapping shawls and
beads unraveling
at your entrance.
Be the the ‘bringer of plums’
the Hummingbird lover
who settles at the back
with no preference,
no large need
for a certain brand of music,
tea party execution
or granola with cranberries.
Don’t you agree,
‘the bringer of plums’
is sweet, generous
and lovely.


 My Old Mother

She stood in the doorway,
a frail welcome wagon,
a single autumn leaf
clinging to a multitude of loss.
The kettle on,
biscuits in the same tin,
like repeated stories.
How long was I staying?
Would I always live in America,
She flipped through the
newspaper fixed on an ad,
as if it was the editorial.
And after an evening’s
touch down in the rain forest
of a glossy Geographic
she sipped whisky,
exclaiming it was
high time for a drink
and poured another.
The moon hung in
the courtyard,
she locked the doors
jabbing with the wrong key,
perplexed and irritated.
Clinging to the banisters,
as if a strong wind was
delaying her voyage in the last
fierce currents of her life.
We have mostly locked horns,
my own horrifying self
in her struggles, her
categoric conclusions,
her emphatic declarations
and my panic to find the exit,
a high speed train home,
plagued by sadness,
by my own heartlessness.
She appeared at the
top of the stairs,
without her teeth,
her face collapsed and tiny;
a gnarled bark of tree
peering down at me,
an old mountain women.
I loved her more than anything
in that moment,
she was pure beauty,
pure spirit, so illuminated,
she was terrifying.

First year Anniversary of Your Death

Darling, you would love to be married to me now! I am taking seriously tax forms I used to mislay.
No longer nonchalant about the bills, and have labelled everything in the cock pit of the utility room.
The key to the safe is under the
Buddha with instructions.
​In a nutshell, I have grown up!

Sorry you had to take such drastic steps on my behalf.
We always wanted for the other
What we wanted so desperately for ourselves.
You insisted on security, responsibility, duty
enough funds for the grandchildren
I wanted to speculate the intangible
to sign up for the latest retreat far beyond my tolerance.
Because of your industry I drummed up the next
pilgrimage or couples workshop.
Now you know my thoughts
were not always loving;
choosing the best cup of tea with the perfect amount of milk or taking the cream off the yoghurt.
God forbid what else I grabbed for myself.
Yesterday the pope was on the radio
how your imitation would make us laugh.
Rilke said God is growing, a radical thought.
Why not our relationship?
You have more influence
where it really matters now.
Lets keep finding each other.
I saw you yesterday in the garden
drinking from the bird bath
as if time was no longer an issue.
And don’t pretend you can now keep silent;
I have heart the gods are already complaining.
I miss your entrances and exits, your
ecstatic homecomings.

There is no Best Time to Die

Youth is propelled by immortality
Sooner or later the hour starts to sprint;hair turns to cobwebs the hub cap comes off
The fender gets bent and oil change frequent.  Death no longer menaces in the distance.

I am trying without the tedious desire to be known to hang out in impermanence,
contemplating devotion that belonged to Issac who like a maniac laid his son on fiery sticks in shocking faith.  He was right, sacrifice is necessary.
As you fade loved ones might be in melt down you can’s waltz in with your apron on to problem solve.
The final exit can come at the
worst of times.

But the young get the hang of rough seas
they learn to navigate unpredictable winds
to pull in and release for the about turn.
Now I am sweeping away
valuables of no value.

The moon is on the mast and
sails lowered for the silence of night;
Seaworthy and incomplete I make
feeble attempts to know God
Who enthusiastically is planning my
chaotic arrival.

Down to Zero

My mother is ninety six with dementia.  Last night she told my sister
I am in the best part of my life 
because I am down to zero”
i jumped for joy and swam all night
in her wisdom while she
trawls through her unhitched psyche, 
through childhood injustices, old loves,
pedaling her attachments like
wisps of thoughts in the wind.
released from entanglements, desires,
grasping and proclivity to 
pontificate homespun philosophy 
no longer boldly define her.
Some people say what a waste 
when the mind goes AWOL
that life in not worth living in senility.
I would have agreed but now
I see she is already traveling
through the challenging bardo
people speak of, getting into
every corner and nook of her
existence like someone with
a duster happily cleaning out her soul, 
joyful and repeatedly 
thanking all and sundry.
We always knew where to find her
on a Friday at the hairdresser’s hooded heat. 
How tired she sometimes looked.
We watched her smother her face in
muscular moisturizer
now she likes to eat it.
Now she is my great teacher again. 
Sweetly she accepts her peripheral world.
When the noble hour arrives she
will slip imperceptibly into the 
wide open territory.
and knowing her as I do,
she will be annoyingly smug 
that at times she DID believe. 




This Morning

​Sometimes I can’t get going -
my arms, legs and mostly my heart wooden.
And lethargy rules.
I want to curl up with the two
sleeping dogs in their cushioned basket.
or disappear into the back room
with a good program on the radio
about somebody else’s life
how they got up and achieved great things
against all odds while I lie under warm blankets.
Outside the plum is blossoming purple pink
bamboo beginning to shoot new
calligraphy into the chilly wind
and the lately pruned apple tree
getting ready for a stunning performance
looking at me through the window
with the question,
“what is your problem?”

That Man

That man riding a bike through
Queen Anne’s lace is mine,
large frame and shoulders
castle of bone and beauty.
How can this be happening?
how can some vagrant
cell march like Hitler through
his bones and liver?
As if dark occupation
can silence him.
To think ahead is to unravel.
This step is enough.
Images are confining,
mystery more potent,
more imaginative, more lightly
to welcome the one guest
who like a prayer flag dances in high winds.
Pass the musical instruments
while variables calculate and weep;
life is woken not by a morning alarm,
but by the middle of the night
with its tonnage of threat
insistent shadow and
sobering cry of impermanence.
And by day a new authenticity
as if the bag of neurosis has vanished
scattered in a drained ocean,
in it’s place a simple sweet melody
I could sing it for you,
I have listened to the birds,
apprenticed myself to the flowers
to the breeze that softens the islands
and the beautiful melody that
moves through our hearts
as if hope did not matter anymore.

Robin Redbreast

And almost under my descending foot,
beneath the long thighs of pine,
cedar and distant geometry of blue,
and below Salal and huckleberry,
her wings slightly lifting
her grey eyes fogged and dimmed,
her breath ebbing.
This June morning a small
bird dying and no record,
no tiny gravestone
hidden in the woods,
nothing written in gold letters
of her lineage, her fledgling’s
desiring above the green field.
I wanted to pick her up
and take her to a leafy church
in the undergrowth for her
memorial, but already her name
is being born by the wind to the
branches, to the clouds
where she is most at ease.
And the dappled owl preparing
a tribute, a cosmic chant.
Squirrels in every direction
announcing her death
to the forest as
darkness prepares
her shroud.

Anon

​My favorite poet is Anon.
She locked her poems in a drawer, 
supposed to be doing the laundry or 
putting slippers on her husband’s feet.
My mother told us in the 70s, would you believe, 
make sure you are made up,
a gin and tonic ready when he returns.
I was working twenty four hour shifts,
and I too would like slippers and a drink.
If the poet did put a name to anything,
it had to be male like George Sand.
I would like to take my pussy hat
and hurl it at the wasted centuries.
To put up neon lights on all sex shops,
only for women’s pleasure.
To say to little girls “shout 
everything you care about.”
I would fill the senate with
women who disband
the band of brothers in their
house of violence.
God cringes at the word cunt. 
It hurts her, it offends the
beauty of the holy entrance
to what is soft and loving.
Anon has endured since the cruel 
burning of her sisters because their
poems were healing and a threat
to the ledgers of power. 
Still she flees the most despicable weapon of war.
For her the angels weep and for the
perpetrators, even the devil is ashamed.

Kayaking.

Hauling the boat over rocks
your unshod feet tenderised
by barnacles and embalming sea weed’s
​oily flowers cushioned in a rusty under green. 

Take all of your self, your whole history;
the past hour’s neurosis into this small
container and be no more than blue
to where the water is turning silver
at the meeting of currents.
When you are far enough away from
the cabin, the dock, the washing
drying the afternoon, 
let the paddles rest and rock
and be taken. 
You are more than you ever imagined.
Look at the horizon in the mist below
the mountains, the silent islands
communicating from familiar distance
Can you go on living your life
on the shore as if the kitchen of things mattered?
Drifting in unhitched expanse
you belong elsewhere.
Sooner or later in a  random
hour released into unfamiliar territory 
with no idea of it’s mind blowing contours.   
Untangle from the morning’s imperative
and paddle out of your mind to an
intimacy beyond yourself. 

Abundance
​

Abundance leaps from the latin
abundia; the verb abundare; 

a shit load, three bags full!
a host, quantities, scores, a slew 

oodles of blackberries.
Single mellow moon and sovereign sun, 

and the night sounds from the
marshes to catch to shoe.

lace and light of matins
diffuse in the chapel of bird song.

The country side looks 
through your window, 

        your open door -

Do you have any idea
how expensive you are,

the industry it takes to keep
you amazed, and grateful? 

Oh Lordy lord!

​








     
























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  • Home
  • Events
  • Poetry
    • Friday Readings for Healing Circles Langley
    • Featured Poems
    • Commissioned Poems
    • Spoken Poems
    • Videos
  • Local Poets
  • Books & CDs
  • Articles
    • Poetry and Loss
    • SW Record April 12, 2019
    • Upper Skagit Library Interview
  • About Judith
    • Contact
  • Links