Tag: family

To My Grandmother

Published on by Tosha Michelle43 Comments


I know you’re in a better place.
where anguish and pain
can’t find you.
Your frail arms strong again
Your mind free of dementia,
where your hardest task is
choosing a book over a nap.

I know God must exist,
and he must be a good God
because he gave me the
gift of you. Proof was found
in the way you nurtured me,
my teacher of homespun truths,
my giver of Sunday dinners,
porch swing singalong, and
honeysuckle musings.

Sometimes when my eyes are
starry, I feel the membrane
between our worlds break
and I find you again.
You’ve traveled so far to
be near, galaxies envelopes
us. You faster than the lightest
of lights, so much faster than
death and despair.

In these times I can feel
you living on in me.
Remnants of a childhood of
belonging and grace.
The cosmos and it’s mysteries
of scattered matter and infinite
wonder draws us closer still.
Granddaughter and
Grandmother together again.

-Tosha Michelle

This and That 

Published on by Tosha Michelle17 Comments

Happy Sunday. I recently took a DNA test from Ancestry.com. These were my results. No big surprises.

And in other news, Tucker making the world brighter 😜

Lastly, some Christmas cheer. I’ll be posting a point dedicated to my grandmother on Wednesday.  Love to all. 💕

Music For Sunday ❤️

Published on by Tosha Michelle7 Comments

“This is our life
These are our friends
This is our family that grows and bends.
This is our chance
This is our time
This is us making things to somehow leave behind
What  will we leave behind to show
That this is our life”

Shadows of Death

Published on by Tosha Michelle32 Comments

image

The shadow of my dead
grandfather cast itself
in my dreams some
nights.

I see his silhouette
walking down a deserted road.
I follow him for hours. Every
time I quicken my pace to
catch up, he quicken his
faster

There’s always a
ending but never a beginning.
Time refuses to fold back
Translucence wanders endlessly.
Papa’s the light darting through
my eyes.

I wonder if the dead remember?
Maybe in my dream I’m
looking for a clue that they
haven’t forgotten us,
that’s there truly is a spiral staircase to a better place.

Papa keeps moving
The bones stay quiet.
The ash refuses to speak
The moon gives me the dead eye.
What a thing to be so close
but hear no words

The night dissolves.
A squawk of a crow wakes me
My sadness steals the sun.
For now my question
remains unanswered.

-Tosha Michelle

Granny

Published on by Tosha Michelle59 Comments

image

I’m snapping green beans
I bought at the store today,
thinking they would remind me
of Granny and sitting
at the kitchen table,
listening to her “well,
when I was your age” stories.

Hoping that just for a moment
I could hug her again,
feel the sureness of her being,
her sweet familiarly.

Go back before dementia
stole her mind,
and cancer her body.
The days of sweet tea,
peppermints, and house dresses.

Granny could solve any problem
with a hickory stick or a stern look.

I miss her, even now years later,
I can’t help but compose
her in a poem- warm hands,
dark hair, sadness
that never left her eyes,
a lifetime of hardships

For a moment I’m ten again,
and Granny gives me her Irish grin.
Something soft but fierce about her.
Finding joy in an orderly
home and things done right.

How solid and healthy
she looks laboring away
over green beans.
Singing her favorite hymn
“In the sweet bye and bye”
Light shimmering through the room.
Real but unreal.

“We shall meet on that
beautiful shore”
Her notes gradually
becoming fainter.
The words descending,
echos from the past.
Love in every syllable.

I listen as evening opens
around me.
Sorrow changes its pitch.
Thee last of the sunlight
streams in the windows.
Swelling, even as it
disappears, even as it waves goodbye.

-Tosha Michelle