POETRY BY DR. BELINDA HUBERT

In addition to writing fiction and poetry, Belinda Hubert is currently working on a novel, titled Shrink Wrapped and a collection of short stories about life in the Midwest. She works as a clinical psychologist in a private practice in Lowell, Indiana.
http://buelasprairiepractice.blogspot.com/

2 Poems:  Taking It, End of Autumn




TAKING IT

So odd how tragedy seeps.

You think you’ve wrapped your head around it,

then,

a glimpse

of a wheelchair that shouldn’t be there.

And thunk.

You’re laid out flat.

You can stare wide eyed in horror.

Flee.

Or chew on it

to suck out every drop of drama.

Collapse.

Works better for me to know

it’s always coming.

No way to prepare.

Just drop my guard

and keep it down.

Feel it, full on.

It passes quickly enough

without the dread

or wince

or resistance.

It is.

No matter how you react to it.

Your only choice

is how you receive it.

Resist?  

It persists.

Piles on misery to the flash of suffering.

Me?  I’m staying wide open

to all the vibrations in the room.

Thunk.

Zing.

Still.

Gives me access to the sublime,

as it all mixes around together.

If you’re patient and kind to yourself,

it shifts.

You never really wrap your head around it.

Tragedy always seeps back.

Alongside the comedy

joy

peace.

Just take the ride.

End Of Autumn

Winter came on hard and fast this year.  Whoosh.  It’s easy to despair about short, short days and the sudden absence of color after a big wind and freeze. The onset.  Our beautiful Autumn is swept away and we huddle inside.  We wait for perfect, knowing that’s a looooonng way off.  It seems like all the color on the birds who stay is faded.  The really bright ones are gone. It’s only sparrows and crows perched among the few dead leaves straggling on the naked branches. But while we dread ice and misery, hunch against dreary gray clouds, the good is still right out there.  There are still plenty of bright cardinals and blue jays, woodpeckers and nut hatches, cute little black and white chickadees.

You just have to wrap up and walk out to see and feel this new reality. We see what we look for.  Hardship creates it’s own stark beauty.  The holly berries are red as fire.  The beauty berries are the silliest shade of purple, showing off absurdly against leafless branches.  Tall dry grasses with golden tops still blow in the wind.  There are animal tracks everywhere next to the freshly harvested fields, amid the litter of husks and sharp crispy corn leaf blades .  The blown down yellow willow branches make such a pattern curling against the dark crunchy earth.  In the early morning light, the frost sparkles up all those textures.  Then we get the million kinds of snow.  It changes by the hour.

It’s our judgement that makes all that bad.  We think we can only be happy when the planets align and the bluebird perches on our shoulder.  Pshaw.  It’s savory. I love to cozy up to the dark.  If we obey the urge to look away from the old, the dark, the dried and blown, our attention is all about what’s not any more.  We mourn what was, and we miss what is.  Winter is not flamboyant or easy on us. But if we open up, drop the dread, look straight at it, walk out into it, we can see the beautiful bones, the underlying traces, tune into the shapes and shadows. This part of the year, we have to take the remnants, the roots, toss on a few spices, light up a fire and make soup.

 ~Belinda Hubert