Storyteller of the Week

 Cynthia Bernard 

 

Cynthia Bernard and her husband Mark on their wedding day, May 20, 2022.

Cynthia Bernard is a woman in her early seventies who is finding her voice as a poet and writer of flash fiction and essays after many years of silence. A long-time classroom teacher and a spiritual mentor, she lives and writes on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Multiplicity Magazine, Heimat Review, Poetry Breakfast, The Beatnik Cowboy, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Witcraft, The Journal of Radical Wonder, Story in 100 Words, Medusa's Kitchen, Passager, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Spillwords, Persimmon Tree, Verse-Virtual, and elsewhere. She was selected by Western Rivers Conservancy to serve as the Poet-Protector of Deer Creek Falls in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills.

 

 Comments by Sharon Waller Knutson 

 

 I fell in love with Cynthia Bernard’s poetry when I first read “Road Trip” on Poetry Breakfast and “Losing the Fog” on Heimat Review and have been hooked ever since on her signature style and sassy, smart portrayal of women. I am proud to publish these stunning stellar poems.

 

 

road trip

happily ever after
is not a smooth glide
down a freshly-paved highway
in a pristine silver Mercedes
under clear skies

the road can be bumpy
and some of those potholes
are decades old
and pretty darn deep

sometimes we cruise along
enjoying the view
checking out enticing detours
or going pedal-to-the-metal
to get to that little diner
with the best burger ever

other times we get lost
in a maze
of unpaved streets
and some of them
are dead-enders
with no warning signs

there are a few maps
in the glove compartment
but someone did an origami
fold-and-tuck on them
and they’re impossible
to open

the google lady’s
no help either
there are too many places
with no cell service
along the way

and then there’s my
looney-tunes mother
and your
iceberg of a father
who show up
uninvited
and try to grab the wheel

but your brown eyes still twinkle
and I still sing an off-key happy song
when my hand
finds yours
and weaves its way in
even when we fall
into a ditch and
the wheels spin and spin
before we manage to get out

and all along the roadway
we remember
that we’re playing
for the same team
which means
we always win
no matter what might happen
especially on cold nights
when the heater fails
and we have to cuddle up
to keep warm
 

 

Losing the Fog

The Pacific inhales overnight,
then, shortly before dawn, begins
crooning her love to the hills nearby.

Her fog-song caresses the beach,
sashays up the hillside,
tucking in between houses,
weaving through bushes, around trees,
seeping down to greet the gophers,
gliding up to tango with the crows.

It’s a relationship renewed each morning,
fertile and productive—
nurturing coastal redwoods, who would not survive
without the moisture they sip from each morning’s mist,
and salmon, who swim streams
kept alive by fog-drip.

She’s begun to develop shortness of breath,
fog barely making it beyond the bottom of the hill—
and there’s no inhaler we can offer her,
no chemotherapy that will cool things down,
no radiation that will stop the spread.

We can’t advise her to quit smoking, either;
we’re the ones who feed the flames.

Less fog… even less fog…
The hillside weeps dried leaves, dead branches,
as his beloved’s song fades away.
 

 

Wandering the Mojave

Along with the silvering of my hair
the years have gifted me
with a Frequent Wanderer Award
granting open access
to the Mojave of Middle-Night,
where there are many
interesting places to meander
but there does not seem to be
a trailhead that leads back to sleep—
and though I could remedy the one
with gloves, a bottle of dye,
and the laundry room sink,
there seems to be no compass
to help me navigate the other.

For a long time I grumbled about this
and stumbled through too-much-coffee tired days,
but then, during one weary too-early,
I paused to watch a horned lizard
swishing tail, flicking tongue
near the base of a Joshua tree
and noticed the almost silent whisper
of a gestating poem,
stopped to play with her for a while,
and soon I was surrounded
by her many siblings, cousins, and rivals—
quite a lively little nursery
with a hungry baby sonnet I’d almost forgotten,
two toddling villanelles fighting over a yucca flower,
and a pantoum with sand in her eyes crying in the corner.

Middle-Nights now, when the Mojave calls,
I am ready, having indulged in another
gift of the years, the afternoon nap.
I brew up a pot of cactus flower tea,
toss my tinseled hair over my shoulder,
grab my favorite pen,
and set out happily a’wandering. 

 

 

Daphne

 after Paisley Rikdahl

 

I

 

She loved dance classes,
following the teacher’s lead,
adding little flourishes of her own—
especially long glides and turns,
almost flying around the perimeter
of the studio, swift feet barely touching
the wood-grained laminate floor.

Once, years back,                       
she’d gotten a lot of attention
from a visiting instructor—
flattering, until it wasn’t.
No, thanks seemed to mean nothing;
he tried to follow her home.
She ducked into an alleyway,
posed, perfectly still,
until long after he was gone. 

 

 

II

She thought her shoulder
would heal on its own,
but when she stretched into a spin—
Arms up! — the right one
went no further than halfway
and stabbed her
with sharp red-hot fragments
of crushed glass.

Moderate to severe degenerative changes.
You can see it on the x-rays.

Don’t leave, they said, just modify,
do what you can—
but there was no joy
in holding back
from sweet abandon.     

 

 

III

 

Some days, her right arm
can’t pick up a towel,
turn a doorknob, carry a cup of tea,
and she is no longer graceful
when she puts on deodorant                     
or takes off her t-shirt.

Good thing she had the left one—
until the fragments propagated and spread.
Both shoulders now, wrists, knees, hips…
and, oh, stabbing at the base of each thumb. 

 

 

IV

 

She had been a believer for decades,
optimal health
through lifestyle choices
and natural remedies.
This would be no different, she thought.

Folks raved about this pill, that potion,
these exercises from a physical therapist,
anti-inflammatory diets,
massage, electric stimulation,
hot wax, cold wraps,
splints and braces.
She gave each one a fair trial
Combustion spread, undampened.
 

 

V

 

Pain is her constant companion now,
worse whenever she moves.
Easier, much easier,
to be still.

Her body’s a rebellious child—
oppositional defiance disorder, she jokes.                
Getting to sleep can be a challenge,
surfing her shoulders,
perhaps finding a sweet spot,
perhaps not.
Almost never staying asleep…
then waking up aflame,
a brutal way to start the day,
but not surprising any more.
 

 

VI

 

Sex had always been another delight,
following her beloved’s lead
or asserting herself with fierce intensity.
They had been passionate and inventive—
tango, salsa, bachata, merengue…

No longer. Now they had
an often-awkward ménage à trois—
her passion, her partner,
and the lumbering elephant
her body had become.

He said he was happy with what they had now,
sweet, gentle and warm,
and sometimes that was good,
but if she let go
into the cascading pleasure
of orgasm, if she moved without thinking,        
she was stabbed or burned or jolted.
Eventually her body
simply wouldn’t any more,
and there was little joy
in holding back
from sweet abandon.                    

She knew he was being generous;
she did not want to hurt him.                
There was nothing she could do,
no reason to speak up.
Best to accept, sit quietly,
and be still.

If there were tears,
she only shed them
when she was alone.