Encore

Marilyn Zelke Windau

 

 

 

My Grandchildren are My Joy

By Marilyn Wilke Windau

I started writing poems at age thirteen. I am a former art teacher and have had five books of poetry published: Adventures in Paradise (Finishing Line Press), Momentary Ordinary (Pebblebrook Press), Owning Shadows and Hiccups Haunt Wilson Avenue (Kelsay Books), and Beneath The Southern Crux (Water’s Edge Press). A Pushcart prize nominee and an award-winning author, my work can be found in many journals and anthologies. I include my maiden name to honor my father, who was also a writer.

When I’m not writing, I work at restoring our 1891 house, travel to Pembine, WI to the family cabin, create mosaics, paintings, and books made with tea papers. I am a Master Gardener volunteer and an art center docent, am married to a retired environmental engineer, have three daughters, and three grandchildren.

My grandchildren, two girls and a boy, are an ever-present joy. My husband and I see them as often as possible. Two are in elementary school and one awaits pre-K. They are busy children, love playing outside, love creating forts with pillows, love doing puzzles and having stories read to them. They are particularly fond of going to a beach to run and shout, climb rocky shorelines, build structures from driftwood, put feet in cold water.

I listen for their new words, watch for their new antics, then use those to compose new poems.   
 

Grandpa Smells!

I came through the dining room door
just in time to hear him bellow
from his booster seat.
“Grandpa smells!” he shouted
with his almost three-year-old voice.
Immediately, I sniffed, then turned,
puzzled, in grandpa’s direction.
“Grandpa stinks?” I asked.
He was waving his arms and hands
toward his nose, beckoning the scent
of the kitchen’s freshly oven-roasted garlic.
He inhaled with pleasure,
smiling at his grandson, who repeated
“Grandpa smells!’

 
Knit, Purl
 
I wind yarn of blue
and white boucle,
cast on loops,
consider each stitch increasing growth:
a blanket for a new baby,
my eldest daughter’s firstborn.
 
I yearn to wrap, to hold,
to cuddle softness,
to expand heredity
with love.

 
A New Life
 
Fuzzy-headed, dark-haired little one!
You dear baby,
our first girl grandchild.
 
Quiet yourself, smile to yourself.
Your mother, my child, is watching
counting your eyelashes,
clutching your fingers as you clutch hers,
awaiting your every nuance of change.
 
Your father wants to take you fishing
in a boat, with a pole and a bobber,
with a little dog, a lap cuddler,
a racer, a prancer.
 
Your grandparents want.
Your aunts want.
Your uncles want.
You want!
 
Moments of voice, of melodies,
of knowing those familiar words
of love, of questions, of answers.
Your parents told you in utero:
“You are ok, my little one.”
“You can rest safely, my girl.”
“We love you, even though we haven’t met.”
 
We now know you.
We now see you.
We now feel your tenderness of skin,
Your fuzziness of dark hair.
 
We hear your cries,
your auditory awakenings of hunger.
We watch you pout your lip in sleep.
Day by day, you will bind our hearts
in the love that endures seasons of growth,
seasons of harvest, seasons of rest,
of quiet, seasons of celebration,
seasons of time, of longevity,
of life forward.

HUG
 
“It’s a small word,” I told him.
“It has three letters, just as you have three years.”
 
We sat, my grandson and I,
Cozy in the flannel blanket
I’d made for him last Christmas.
 
“Tell me the story, Grandma.”
 
I cuddled him to me and began:
“HUG is a word that has U in the middle.
That’s because U are important.
The first letter: H is for him and her.
That’s for your dadda and mamma.
The last letter is G!
Who do you know that has a name
starting with a “guh” sound?”
 
“I know! Grandma and Grandpa!”
 
“That’s right, my boy!
HUG is a word that gives you love always—
from your mom and dad and from us.”
 
“Would you like one now, Grandma?”
 
“I’d love one, always and forever!”
 

A Continuum

Oh, the softness of brown hair
On the head of a new grandbaby.
Oh, the remembrance of that same thinness
Of strands of my firstborn.

She, and now she, winces at the sun's light
with blue-grey eyes of hazel yet to come.
She, and now she, excels in her hiccups.
They beat the rhythm, together as one.

Long are the toes.
Long are the fingers.
My mother would have said, "Piano fingers!"

There is music in birth.
There is symphony in sighs,
a melody in groans,
in seeking sustenance.

There is a breath, hold, enunciate.
Somehow there is a link,
unspoken, intimate, primal, original and true.

Grandparents willingly, gratefully offer
safety in a curled arm,
a shared open mouth in sleep,
a recognized heartbeat from ages past,
a continuum of life.


Life Excitement
 
Every day he assumes names.
He’s not a criminal.
He’s a 3-year-old boy, my grandson,
who loves certain cartoon shows,
especially Super Wings and Octanauts.
 
Yesterday he was Peso.
Today he is Captain Barnacles
and his mom is Dashi
and his dad is Tweak
and even his dog has a new name:
Shellington.
 
These names change daily.
“I’m Bilbo. Call me Bilbo!”
 
Mom today is Super Wing Dizzy.
Dad is Jerome.
Grizzly the pup is Jett.
 
Television is only a daily twenty-minute episode,
a respite for a snack after naptime.
 
He becomes engrossed,
learns so much that quizzes after supper
support his knowledge gained.
 
He dreams adventures,
memorizes the globe in sleep.
When his bedroom shades are pulled up,
morning offers all new life excitement.
 

Appreciation

She kneels down
to their level,
their green, growing,
emergent level.
Leaves and stems thrust
skyward.
Buds are blossoming.
My granddaughter doesn't know
the word:
flower.
She doesn't know the word:
pretty.
She, at almost two,
only knows to kiss them,
these spring-born flowers
In the woods of new.