Back to the Beginning

 Shelly Blankman


Photo by Jon Blankman

Blame it on the Blue Sky Book and Giraffes

By Shelly Blankman

I’ve loved to read and make up stories I’d tell to my sister ever since I can remember. But poetry? That didn’t enter my life until my parents gave me the best birthday gift I’d ever received –The Blue Sky Book, published by the LW Singer Company in Syracuse, New York. To this day, it’s a prized possession that sits on my bookshelf in my living room. I introduced poetry to both of my sons when they were young and to this day, treasure it as my first introduction to poetry and poets, like Eugene Field, Walter de la Mare, Rachel Field, and Carl Sandburg (whom I would study later).


From there, I started writing my own poetry. I loved playing with words and expressing them in different ways. Here’s the first poem I ever wrote. I was about 10 years old, and to no surprise to anyone who knows me, it’s about giraffes.

I was probably about five when I saw my first giraffe at the Maryland zoo. But I'd probably seen them in books before then.

 I loved giraffes because they are quiet, which gives them a certain serenity.  They do have a language among themselves and make a humming sound but there's no vocalization that humans can hear. And those eyes!!! They're gorgeous and have long beautiful eyelashes. Their eyes are so expressive. They may not vocalize but their eyes speak volumes and we'd talk a great deal.  If the lines for feeding the browse (acacia leaves) weren't too long, the trainers would let me stay with them longer and give me extra browse at no charge. Overall, we went so often that I think I spent more money on browse than on clothes.  My husband Jon was a schoolteacher so we'd go every weekend and practically every day during the summer. I love the zoo in general, but giraffes are at the top of my list.  And it was always my place of peace when something went awry ... when I was ill or my younger son was sick.  

I loved giraffes so much that my husband bought me a six foot tall stuffed toy giraffe he saw at a toy store when we were shopping for a gift for our niece.

 

Photo by Jon Blankman

The poem I wrote at ten:


GIRAFFES 


A spotted thin neck peeks over high trees,
seeming to seek out those at its knees,
and if we’re to laugh at the sight of this clown,
think who’s looking up
and who’s looking down.

I took a couple of poetry classes in college and grad school, but by grad school, my interests switched from English lit to journalism. Subsequently, I concentrated on my careers in journalism and public relations. I didn’t write poetry so much as read it for leisure, usually
out loud in my room because (same as I had as a kid) because I so enjoyed the beautiful sound of poetry –like a song. 

These two poems were written in the late ‘70’s.  


UNTITLED


tonight the moon is high
above her emerald garden,
and in the dark, each petal shines
with tiny drops of dew,
a prism in the grass.


today’s haloes of flame
dance above her garden,
flowers chip their blossom,
dropping buds of stone.

OZ 


you go wading through a field of lilacs
turning plants to purple dust
the day is pink and your bright sun
hides all that you have crushed


and when dusk drops stars upon the petals
changing violet back to black
you’ll see ahead the flowers shining
and not the trampled at your back.

I didn’t publish poetry until my sixties.

Firestone Feinberg published these two poems in 2015 in Verse-Virtual.

The Thief, Alzheimers


You sit day after day by the window
watching the tree wave at you.
You say it waves every day,
The cruelty of colors fading,
with memories of weddings and parties,
Your once proud shoulders 
now stooped in despair.
tears once shed, now dry.

Alzheimer’s, a thief of your soul
and mind, has left in its wake
a skeleton with empty eyes
and a waving tree at a cloudy window
and a mom I once knew waving back.


The Secret

The sky was thick with snow.
Leaves of ice dripped from pine,
ice shelves on the sills.

Car roofs poked through snow
like ice cream toppings
on a sidewalk sundae.

Your phone rang four times.
I hung up and called back.
It rang five times.
You answered.
I wanted to tell you the news.
You said you wouldn't tell
You'd never tell.
It was a good secret,
a mom/daughter secret,
the type we used to share.
But now was different.
“I want to brag,” you said.
“I want to tell the world.
Why should I know
if I can't tell the world?”

And I hung up so sad.
So mad at myself
for thinking we could talk as we always had,
so mad that confidences would be broken.

And then you called me back
And asked me if it was summer.

I had to go into the hospital for a couple of weeks one summer.  I had become very friendly with the Maryland Zoo staff, and I had told one of them that I'd miss my giraffes while I was gone.
So they treated me to a behind-the-scenes tour of the giraffe house, usually reserved for conservationists. To be inside the giraffe house was an extraordinary experience.   I was allowed to pet them and feed them.  One giraffe even bent down and licked me on the cheek and drenched my shirt.  I never wanted to wash that shirt again! After I was finished with the browse, all of the staff (including the vets) came in and presented me with a painting  (nontoxic) made by the giraffes' tongues.  The names of all the staff were on the back of the painting. I think it's the most valuable gift I've ever received. 

 
Photo by Jon Blankman of painting made by tongues of giraffes 


Silver Birch Press published this poem about the painting in 2016:

Giraffe Painting

My walls are lined with pictures, 
posters, and paintings from travels.
and craft stores,

photos of kids and pets, 
of events and celebrations,
bar mitzvahs and weddings.

But my most prized possession 
has a wall to itself, a priceless
piece of art that appreciates 

with time if only in my heart, a
masterpiece done by the tongues 
of giraffes, lapping gentle colors
 
of spring on a canvas of white, a
gift of peace to seal a life of passion
well-known at the zoo from a staff

who understood how I felt
and felt it, too...who knew I was at one
with these beasts of peace.

Giraffe eyes tell their stories that 
have no voice, and have seen my
unspeakable pain fade.

And when in despair and not at the zoo,
I can now look at my painting at home
and my most precious treasure of all,

and breathe in bliss
with my greatest gift –
My giraffe painting.


The Ekphrastic Review published this poem in 2017:

VINCENT AND I

I walked down school halls 
with your ghost by my side,

misunderstood, you and I.
Our frayed souls knitted in

the lyrics of our lives that
no one understood but us.

If they tried, they didn’t say.
We were locked in our minds,

our vessels of happiness, cracked
and emptied by mockery and 

despair, our lives captured in the
peace of nature, you with your

paints, I with my pencils, where nothing
brought joy but flowers, their wind-kissed 

petals gently dancing, no judging,
not leaving us in darkness,

not abandoning us in light.
I lived your life through your pain.

Perhaps if you’d known, you would
not have felt so alone. I outgrew 

the sadness once shared with you.
I will always know the crystal color 

of your tears that others will only see as
pictures in pretty frames on museum walls.

At 71, I have published poems in numerous journals and am even more eager to continue my poetry journey I started at the age of ten.