Joan Leotta
My Dad
By Joan Leotta
The death of loved ones, first my grandmother, who I loved dearly, then my wonderful father, my dear mother, and devastatingly, our beloved son, Joe, were events that sent me into spirals of sadness. The spirals still come, but some relief for the grief also arrives in my thinking about our good times together and writing about them. I also talk to them, sometimes simply a few words where I am, in the store or passing by a place we both enjoyed and they also talk to me, mostly in dreams.
Below, I relate some poems about these dreams/and comforting memories in the order of their deaths. I believe death is powerless to sever our ties with ones we love.
Grandma.
Grandma’s soup and kitchen figure prominently in many of my poems and dreams
Not long after I wrote the poem below, I dreamt of Grandma, realized I could talk to her again, and in fact not long after did dream of her and her soup and recorded that in the haiku that follows this poem.
Listening to Radio in the Kitchen
On the top of her kitchen cabinet,
usually “on”, Grandma’s
beige Bakelite radio, daily
blared out the travails of
Stella Dallas or the sweet
melodies of an Italian music show.
I often sat at her gray
Formica table to watch her
turn plain vegetables into soup,
knead flour into loaves of bread, or
clip the paper top off of a tall
tin container of fresh ricotta.
The fresh ricotta was
what I loved best—
its cream often had risen to top
and if I had been good that day,
Grandma would let me
skim off some to eat in my
favorite periwinkle Fiesta ware bowl
before her spoon stirred the
rest of the cream back
down into the container for
her to could transform into
filling for her homemade ravioli.
Her radio is gone, but
I make my own soup, her recipe,
and spoon it into that
same Fiesta ware bowl.
while listening to podcasts on my radio,
sitting in my own kitchen,
and wishing I could talk to Grandma.
(This first appeared in Verse virtual, 2023)
late night sneezes–
I dream of grandma’s soup
wake up well
My Dad
Dreaming about my father has taken many forms—midnight suppers with him, Dad coming to (a pharmacist) advise me on how to help cure my cold’s lingering drippy nose (saline spray to stop nasal drip), and in a time of anxiety, in this poem, he reminded me, he and other beloveds wait for me on "the other side."
Dreaming Across the Styx
My father walks into my view.
He is in a long, narrow room,
wearing his tan trench coat.
A finely blocked felt hat
tops his jet-black, wavy hair.
He tamps down the tobacco
in his cherry wood pipe, then turns
to me, his brown eyes twinkling.
He steps back into
a poorly lit hallway I do not recognize.
Dad removes his coat and
sits in an orange plastic chair.
Coat on his lap,
he draws softly on the pipe and
nods toward me .
Cherry -flavored tobacco smoke
soothes me.
Dad is waiting for me,
as always.
Through theatre classes
piano lessons, dance lessons.
Patiently enmeshed in his own thoughts,
he waits without complaint.
Suddenly I wake.
I'm at home.
No hallway. No chair.
No cherry tobacco.
Only the smell of coffee.
My father smiles from his photo.
Some say dreaming across the Styx means
Ferryman Charon will soon arrive.
But not for me.
Instead of Charon,
my own beloved father
waits, patiently, to
ferry me across the Styx
in his white 1960 Thunderbird.
First published, Red Wolf Journal, Summer 2014
Included in my chapbook, Languid Lusciousness with Lemon
Mom
She and I traveled together because my dad did not like to travel. About thirty years after that, I recreated the same photo with my daughter, Jennie, and me. One note--for the longest time, my mother did not make an appearance and her poem explains why. (Interestingly, she began to appear in my dreams after I wrote this ekphrastic poem).
Magritte’s Apple Explains It All
After Magritte’s Apple
One glance at this canvas and I knew the answer
to the conundrum troubling my heart:
Why in the twenty years since she has left this earth,
has my mother not visited me in a dream?
Dreams, those moments when the conscious mind relaxes
when life’s everyday reality joins with matter deep inside
bridging that line between the known and mystery--
in that land of dreams I’ve often watched, met, even talked with
my grandmother, father, aunts, and son.
All of these beloved departeds have spoken to me.
My son has directly addressed me more than once.
Only my mother has never appeared. Never even walked
across my mental stage as a cameo.
Occasionally, I admit, I worry that perhaps she doesn’t visit
because I did not love her enough in life for her to remain connected.
But how can that be, when I know I loved her then and still
love her very much?
In life, we laughed and argued, had much to say to one another.
I wear her jewelry, cook her recipes, , chuckle over her sayings,
and, regularly, even though it's been twenty years, when
I open the drawers of her wooden vanity, the aroma of Youth Dew
wafts up to meet me.
Now, Magritte has helped me understand.
My mother does not need to wait for night, for dreams to return.
She fills my days in many ways.
She does not come in dreams because she has never really left
my waking moments.
She fills the room of my consciousness, my crisp green apple
of a mother, larger than life—even in death.
Son
Joseph Gabriel Leotta, 1982-2002
The death of our son was the most difficult of these four for me. At times I wondered if I would ever have joy again in life. The poem below, a found poem of sorts since is distilled form a longer essay with the same title, recounts a dream and more where he comes to me and the poem tells how I found joy again through a memory of Joey learning to hang glide in the Outer Banks.
The Day I Learned to Fly
On our Outer Banks Vacation trip in March of 2000,
Joe was most excited about learning to hang glide.
I accompanied him to the high dunes learning center,
stood close to the to the group to snap pictures,
heard the instructor tell them,
"The key to successful flight is to be still,
to let the wind lift you.”
Although I did not know it then, it was our last vacation.
Two years later in March, Joe was hit by a car while
crossing the street at Virginia Tech and died a few days later.
In my grief, I struggled with simply living every day.
The idea that I could once again function normally,
even experience joy, seemed impossible—until I recalled the words of
Joe’s flight instructor—
“Be still and let the wind lift you.”
From that moment, I began to focus on God,
on others, instead of my grief, on good memories,
let the Spirit work in my heart to lift me.
Indeed, just as Joe, going airborne in a glider
I learned to sail above my grief,
This world’s troubles—that day I learned to fly,
began again to experience the joy’s exhilaration.
Joe began to come—visiting through dreams
first telling me, not to worry I’d failed as a mom--that
indeed, I had taught him to look both ways before
crossing a street, saying he had simply
not done so that night. I began to
chat with him by day, and in quiet moments,
such as when seated at our dining table,
writing, or having coffee, I was rewarded with
feeling his hand on my shoulder,
patting me as he did when in life he
would walk by and again I could
hear him murmur as he touched me,
“Love you, Mom, Love you.”
The day I realized joy, a part of love
does not cease when loved ones pass
into the next world, that we too can fly,
powered by the joy of our love for them
if we do not struggle against it, because
because they are still with us, that is the
day I learned to fly—joyously.
