Tribute to Monday
by Marianne Brems
You’re the day beneath dark folds of eternity,
the annihilation of the weekend.
Move through the hangover.
Pull up bootstraps reluctant to budge.
You’re the awakening one resistant eye at a time
of alarm clocks,
tight schedules,
meals eaten in distraction.
You’re the beginning of an Everest climb
to a faraway weekend,
the workday holidays try to obliterate,
a day without weddings or picnics.
You’re the day starting with mmm,
but you’re not good to eat.
Still you stand as a buttress
in the midst of aversion
at the head of the week,
able to bench press six other days,
wings spread for takeoff
up through the trees.
Avenues of Aging
by Marianne Brems
With age we may cling to constancy.
It’s the firmness that soothes
when much rushes away in a flood of debris.
The spoon next to the plate
at the 11:00 o’clock position
is all wrong at 9:00.
The left shoe must slip on before the right.
Or age may soften us
so words at last find voice
like fruit turning sweetest
just before ripeness fades.
The “remember whens” the
“you’ve been with me always”
can fill cracks
where loneliness seeps in.
Or firmness and softness
may suckle each other,
rearing their persistent heads randomly
within the routines of wakefulness and sleep
floating like lifeboats
on an ocean of sun downs.
—
Marianne Brems is a long time writer of textbooks, but also loves to write whimsical poems. She has an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several literary journals including The Pangolin Review, Armarolla, Foliate Oak, The Voice of Eve, La Scrittrice, and The Sunlight Press. She lives in Northern California.