---

Note:
“Turning the Page” and “Looking Back” are in my
upcoming book, Letting Go and New Beginnings:
poems and photographs.

Turning the Page

There is something…
just beyond my grasp
a key perhaps
to the future,
a not quite visible door,
the wisp of a flowing dress
just disappearing around the corner
I see only out of the corner of my eye.

When I look straight ahead
all I can fathom is the direct path
from my checkered past
into the inevitable near days—
no accounting for imagination, creation,
or the volatile state of the world
or the leaving of a last child.

After interweaving my life with others
to whom I gave birth
now is the unweaving
with some grace, some guidance, some wisdom,
yet leaving my heart intact.
Creating new relationships
I only wish to imagine.

And so the future
with all possibilities
remains blank,
unknown and possibly unknowable.
Still worth getting up in the morning
to find out what will happen
as I turn the page.


Margaret Dubay Mikus
Copyright © 2004

To Be Recognized

I have on occasion
been mistaken
for someone else:

a neighbor,
a granddaughter,
the girl I was last week.

On occasion, mistaken
for a lion, a deer, a zebra,
a cat left out in the rain.

Always my response
is the same:
grateful to be recognized

in whatever measure,
I smile the warm smile
and continue walking.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
Copyright © 2005

To Kip:
Post Lesson Time of Grace

Thank you for being my ears
these almost eleven years,
for I cannot hear my own song—
and yet how I longed!

Thank you for peeling the layers
of the onion no matter the tears,
no matter the fears of
not being good enough

or shining too bright
or falling in the darkness
or being more or less
than I truly could be.

I cannot tell you in linear words
how our lessons of voice were
unconscious pretext, gave me the choice
to change my life.

Of course it was up to me
to say yes and keep on saying,
though I cannot see
doing otherwise— this path

now seems so obvious,
so joyful, so playful,
the navigated pitfalls
seem in memory minimal small.

And yet,
it could have been
otherwise.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
Copyright © 2005

Mary

A pot on my shelf,
unfinished symmetrical beauty,
created by the hands of a botanist,
an artist, a woman now gone,
a reminder of life’s pleasure;

unglazed earthen lines
shaped from her skilled, hopeful fingers,
made to be a vase with a lid.
But I have no lid, just smooth
perfection, in preparation;

no glaze or added color,
just the fullness of earth in form,
a work in progress
from the months before her illness.

And I have a small finished bowl,
open face to receive the rain,
cream glaze with asymmetrical royal-blue drops,
made in ‘87 when she was vibrant and healthy.
Would that she knew what these pots mean to me.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
Copyright © 2005

To Brigitte: After Massage

Well-melted
sweetness dissolved,
sumptuous and accessible.

Grateful
alert and aware
of pleasure,

welcomed care,
calm, centered
enveloped, embraced;

enfolded in the warmth
of your hands,
your generous, loving hands.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
Copyright © 2005

Looking Back

When my children were young
a woman, quite wistful, came up to me
in line at the grocery, and said:
enjoy them, they grow up so fast
and then they are gone.

Those days were filled with baths, feedings,
diapers, night terrors, ear infections, eczema,
reading stories, infectious grins, thrown Cheerios
and raisins, chickenpox, shrieks and devilish looks,
school projects, book reports, shopping, migraines,
dance classes, trips to the library, trips to the
emergency room, pediatricians, orthodontists,
dentists, band and orchestra concerts, baseball,
softball, basketball, sprained ankles, laundry, summer camp, vacations, birthday parties, sledding, snow angels,
school supplies, teacher conferences, babysitters,
tears, talks, back rubs, family dinners…

And now…somehow…I am that woman
walking up to a mom with small kids
in a grocery cart, saying:
enjoy them, they grow up so fast
and then they are gone.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
Copyright © 2005

---