Sample ‎ Poems by Naomi Feigelson Chase

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Writing My Life

How I ‎ wrote
For twenty-five years
Every morning
Since I came to the Cape
About my ‎ excitement at being here
Buying the house
Waking up to the view of the Tidal ‎ Marsh
The friends I made
Joanna who ran the bookstore
And took my first books to ‎ sell
Dennis who ran the Community House for Yoga
Which I took daily
Madeline his ‎ wife who invited me
For Christmas ever since
The letters I wrote to Miriam, Sondra and ‎ Jay
About my poems and theirs
The walks on the beach
The weather
The birth of ‎ Matthew, my first grandson,
And my six am drive to New York to see him
I don’t think I ‎ could have remembered
My life in such detail if I hadn’t written it.
But I don’t want to take ‎ my writing
Back to New York and obsess over it.
That’s what I would do
Leaving here, ‎ ‎
So much of my life will disappear.
I’m writing to put
All the excitement back in my ‎ memory
To hold it here
Now.

? ?

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Truro, Cape Cod

Is this the beginning
Of a Poem,
A ‎ story,
A new life?

A small white cottage
Blue shutters,
Blue door
Blue ‎ porch floor

A tidal pond in back,
Where two white herons
Fishing
Stop ‎ my breath.

Small green islands emerge
From the first mud
The pebbled ‎ bottom,
When the tide goes out

I bought the house,
Traded the back wall ‎ ‎
Which hid the pond
For glass

I built a deck
Raised my bed on cinder ‎ blocks
To see the water better
Before I slept.


? The bookstore owner told me,
‘‘You’ll have time to write
‘Everyone gets drunk year ? round
There’s nothing else to do here.”

I sat on the deck
For twenty-four ‎ summers
Watched the water
And wrote.

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?The House Tastes of My Life

I sit in the old green rocking chair
Possessed ‎ by my possessions
The red pie chest I’m crazy to keep,
The old Shaker bench that sits ‎ three,
The tarnished silver compact
With mother’s initials.

My paintings, my ‎ Bagatelles
I call them
Made from zippered garment bags,
You get at expensive ‎ stores
To bring home expensive clothes

I paint Eve on one side of the ‎ zipper,
Give her a red apple
Dip my shoelace in gold
And drape a snake around ‎ her.
I place snapshots of children
And Eve crawling out of Eden.

I paint the ‎ Grand Canyon
When I can’t write about it.
Orange, Yellow,
Layered like strata,
It ‎ had a glow.
I veiled it, untranslatable.

The blue steps to my bedroom,
The blue, ‎ red, yellow
On the stippled bathroom floor.
Downstairs the floor to- ceiling ‎ hutch
With the black statue’s head from Angkor Wat.
My father got it at the World’s ‎ Fair.

My old purple covered chair
That used to be Gordon’s
Elizabeth’s ‎ boyfriend sat in it
Till Gordon/ pointed out,
“That’s my chair.”

The pictures of ‎ Gordon and the children
Drawers full: the children
At every year, at birthdays and ‎ holidays
In London, at Stone Henge,
At meals

Outside, the asparagus
The ‎ roses, the peonies,
Outside, the quiet.

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? ?My Accountant Tells Me

I’m seventy -five. How long will I live?
My ‎ accountant doesn’t know.
He knows I don’t have enough money
For the house and my life ‎ in New York.

I have to sell the house.

I protest.
I love the house.
I ‎ moved it.
I changed it.

“How much money do you have?”
He asks me.
I ‎ don’t answer.
“That’s why you have to sell the house,’’ he ? says.