Tag: Mary Ray Goehring

Friday Night Fire by Mary Ray Goehring

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Friday Night Fire

        After When I Was Conceived by Michael Ryan

July 1950. An evening breeze off
Lake Michigan ruffles the cotton
kitchen curtains in their third-floor apartment—
the ones she sewed on his sister’s machine.
They were in Kenosha, perhaps a Friday,
his Western Electric work week finished
as was their meatless meal of salmon
patties, baked beans and bread baked
that afternoon, the smell still scenting the room.
My brother already in bed.
Mom, apron tied around her waist, washing
dishes at the sink, strands
of hair slip bobby pins
frame her smiling face
Jack Benny jokes on the radio.
My father smokes a Pall Mall at the table
as she suggests a picnic at Simmons
Island beach for tomorrow.
He tells her he loves her potato salad
snuffs his cigarette in the ashtray
walks behind her
wraps her in his arms
presses against her ample hips.
Dishes forgotten in the suds-filled sink.

*

Mary Ray Goehring has been, for the last 20 years, a snowbird migrating between her home state of Wisconsin and East Texas. For family reasons, she has now permanently moved to the pine forests of East Texas. She writes primarily about nature, family and friends. You can find her work in several print and online journals and anthologies such as: ONE ART: a journal of poetry, A Path to Kindness – edited by James Crews, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Moss Piglet, The Blue Heron Review, Bramble, Your Daily Poem, The Rye Whiskey Review, Steam Ticket Review, Texas Poetry Calendar and others.

Laughing Yoga Time Travelers by Mary Ray Goehring

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Laughing Yoga* Time Travelers

Six 60 somethings
hold hands, swing arms,
snort, snicker, chortle,
cachinnate,
and find long forgotten
6-year-old selves still here.

We gather to laugh
with a friend undergoing chemo.
No clever jokes,
no judgement allowed.
Just crazy gestures, goofy faces.
While moving our bodies, our bellies laugh
and afterwards, deep restorative breaths.

We strut like chickens.
Giggle like school girls.
Bellies bounce in hoots and hollers.
Our mood rising like rainbow sunrises
lighting the room in lifted spirits.
Magical. Transported to a time
we remembered how to laugh
for no other reason
than it felt good.

*Laughing Yoga is part of a holistic therapy discovered by Madan Kataria in 1995 and is now offered by MD Anderson Cancer Center of patients receiving chemo. “Laughter yoga brings a unique element to the Place…of wellness,” says Moshe Frenkel M.D. medical director of the Integrative Medicine Program at M D. Anderson. “We know from multiple studies that laughter causes a positive physiological response and above all reduces stress and anxiety. This complementary therapy allows us to incorporate humor in cancer care and help patients discover a playfulness that reduces stress and anxiety while increasing their pain tolerance.”

*

Mary Ray Goehring, a snowbird, migrates seasonally between her prairie in Central Wisconsin and the pine forests along the border between East Texas and Louisiana. Grateful to be learning about the flora and fauna throughout the country, she writes primarily about nature, family and friends. You can find her work in several print and online journals and anthologies such as: ONE ART: a journal of poetry, A Path to Kindness – edited by James Crews, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Moss Piglet, The Blue Heron Review, Bramble, Your Daily Poem, The Rye Whiskey Review, Steam Ticket Review and others.

Two Poems by Mary Ray Goehring

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My Father Ate Robins

Born in an honest to God log cabin
on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
the youngest of seven children
in his mother’s second marriage
after she shot her first husband
in North Carolina for having another
family. His death in the hospital pushed her
to quickly answer an ad for a wife
placed by a French-Canadian lumber-
jack named Henry, my grandfather, who left
his family to fend for themselves while he
worked the lumber camps. Finally left all-
together when dad was 17. The hearth
always had a stew pot. They ate what they shot.

*

Luna Moth

Last evening, while our reticent son
visited, a Luna moth fluttered into

the glass of our living room window.
Such moths, I am told, mean new

beginnings, a quest for knowledge
and truth. Their only job

procreation. For this, they are blessed
with no mouths.          Silent,

stealth bomber shaped lime-green
wings made to avoid detection,

tapping over and over—
its purple headband, its false eyespots

on the clear pane trying
to get to the light

as I asked my son who he was dating.
He answered

I will tell you when you need to know.

*

Mary Ray Goehring is a snowbird traveling between her Central Wisconsin prairie and the pine forests of East Texas. She has been published internationally in journals and anthologies such as The Path To Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Blue Heron Review, Bramble, Your Daily Poem, The Rye Whiskey Review and others.