PSH: Poets of the Week

Send to: POTW@PoetrySuperHighway.com

Ila Marie Goodey, PhD
igoodey@ksar.usu.edu

Bio(auto)

Dr. Ila Marie Goodey was born to a young farmgirl and her cowboy husband in Cache Valley at the Northern end of Utah. She was their first child and they were filled with the hopes and dreams of parents everywhere.

When she was three years old, she contracted Polio and remained physically disabled and in a wheelchair from there on. She attended Utah public schools and graduated from the University of Utah with a PhD in Psychology. She spent the next eight years as staff psychologist at the University, speechwriter, and consultant. Dr. Goodey has received many local and national awards, including, Utah Department of Human Services' creation of an annual "Ila Marie Goodey Award for Meritorious Service", the creation of an Annual University of Utah Ila Marie Goodey Scholarship in Writing, a Resolution of Commendation from Utah Legislature, J.C. Penney's National "Golden Rule Award" for Volunteerism and Community Service, YWCA Leadership Award in Business and Professions, Biographical Institute Personalities of the Americas, Who's Who of Writers
and Editors, Who's Who of American Women.

A decline in health has resulted in Dr. Goodey's need for full-time mechanical and other life support. In her restricted movement, she returned to her love for writing and began sharing her emotions and insights in poetry.

Ancestor

I took your journal out late yesterday,
father of my mother's father, and read
about your life. You labored for a way
to provide necessities: the day's bread
and the night's shelter for your babies, your wife
and then your livestock. Each new day's quest
was a seed planted in a family's life
as well as in the dark earth. Each night's rest
a harvest, rich and fully intertwined,
all with all - root and flower and blood
and dreams. I read your hopes in every line:
that war would end, that rain would come, that one by one
each child would thrive. There I could see
the promise passed from life to life to me.

Exposure

Putting pen to paper opens old wounds
and tears at memories bound in a heart
that's weathered past sensation. Is there room
in my life for such bloodletting? A part
of me kept silent by determined will
for these many years seems to scream in pain
of too much wordlessness, and so my quill
like some crazed animal runs, not to gain
a destination, but somehow in flight
to escape the inescapable: me.
All the self I refuse to claim, I write
into its own embodiment, set free
to suffer on its own this last disdain.
Yet in its poemspun shroud I still remain.

unspeak

it was from cummings i received the word
that said it all and more than less;
it's just semantics after all, absurd,
bizarre, grotesque realities at best
or worst. the truth is what we dare not say,
or cannot may be more than same, un-
captured, unsyllabled, it nows away
to live undead, unsubject to the pun
of our retelling. "how sad we two
cannot untwo, be one, and how unwhole
is us without us" said. yet when and through
unsaying we, unknowing we, enfold
more us than vowed a ringed forever.
love unspeaks the always of our never.

Blackhole

I feel myself imploding, a blackhole
collapsing on itself. The gravity
grows deeper and overwhelms my soul
with nothingness. Like Dante's opening
to hell, I am a gaping wound, a door
that reads "Beware all ye who enter here."
The life inside my spirit is no more.
Its nucleus exploded. Nothing here
remains but radiation's afterglow,
an image left like matter's residue;
invisible, says Hocking, when time so
slows it nearly stops. He somehow knew
that left alone, the end is entropy,
this metaphor for chaos that is me.

Tapestry

I love this life. Its unexpected shades
of joy and sorrow intertwined around
each other like a multi-colored braid.
I love the many precious strands I've found
within my path to weave a tapestry
as personal as fingerprints. I like
to touch the golden threads of memory
with wistful sentiment as if I might
bring back the cherished moments they depict
for one more sweet enactment. Every hue
elicits tears or smiles. Each fragment flicked
with color represents the residue
of me, a vital pattern woven rife
with rich intensity. I love this life.

Jennifer Goldie
goldie@interlog.com

Bio(auto)

J.E. Goldie Is from Toronto, Ontario, Canada & unpublished. She has been writing thoughts & short stories over the past 45 years of her life. Once a so-so Actress she now owns her own Business a an Agent in Toronto. After 23 years in The Entertainment Business what else is there? Her poems are "bits of life reflected in her heart & mind" and she only hopes to share them with the world knowing we all come from the same place.

Occasionally

I can't control,
what is to be,
If you read me at all,
you'd know,
you'd see,
That all of us,
All of we,
Fall into each other,
occasionally.

Shining

There is a subtle shining,
a quiet acceptance.

It is not loud
rather,
a murmured understanding,
between us.

You Let Me Care

You let me care for you,
I owe you for that.
You've let me touch your spirit,
and that,
leaves me speechless.