Crisis Counselor Poem by C.J. Sage
Crisis Counselor
She was a coat of arms
seasoned for the job -- tough
and polished like tortoise shell.
When the women were tougher,
she'd tuck her advice-giving head
back against the executive chair,
let them try to fluff bent feathers,
watch them falling to their feet.
Then, her little turtle arms
would stretch out across the desk;
try to float a form --
a restraining order, maybe
a list of early warning signs --
but they'd keep on sleeping, sleep
hard through the sessions she'd spend
blowing on plastic ships, paper sails
rarely reaching port, and they would cry
like little children watching helpless,
dazed as she sunk their dreamboats,
sat on them, no coming up for air.
And perhaps she'd think of the little turtles
we'd kept confined to bathtubs as kids,
or of the public safety commercials
telling mother how, if she turned her back,
we could fall to sleep, slide and drown
in barely an inch of sitting water.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/19/2024 5:25:25 PM # 1.0.0.1119
Surreal description...... A view of a crisis counselor from the eye of the counseled? I think so, as she sank the story teller's boats.... with advice - advice about? Children falling asleep and drowning in a bath tub? This is very human C.J.... Human crisis affects us all in many different ways - but sometimes in the same way. I was 18 when my mother died many years ago. I was certainly beside myself. I remember carrying her coffin to the frozen hole in the cemetery - the ground was so frozen during the Indiana blizzard of 78 that we had to first sit and wait for the crew to finish digging the hole.... I remember thinking this is not how I want to bury my mother. I can't remember the priest's face - as he prayed over the grave - all of us huddled in a black mass around. I can't remember his face. I remember his colored robe, even his ears as small hairs fell over them, you know the fuzzy ones that you can only see when the light hits them just right. But where his face is supposed to be I can only see a flesh colored blob... no eyes, no nose, no mouth... Your poem is strikingly similar to many of Anne Sexton's poems. If you don't know them then you should check them out.... Good read....