Sunday Morning Conflicts & Contradictions - A Poem Painting Poem by Iris ArensonFuller

So many ideas scrambling the brain
warming me, spreading through the body
that stretches and squirms with pleasure,
an upside down dog getting belly rubs.
ideas flowing in, sun rays through chiffon curtains
it tastes like a fresh-baked Sunday morning.
so what do I do today?
this is the story of my life
I remember reading it, feeling it even as
a tiny girl, with sundresses and Little Golden Books.
how shall I pull together all the lives I want and need?
how do I learn the scripts, words from one play
crashing the gates of the others, too loud to make sense,
asking me to memorize them all at once?
this is life, my friends, where things don't happen simply,
the life that often contradicts itself each time
a sparkling new day lets out its first cry.

****

I want I need I will I can't I should I won't I choose,
I am dizzy from colors flashing, merging, running
from easel to floor, spreading into wet color pools.
I step into bright puddles of coral, then salmon, rose,
fuchsia, floating, floating, floating over feet,
toes painting themselves cobalt, sapphire, teal,
finally feeling cool, kind grass, soft and seductive,
saying, 'Sleep', yet I notice things as eyes close.
the me that's always watching, sleep waking, knows
this grass is soothing and also has sharp jagged spikes,
lush emerald stalks woven together with dry brown blades.
this grass is teeming with new life, bees, ants, ladybugs,
but is also unripe, waiting to burst into weeds and wildness.

****

This Sunday morning is cinnamon and sorrow
like all mornings, sending me dot-dash memory messages
of things that were, things that still need doing,
things yet left unsaid, words waiting for natural birth.
I wrestle with the contradictions, sometimes winning,
sometimes on the ropes or knocked out cold,
but life is like my mother's scented pillows,
the ones she made those summers in Kerhonkson,
when she complained about socks to be darned,
but sat in the swing chair under the trees,
stuffing pillows with pine needles.
I bet if your head has ever rested on a pine filled pillow,
has ever sought sanctuary from day's decisions and doings,
then you will know what I mean.
there's no way to describe the coupling of sharpness
and clouds, of woodsy clearness mixed with
the slightly unpleasant smell of earthen mystery.
there's no way to explain how something that comforts
can sting and yet cradle your weary head with sweetness