Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,

    All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

    Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children's faces looking up

Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,  

    Music like a curve of gold,

Scent of pine trees in the rain,

    Eyes that love you, arms that hold,

And for your spirit's still delight,

Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,

    Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of peace

    Count many a year of strife well lost,

And for a breath of ecstacy

Give all you have been, or could be.

Sara Teasdale, public domain

Abandoned Farmhouse

 

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

 

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

 

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars

in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

Ted Kooser, Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburg Press, 1980)

Vocational Training

I sound so much like my mother
that when people called our house for help,
I’d have to stop them halfway through
their stories. Hold on, I’d say, I’m not her.
When I went with her on calls, I hovered
in doorways, holding her equipment, watched
her walk to the center of what was wrong.
I knew I could memorize facts, anatomy,
the math of giving oxygen or shock,
but I needed her to teach me what the body
wanted. What I learned was common sense:
Apply pressure to bleeding. Stay as calm
as you can. I’ll never have her hands,
the power I saw her wield, but sometimes
I feel her voice in my mouth: Get some ice
and you’ll be fine. It doesn’t need stitches,
it’s only a scratch. Even when I’m the one
speaking, my mother’s voice knows what to do.

 

Carrie Shipers, Family Resemblances (University of New Mexico Press, 2016)

The Wedding Doll

 She boxed me—saving me, she said, for the wedding.

She shall be my centerpiece, stand next to the cake.

That was when she was twelve.

 

I was a birthday gift to a girl who loved dolls. A girl who had

dreams, pictured herself, apron-clad, in a sunny kitchen

fixing pot roast for a husband, four children.

 

It is now 65 years later, and I’m stuck up in the attic,

like a child’s cradle outgrown or a rocking horse

no longer needed. And I am still in the turquoise box

 

with magenta lettering proclaiming Madame Alexander.

We, the most cherished dolls of the era. This was

before Barbie, Cabbage Patch kids, and American Girl.

 

My box itself has begun to collapse, its corners broken,

its top dented from move after move. The wedding dress

I wear now is tainted—tea brown with age. The lace

 

delicate, ready to dissolve at the touch. My face, too, is

cracked, but my blue eyes are still open. She takes me

out now and then and witnesses time, acknowledges

 

that I never got that center spotlight—nor did she.

How do I feel having been boxed for decades? How does

she feel never having had a man to hold at night,

 

children to embrace? She, too, has been in a box. Hers

constructed of societal expectations. No less imprisoned

than I. Do I pity her? Not really. She had choices whereas

 

I had none. She could have, at any time, lifted her lid,

flown over the edge.

 

Nancy Beagle, rattle.com April 11, 2024

The Faces of Children

Meeting old friends after a long time, we see
with surprise how they have changed, and must imagine,
despite the mirror's lies, that change is upon us, too.

Once, in our twenties, we thought we would never die.
Now, as one thoughtlessly shuffles a deck of cards,
we have run through half our lives.

The afternoon has vanished, the evening changing
us into four shadows mildly talking on a porch.
And as we talk, we listen to the children play
the games that we played once. In joy and terror,
they cry out in surprise as the seeker finds the one in hiding,
or in fairytale tableau, each one is tapped and turned

to stone. The lawn is full of breathing statues who wait
to be changed back again, and we can do nothing but stand
to one side of our children's games, our children's lives.

We are the conjurors who take away all pain,
and we are the ones who cannot take away the pain at all.
They do not ask, as lately we have asked ourselves,

Who was I then? And what must I become?
Like newly minted coins, their faces catch
the evening's radiance. They are so sure of us,

more sure than we are of ourselves. Our children:
who gently push us toward the end of our own lives.
The future beckons brightly. They trust us to lead them there.

 

Elizabeth Spires, Now the Green Blade Rises (W. W. Norton & Co. 2002)

Other Sheep

            I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
           I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
                                              —John 10.16


We think we're being open-minded
when we include “all of us,” Protestant and Catholic,
Orthodox and Coptic, as if we see the whole landscape.
But the pasture and the Shepherd are far greater than that.
Believer, unbeliever and other-believer alike
are all shepherded, each in their own language.
And still there are more, and more other, sheep.
Like, well, sheep.
Do not the deer and otter, whale and fungus
follow the Shepherd faithfully?
Is not the bird migrating its continents shepherded as well?
Christ is not the partisan figurehead of a religion,
Christ is the infinite embodied grace of God,
the Shepherd of all Creation,
who leads rivers to the sea and winter into spring
and each of us into life.
So there are still other, and more “other,” sheep.
For Copernicus isn't done with us yet:
we admit the sun doesn't revolve around the earth,
but we still think God does.
No, little one: we are in a small corner.
Yet even the far galaxies,
the trillion trillions of stars and their planets,
and yes, their doubtless forms of life,
are also under the calm eye of the Shepherd,
and follow the Shepherd's voice.
All of us, Baptist and Sufi, fish, bug and bird,
earthling and alien, village and nebula, all are one flock. One.
And, behold, even on the remotest planet
in the farthest flung galaxy—like ours—
or the most desolate spot in a life like yours,
under the loving gaze of the Shepherd who seeks out the one,
there is no one who is not at the center.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net April 16, 2024 

No Longer a Teenager

my daughter, who turns twenty tomorrow,
has become truly independent.
she doesn’t need her father to help her
deal with the bureaucracies of schools,
hmo’s, insurance, the dmv.
she is quite capable of handling
landlords, bosses, and auto repair shops.
also boyfriends and roommates.
and her mother.

frankly it’s been a big relief.
the teenage years were often stressful.
sometimes, though, i feel a little useless.

but when she drove down from northern California
to visit us for a couple of days,
she came through the door with the
biggest, warmest hug in the world for me.
and when we all went out for lunch,
she said, affecting a little girl’s voice,
“i’m going to sit next to my daddy,”
and she did, and slid over close to me
so i could put my arm around her shoulder
until the food arrived.

i’ve been keeping busy since she’s been gone,
mainly with my teaching and writing,
a little travel connected with both,
but i realized now how long it had been
since i had felt deep emotion.

when she left i said, simply,
“i love you,”
and she replied, quietly,
“i love you too.”
you know it isn’t always easy for
a twenty-year-old to say that;
it isn’t always easy for a father.

literature and opera are full of
characters who die for love:
i stay alive for her.

 

Gerald Locklin, The Life Force Poems (Water Row Books, 2002)