After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries a New Recipe for Hamburger Hot Dish

"How did you like it?" she asked.

"It's all right," he said.

"This is the third time I cooked
it this way. Why can't you
ever say if you like something?"

"Well if I didn't like it, I
wouldn't eat it," he said.

"You never say anything
I cook tastes good."

"I don't know why all the time
you think I have to say it's good.
I eat it, don't I?"

"I don't think you have to say
all the time it's good, but once
in a while you could say
you like it."

"It's all right," he said.


Leo Dangel, Old Man Brunner Country (Spoon River Poetry Press 1987)

Bonnard's Nudes

His wife. Forty years he painted her.
Again and again. The nude in the last painting
the same young nude as the first. His wife.

As he remembered her young. As she was young.
His wife in her bath. At her dressing table
in front of the mirror. Undressed.

His wife with her hands under her breasts
looking out on the garden.
The sun bestowing warmth and color.

Every living thing in bloom there.
She young and tremulous and most desirable.
When she died, he painted her a while longer.

A few landscapes. Then died.
And was put down next to her.
His young wife.

Raymond Carver

Here's to the Crazy Ones

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They are not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine.
They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you look at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.

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Could Have

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . .
You were in luck -- just then a straw went floating by.

As a result, because, although, despite.
What would have happened if a hand, a foot,
within an inch, a hairsbreadth from
an unfortunate coincidence.

So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

Wislawa Szymborska
translated from the Polish by Stanislav Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh,
View With a Grain of Sand, (Harcourt, Brace 1996)

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have not left one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the stone between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough in handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more.
There where it is we do not need a wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."


Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost. Edited by Edward Connery Lathem (Henry Holt and Company, 1969)

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House, copyright Margaret Atwood 1995 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishers)

The Lord's Prayer : A New Zealand Prayer Book

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe;
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world;
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings;
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trial too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, 
now and forever. Amen.

A New Zealand Prayer Book, The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, 1989 (HarperCollins 1997)

It's All Right

Someone you trusted has treated you bad.
Someone has used you to vent their ill temper.
Did you expect anything different?
Your work -- better than some others' -- has
      languished,
neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard,
and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luck
spoiled what you did. That grudge held against you
for years after you patched up, has flared,
and you've lost a friend for a time. Things
at home aren't so good; on the job your spirits
have sunk. But just when the worst bears down
you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon,
and outside at work a bird says "Hi!"
Slowly the sun creeps along the floor;
it is coming your way. It touches your shoe.

William Stafford, The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press 1998)

If You Knew

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulled his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

Ellen Bass, The Human Line copyright Ellen Bass 1997 (Copper Canyon Press)

It Is I Who Must Begin

It is I who must begin.

Once I begin, once I try --

here and now,

right where I am,

not excusing myself

by saying things

would be easier elsewhere,

without grand speeches and

ostentatious gestures,

but all the more persistently

-- to live in harmony

with the "voice of Being," as I

understand it within myself

-- as soon as I begin that,

I suddenly discover

to my surprise, that

I am neither the only one,

nor the first,

nor the most important one

to have set out

upon that road.

Whether all is really lost

or not depends entirely on

whether or not I am lost.

Vaclav Havel, Life Prayers from Around the World, ed. Elizabeth Roberts 

How Is Poetry Different?

Poetry has long been recognized as a distinctive literature which works in our lives differently than other genres. Our reading can be more useful if we take a moment to consider in which ways that opinion is true. How is poetry different?

1. Poetry provides a way of talking about subjects that we normally avoid.
In most contexts people don't talk about death, though each of us is going to die. We don't talk easily about sex, religion, a failing marriage, difficulties with children, abuse or addiction. With images and the creative use of words, poetry can build bridges to life experiences. It involves us with the subject indirectly with less anxiety and resistance, facilitating reflection, prayer, and conversation.

It's as if the poet knows our lives. Poetry doesn't avoid that which is uncomfortable or painful, nor that which is full of joy and beauty. Perhaps for the first time we are able to speak about our real lives, freely and confidently.

2. Poetry provides a way to express feelings that we tend to repress or deny. 
In many cases, people cannot find the words which describe what they are feeling. They sense that "the right words" are not available to them.

Yet, as poet-author Erica Jong wrote, "poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life -- when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born, or when we fall in love. Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives."

Poetry also helps us in the routines of life. Now we can work through the dark emotions and experience feelings of comfort and consolation; or we can claim the positive feelings of happiness, peace, and wholeness. Poetry grounds us in reality, allowing us to articulate our feelings to ourselves, if not yet to others.

3. Poetry teaches us to access wisdom through the imagination instead of habitually seeking a rational understanding of every word and every experience.
A poem is not primarily a product of the poet's rational thinking. It is not an attempt to explain life in a clear, orderly fashion. Understanding the poem is not a result of grasping the literal meaning of words, sentences, and paragraphs.

Poems are full of metaphors, the creative use of words, and unconventional forms. These elements speak to our hearts, not just our minds. They speak to our imagination, offering a multitude of insights, bearing the hope of a reordered life-perspective.

4. Poetry can unveil, express, and connect us to the spiritual dimensions of our lives and experiences.
Poet Jane Hirshfield suggests this exercise: "Open any doorstop-sized anthology at random a dozen times and find in each of the resulting pages its spiritual dimension. If the poems are worth the cost of their ink, it can be done,"

The realm of poetry with a spiritual dimension is not limited to "religious poetry." Religious poetry may seem heavy-handed or opaque, too obvious or superficial. Some religious poetry may lean toward the sentimental or nostalgic. Poems are truly spiritual to the extent that they probe the central questions of human life -- mortality and transience, isolation and alienation, the question of suffering in all its dimensions, or lead us to authentic praise and thanksgiving.

(I encourage you to use the Comments section below to share observations, suggestions and questions.)

Bathing the New Born

I love with an almost fearful love
to remember the first baths I gave him,
our second child, so I knew what to do.
I laid the little torso along
my left forearm, the nape of the neck
in the crook of my elbow, hips nearly as
small as a least tern's tail
against my wrist, thigh held loosely
in the loop of thumb and forefinger, the
sign that means exactly right. I'd soap him,
the violet, cold feet, the scrotum
wrinkled as a waved whelk, the chest,
hands, clavicle, throat, gummy
furze of the scalp. When I got him too soapy he'd
slide in my grip like an armful of buttered
noodles, but I'd hold him not too tight,
I felt that I was good for him.
I'd tell him about his wonderful body
and the wonderful soap, and he'd look at me,
one week old, his eyes still wide
and apprehensive. I love that time
when you croon and croon to them, you can see
the calm slowly entering them, you can
sense it in your clasping hand,
the loose spine resting against
the muscle of your forearm, you feel the fear
leaving their bodies, he lay in the blue
oval plastic baby tub and
looked at me in wonder and began to
move his silky limbs at will in the water.

Sharon Olds, Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 Copyright 2004 by Sharon Olds   

Though There Are Torturers

Though there are torturers in the world
There are also musicians.

Though, at this moment,
Men are screaming in prisons
There are jazzmen raising storms
Of sensuous celebration
And orchestras releasing
Glories of the Spirit.

Though the image of God
Is everywhere defiled
A man in West Clare
Is playing the concertina,
The Sistine Choir is levitating
Under the dome of St. Peter's
And a drunk man on the road
Is singing for no reason.

Michael Coady

Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you find it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For Is'e still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1994)

The Cure for It All

Go gently today, don't hurry
or think about the next thing. Walk
with the quiet trees. Can you believe
how brave they are -- how kind? Model your life
after theirs. Blow kisses
at yourself in the mirror

especially when
you think you've messed up. Forgive
yourself for not meeting your unreasonable
expectations. You are human, not
God -- don't be so arrogant.

Praise fresh air,
clean water, good dogs. Spin
something from joy. Open
a window, even if
it's cold outside. Sit. Close
your eyes. Breathe. Allow

the river
of it all to pulse
through eyelashes,
fingertips, bare toes. Breathe in,
breathe out. Breathe until

you feel your bigness, until the sun
rises in your veins. Breathe
until you stop needing
anything
to be different.

Julia Fehrenbacher, copyright 2017 by the author The Huffington Post, then in She Will Not Be Quiet (e-book, 2017)