Camas Lilies

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas
opening to acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers' hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?

And you -- what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down --
papers, plans, appointments, everything --
leaving only a note: "Gone
to fields to be lovely. Be back
when I'm through with blooming."

Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in your sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

Lynn Unger, Breaking the Bread: Meditations (Skinner House Books)

The Art of Disappearing

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone is telling you in a loud voice
that they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You'll never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could stumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books.1995) 

Memorial Day Sonnet

We're here to honor those who went to war

Who did not wish to die, but did die, grievously,

In eighteen sixty-one and in two-thousand four

Though they were peaceable as you or me

Young and innocent, they knew nothing of horror --

Singers and athletes, and all in all well-bred.

Their sergeants, mercifully, made them into warriors,

and at the end they were moving straight ahead.

As we look at these headstones, row on row on row,

Let us see them as they were, laughing and joking,

On that bright irreverent morning long ago.

And once more, let our hearts be broken.

God have mercy on them for their heroic gift,

May we live the good lives they would have lived.

Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion, May 29, 2004

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light --
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be turning back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I'm mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning (The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995)

On Leaving

They say I am drawing,
swiftly to the end.
Well, so be it.
I have loved,
been loved,
and lost,
oh lost
much more
than ever I spoke.
I shall miss
the world's beauty,
not its awful cruelty.
It was overall good,
this journey
with its stops
I should have shunned,
its detours taken.
But it is too late
to rue the day
when night falls.
I pause at
the gate in the wall,
a little fearful,
a little sad,
not for the going,
but for all
that's left behind.
There, across
the dark garden,
a door opens,
light spills out.
I take the first
of my last steps
home.

Bonnie Thurston, The Paraclete Poetry Anthology: Selected and New Poems, ed. by Mark S. Burrows (Paraclete Press, 2016)

Only Child

I never wished for a sibling, boy or girl.
Center of the universe,
I had the back of my parents' car
all to myself. I could look out one window
then slide over to the other window
without any quibbling over territorial rights,
and whenever I played a game
on the floor of my bedroom, it was always my turn.

Not until my parents entered their 90s
did I long for a sister, a nurse I named Mary,
who worked in a hospital
five minutes away from their house
and who would drop everything,
even a thermometer, whenever I called.
"Be there in a jiff" and "on my way!"
were two of her favorite expressions, and mine.

And now that the parents are dead,
I wish that I could meet Mary for coffee
every now and then at that Italian place
with the blue awning where we would sit
and reminisce, even on rainy days.
I would gaze into her green eyes
and see my parents, my mother looking out
of Mary's right eye and my father staring out of her left,

which would remind me of what an odd duck
I was as a child, a little prince and a loner,
who would break off from his gang of friends
on a Saturday and find a hedge to hide behind.
And I would tell Mary about all that, too,
and never embarrass her by asking about
her nonexistence, and maybe we
would have another espresso and a pastry
and I would always pay the bill and walk her home.

Billy Collins, The Rain in Portugal (Random House, 2016)

Blackbirds

I am 52 years old, and have spent
truly the better part
of my life out-of-doors
but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head
a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air

and when I turned my face upward
I saw a flock of blackbirds
rounding a curve I didn't know was there
and the sound was simply all those wings,
all those feathers against air, against gravity
and such a beautiful winning:
the whole flock taking a long, wide turn
as if of one body and one mind.

How do they do that?

If we lived only in human society
what a puny existence that would be

but instead we live and move and have our being
here, in this soaring and curving world
that is not our own
so that when mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
and when, even more rarely, we unite and move together
toward a common good,

we can think to ourselves:

ah yes, this is how it's meant to be.

Julie Cadwallader Staub, First published in The Mennonite. Will appear in her new collection, Wing Over Wing (Paraclete Press, 2019)

Blind Date

Our loneliness sits with us at dinner, an unwanted guest
who never says anything. It's uncomfortable. Still

we get to know each other, like students allowed
to use a private research library for only one night.

I go through her file of friends, cities, and jobs.
"What was that like?" I ask. "What did you do then?"

We are each doctors who have only ourselves
for medicine, and long to prescribe it for what ails

the other. She has a nice smile. Maybe, maybe. . .
I tell myself. But my heart is a cynical hermit

who frowns once, then shuts the door of his room
and starts reading a book. All I can do now is want

to want her. Our polite conversation coasts
like a car running on fumes, and then rolls to a stop;

we split the bill, and that third guest at the table
goes home with each of us, to talk and talk.

Jay Lemming, Miracle Atlas (Big Pencil Press, 2011)

Gamblers All

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you've felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it's been a tough fight worth fighting
as we drive along
betting on another day.

Charles Bukowski, The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps (Ecco, 2002)

from Sects from A to Z (extracts)

The Baptists put stock in immersion
And loudly will cast the aspersion
           That a ritual that stops
           With a few sprinkled drops
Is merely a watered-down version.

The blue-eyed Episcopal ladies
and gentlemen look like the Bradys.
           Their children are blond,
           And they all are quite fond
Of the Escalades and the Mercedes.

The Quakers possess inner lighting
And refrain from all feuding and fighting;
           They enter their meetings
           With "Bless Thee" for greetings,
But the service is hardly exciting.
         
The Shakers thought sexual activity
Was a wasteful sinful proclivity:
           "No more sleeping in pairs!
           Go make tables and chairs!
Sublimate and increase productivity!"

Most Zealots are eager to tell us
That their God is bad-tempered and jealous.
           They go on for hours
           Describing his powers
With a zeal that is excessively zealous.

R. S. Gwynn, Poetry, July, 2005

N'em

They said to say goodnight
And not goodbye, unplugged
The TV when it rained. They hid
Money in mattresses
So to sleep on decisions.
Some of their children
Were not their children. Some
Of their parents had no birthdates.
They could sweat a cold out
Of you. They'd awake without
An alarm telling them to.
Even the short ones reached
Certain shelves. Even the skinny
Cooked animals too quick
To get caught. And I don't care
How ugly one of them arrived,
That one got married
To somebody fine. They fed
Families with change and wiped
Their kitchens clean.
Then another century came.
People like me forgot their names.

Jericho Brown, The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)

A Teacher's Lament

Don't tell me the cat ate your math sheet,
And your spelling words went down the drain,
And you couldn't decipher your homework,
Because it was soaked in the rain.

Don't tell me you slaved for hours
On the project that's due today,
And you would have had it finished
If your snake hadn't run away.

Don't tell me you lost your eraser,
And your worksheets and pencils, too,
And your papers are stuck together
With a great big glob of glue.

I'm tired of all your excuses;
They really are a terrible bore.
Besides, I forgot my own work,
At home in my study drawer.

Kalli Dakos, If You're Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand  (Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1990)

A Teacher's Contract

Between the teachers and the city
there exists a contract,
full of legal obligations on both sides,
pay steps, duties and responsibilities,
all to be negotiated.
But there is a higher, more important contract,
that requires no lawyers,
no arbitration, no picket lines.
It is a contract given, not stated,
ironclad and universal.
It is written on the smart board,
demonstrated in the halls, surrounding
student desks and classroom walls.
It is a contract automatically renewed each year,
forged in love, witnessed daily.
It is never up for a discussion or vote.
It is unchangeable, immutable.
And in Newtown the contract
remains unbroken in life, in death,
consisting of only two words:
"My kids."

Mel Glenn. This poem appeared in the Metropolitan Dairy feature, Monday, January 14, 2013, The New York Times, page A17.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave a stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Author's name omitted at her request.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

is the usual thing to say when you begin
pulling on the toes of a small child,
and I have never had a problem with that.
I could easily picture the pig with his basket
and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.

What always stopped me in my tracks was
the middle toe -- this little piggy ate roast beef.
I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich
with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,
but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here --
I am even wondering why it is called "horseradish."
I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense
of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.
After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don't want to be the one who spoils the children's party
by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots
or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.

By the way, I am completely down with going
"Wee wee wee" all the way home,
having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

Billy Collins, Ballistics (Random House, 2008)

homage to my hips

these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
I've known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

Lucille Clifton, Good Woman (Curtis Brown, Ltd, 1987)

Have We Had Easter Yet?

'Who are you?' asks my mother.
'If you're looking after me
I ought to know your name.'

I show her me when I was small,
A faded photograph.
'That's Bobbins,' she says instantly.

'I wonder where she is, she never comes to see me.'
I go away. To get my mother's lunch.
'How good it looks. Please thank the cook.'

Later I find it in the bin.
'I didn't know who cooked it,
So I had those custard creams.'

She smiles at me with muddled eyes
And says my name,
Then struggles off on shaky legs,

Looks for her stick,
Opens the outside door,
Calls home dead dogs.

Alison Pryde, Have We Had Easter Yet? (Peterloo Poets, 1998)