Lending Out Books

You're always giving, my therapist said.

You have to learn how to take. Whenever

you meet a woman, the first thing you do

is lend her your books. You think she'll

have to see you again in order to return them.

But what happens is, she doesn't have the time

to read them, & she's afraid if she sees you again

you'll expect her to talk about them, & will

want to lend her even more. So she

cancels the date. You end up losing

a lot of books. You should borrow hers.

Hal Sirowitz, My Therapist Said (Crown Publishers, 1998) 

The Kiss

When he finally put

his mouth on me -- on

my shoulder -- the world

shifted a little on the tilted

axis of itself. The minutes

since my brother died

stopped marching ahead like

dumb soldiers and

the stars rested. 

His mouth on my shoulder and

then on my throat

and the world started up again

for me,

some machine deep inside it

recalibrating

all the little wheels

slowly reeling and speeding up,

the massive dawn lifting on the other

side of the turning world.

And when his mouth

pressed against my 

mouth, I

opened my mouth

and the world's chord

played at once:

a large, ordinary music rising

from a hand neither one of us could see.

Marie Howe, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Consolation, Jim Crews and Ted Kooser, eds. (Green Writers Press, 2019)

Prayer for a Marriage

When we are old one night and the moon

arcs over the house like an antique

China saucer and the teacup sun

follows somewhere far behind

I hope the stars deepen to a shine

so bright you could read by it

if you liked and the sadnesses

we will have known go away

for awhile -- in this hour or two

before sleep -- and that we kiss

standing in the kitchen not fighting

gravity so much as embodying

its sweet force, and I hope we kiss

like we do today knowing so much

good is said in this primitive tongue

from the wild first surprising ones

to the lower dizzy ten thousand

infinitely slower ones -- and I hope

while we stand there in the kitchen

making tea and kissing, the whistle

of the teapot wakes the neighbors.

Steve Scafidi, Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001)

The Contract: A word from the led

And in the end we follow them --

not because we are paid,

not because we might see some advantage,

not because of the things they have accomplished,

not even because of the dreams they dream

but simply because of who they are:

the man, the woman, the leader, the boss

standing up there when the wave hits the rock,

passing out faith and confidence like life jackets,

knowing the currents, holding the doubts,

imagining the delights and terrors of every landfall:

captain, pirate, parent by turns,

the bearer of our countless hopes and expectations.

We give them our trust. We give them our effort.

What we ask in return is that they stay true.

William Ayot, Small Things That Matter (The Well at Olivier Mythodrama Publishing, 2003)

Fund Drive

She could be a Norman Rockwell painting,

the small girl on my front porch with her eager

face, her wind-burned cheeks red as cherries.

Her father waits by the curb, ready to rescue

his child should danger threaten, his shadow

reaching halfway across the yard. I take the

booklet from the girl's outstretched hand,

peruse the color photos of candy bars and

caramel-coated popcorn, pretending to read it.

I have no use for what she's selling, but I

can count the freckles on her nose, the scars

like fat worms on knobby knees that ought

to be covered on a day like this, when

the wind is blowing and the trees are losing

their grip on the last of their leaves. I'll take

two of these and one of those, I say, pointing,

thinking I won't eat them, but I probably will.

It's worth the coming calories to see her joy,

how hard she works to spell my name right,

taking down my information. Then she turns

and gives a thumbs-up sign to her father, who

smiles like an outfielder to whom the ball has

finally come -- his heart opening like a glove.

Terri Kirby Erickson, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Consolation James Crews and Ted Kooser, eds. (Green Writers' Press, 2019) 

Farmer's Market

It's Saturday, and the farmer's market

is in full swing; all of us drifting,

heavy-bodied and happy,

like figures of Brueghel,

among the fragrant stalls of strawberries

and apples and red peppers, honey

in amber jars, Amish cheese,

great brown loaves of bread,

the world proffering its bounty.

And then he comes gliding among us

on his tiny electric wheelchair, barely more

than a rolling pedestal since there's not much

to move, just a head and torso, the little of him

Iraq gave back. He's wearing a Grateful

Dead t-shirt which the girl walking with him

must have pulled over his head

and fitted tenderly over his stumps

before the two of them went out

to the market on this fall morning,

the rest of us suddenly staring hard

at the radishes and green sheaves of corn,

for we have never seen such vibrant carrots,

nor radishes quite so brazenly red,

nor come so close to understanding

the potatoes, wakened from their deep dream,

drowning in the world's light.

George Bilgere, Alaska Quarterly Review 32(1&2): 236

At the Cancer Clinic

She is being helped toward the open door

that leads to the examining rooms

by two young women I take to be her sisters.

Each bends to the weight of an arm

and steps with the straight, strong bearing

of courage. At what must seem to be

a great distance, a nurse holds the door,

smiling and calling encouragement.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails

of her clothes. The sick woman

peers from under her funny knit cap

to watch each foot swing scuffing forward

and take its turn under her weight.

There is no restlessness or impatience

or anger anywhere in sight. Grace 

fills the clean mold of this moment

and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

Ted Kooser, Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004)

Hoodie

A January hoodie will not protect my son

from rain, from New England cold.

I see the partial eclipse of his face

as his head sinks into the half-dark

and shades his eyes. Even in our

quiet suburb with its unlocked doors,

I fear for his safety -- the darkest child

on our street in the empire of blocks.

Sometimes I don't know who he is anymore

traveling the back roads between boy and man.

He strides a deep stride, pounds a basketball

into wet pavement. Will he take his shot

or is he waiting for the open-mouthed

orange rim to take a chance on him? I sing

his name to the night, ask for safe passage

from this borrowed body into the next

and wonder who could mistake him

for anything but good. 

January Gill O'Neil, Rewilding (CavanKerry Press, 2018)

Stolen Glances

Every time I turn to peer 

at my reflection in the mirror,

a cruel bargain comes in play:

the glass takes off another day

from my expected living span.

Its vanity's fair payment plan.

Each time I look I pay, alas.

I see already how the glass

has laced its silver in my hair,

my youth was stolen unaware.

The real me fades away,

glance by glance, day by day,

until too late I'll turn to see

the mirror has stolen off with me.

John Thornberg, poetryfoundation.org, 2019

Sower

      A sower went out to sow.

                      Matthew 13:3

God will sow the seed of herself in you

and sometimes you won't know it.

Sometimes you'll suspect but not trust.

Sometimes you'll believe but chicken out.

Sometimes you'll do your best to receive but fail.

And sometimes grace will bear fruit in you.

You'll need to forgive

and sometimes you won't try,

or try and get hung up on your own deserving,

or get discouraged when the other doesn't get it.

And sometimes forgiveness will set you free.

God will sow you in the world

and sometimes you won't belong.

Sometimes people will misunderstand.

Sometimes they'll dislike you or use you.

And sometimes you'll blossom.

Sometimes you'll try to sow seeds of justice

but you'll do a lousy job.

Or do it well, but folks will resist.

Or they'll care but they'll be overwhelmed by an unjust society.

And sometimes your witness will bear fruit.

Failure,

failure,

failure,

fruit.

And all of it grace. All of it.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, July 9, 2020

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in the book,

found again after two hundred years . . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper . . . .

When the young girl who starves

sits down at a table

she will sit beside me . . . .

I am food on a prisoner's plate . . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,

filling the pitcher until it spills . . . .

I am the patient gardener

of the dry and weedy garden . . . . 

I am the stone step,

the latch, and the working hinge . . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy . . . . 

the longest hair, white

before the rest . . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit

presented to the widow . . . . 

I am the musk rose opening

unattended, the fern on the boggy summit . . . .

I am the one whose love

overcomes you, already with you

when you think to call my name . . . . 

Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2005)

Having It Out With Melancholy

Jane Kenyon experienced periods of depression throughout her life. She suffered much. Sometimes she wrote about the disease in her poetry, expressing herself in highly personal ways -- the words almost unbearably descriptive. This poem may be the best example. I am sharing three of nine sections.

        1. FROM THE NURSERY

When I was born, you waited

behind a pile of linen in the nursery,

and when we were alone, you lay down

on top of me, pressing

the bile of desolation into every pore.

And from that day on

everything under the sun and moon

made me sad -- even the yellow

wooden beads that slid and spun

along a spindle on my crib.

You taught me to exist without gratitude.

You ruined my manners toward God:

"We're here simply to wait for death;

the pleasures of earth are overrated."

I only appeared to belong to my mother,

to live among blocks and cotton undershirts

with snaps, among red tin lunch boxes

and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.

I was already yours -- the anti-urge,

the mutilator of souls.

        2. BOTTLES

Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,

Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,

Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.

The coated ones smell sweet or have

no smell; the powdery ones smell

like the chemistry lab at school

that made me hold my breath.

       8. CREDO

Pharmaceutical wonders are at work

but I believe only in this moment

of well-being. Unholy ghost,

you are certain to come again.

Coarse, mean, you'll put your feet

on the coffee table, lean back,

and turn me into someone who can't

take the trouble to speak; someone

who can't sleep, or who does nothing

but sleep; can't read, or call 

for an appointment for help.

 

There is nothing I can do

against your coming.

When I awake, I am still with thee.

Jane Kenyon, Constance (Graywolf Press, 1993)

        

Airplanes

Trees grow craggy and cranky, says Noah.
One old oak grows sideways
so you can walk the trunk
and we do, Noah and me,
we walk up the tree and down again
balancing with our arms stretched out
like airplanes
which is cool if you're four
or seventy-four.

Noah decides to tour the drinking fountains
of Flood Park and why not, this fine day
so we run with wings outspread
a circuit of twenty acres, sampling.
Some are built of concrete, some of shiny steel,
most in sun where the water comes hot,
some under trees where the acorns fall.
One dribbles a bath for birds,
one blasts your nose.

Most of them are paired -- one high and one low 

for the thirsty, for the curious,

for the very young or very old

with so much to discover.

Joe Cottonwood, Birdland

The Raincoat

When the doctor suggested surgery

and a brace for all my youngest years,

my parents scrambled to take me

to massage therapy, deep tissue work,

osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine

unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,

and move more in a body unclouded

by pain. My mom would tell me to sing

songs to her the whole forty-five minute

drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-

five minutes back from physical therapy.

She'd say that even my voice sounded unfettered

by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,

because I thought she liked it. I never

asked her what she gave up to drive me,

or how her day was before this chore. Today,

at her age, I was driving myself home from yet

another spine appointment, singing along

to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,

and I saw a mom take her raincoat off

and give it to her young daughter when

a storm took over the afternoon. My god,

I thought, my whole life I've been under her

raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel

that I never got wet.

Ada Limon, The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018)

Night Golf

I remember the night I discovered,
lying in bed in the dark,
that a few imagined holes of golf
worked much better than a thousand sheep,

that the local links,
not the cloudy pasture with its easy fence,
was the greener path to sleep.

How soothing to stroll the shadowy fairways,
to skirt the moon-blanched bunkers
and hear the night owl in the woods.

Who cared about the score
when the club swung with the ease of air
and I glided from shot to shot
over the mown and rolling ground,
alone and drowsy with my weightless bag?

Eighteen small holes punched in the

bristling grass,
eighteen flags limp on their sticks
in the silent, windless dark,

but in the bedroom with its luminous clock
and propped-open windows,
I got only as far as the seventh hole
before I drifted easily away --

the difficult seventh, 'the Tester,' they called
it,
where, just as on the earlier holes,
I tapped in, dreamily -- for a birdie.

Billy Collins, accessed on poeticous.com, June 16, 2020

After an Illness, Walking the Dog

Wet things smell stronger,

and I suppose his main regret is that

he can sniff just one at a time.

In a frenzy of delight

he runs way up the sandy road --

scored by freshets after five days

of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

When I whistle he halts abruptly

and steps in a circle,

swings his extravagant tail.

Then he rolls and rubs his muzzle

in a particular place, while the drizzle

falls without cease, and Queen Anne's lace

and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open

and light. Another day, before 

hunting starts, we'll see how far it goes,

leaving word first at home.

The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,

panting, and looks up with what amounts

to a grin. It's so good to be uphill with him,

nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

A sound commences in my left ear

like the sound of the sea in a shell;

a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.

Time to head home. I wait

until we're nearly out to the main road

to put him back on the leash, and he

-- the designated optimist --

imagines to the end that he is free.

Jane Kenyon, Poetry, October/November 1987

Flutes

As I think about retiring I imagine freedom.
I also imagine the cost. I imagine what I will leave behind,
like the Hebrews when they escaped from Egypt,
what they carried and what they left behind,
how both could be a burden,
how even freedom begins in loss.

The addict coming clean is no different,
the sinner laying down the sweet sin,
the child outgrowing those childish, selfish ways.
Gaining always begins in letting go.

And I think of you, and what you will gain and lose,
how moving into the next leg of the journey is a departure,
what shore you will never see again,
what courage is required to surrender to delight,
how the dancers of joy wear little bells of grief

and how the music of people becoming free
with its minor chords and passing dissonances
is so beautiful. And I would like for us all
to be hollowed out like flutes
for the breath of God.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, May 12, 2020

Still Swimming

And so I pull the purple comb
through my son's thick hair,
the same way I've seen
the stylists do it at Great Clips.
Wet the hair. Comb it through.
Part it. Hold it between
two fingers.
Cut vertically. Snip,
and his hair falls to the floor.
Comb it through. Snip. Snip.

We both know that I
have no clue what I'm doing.
So we laugh as the hair
piles up on the floor.
We chatter, the way
that a stylist and customer would,
talking of school and his friends
and his unruly cowlicks. Snip.

I remember that time
I was trapped underwater
by the river's hydraulics,
how I stared up at the light
shining through the surface
and thought, I don't think
it's my time yet to die.
And the river spit me out
and I swam as hard as I could
through the rapid toward shore.

I don't think it's my time yet
to die. Nor my son's. Though
all around us the news of dying --
the numbers increasing every day,
stories of beloveds who are gone.

We ask ourselves, how do we
go on? Meanwhile, we do.
We go on. And because my son's hair
is too long for his taste,
I learn how to cut it by cutting it.
How much more will we learn before
this is over? How to share? How to love?
How to live?

Yes, meanwhile, life spits us out
into sunlight, and we come up
spluttering, gasping, surprised
we're alive, and we swim, what a gift
to find we're still swimming.

Merry Wahtola Trommer, wordwoman.com, May 4, 2020