Lists

 

I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.
I made a list of items of need:
love and water on one side,
on the other the small flowers
that bloom without scent,
and it is like the grocery lists
my grandmother used to make:
milk and butter–dairy
on one side, meat on the other
as if they shouldn’t mingle
even on the page.
My mother makes lists on tiny
scraps of paper, leaving them
on chairs of the seats of the bus
the way she drops a handkerchief
for someone to find, a clue
a kind of commerce between her 
and the world.
And all the time the tree
is making its endless list
of leaves; the sky
is listing its valuables
in rain. My daughter
lists the books she means to read,
and their names are like the exotic
names of birds on my husband’s
life list. Perhaps God
listed what to create
in a week: earth and oceans,
the armature of heaven
with a place to fasten
every star, and finally
Adam who rested a day
then made a list of his own:
starling, deer, and serpent.

Linda Pastan, Poem Most Days, September, 23, 2020

Spilled Milk

 

I can still hear the clink
of the milk bottles he brought home
10:00 in the morning after he made
his deliveries for Bordens.
Thirty-five years, they never
gave him off a Jewish holiday.
The goy he asked to do his shift
on Yom Kippur refused and
the next day he dropped dead.
They called it a Jewish curse.
Then they stepped all over each other
to work for him.

What could I do after his stroke?
I put him in a nursing home.
He knows me, but can't talk anymore.
Fifty years we lived together
he would never weep in front of me.
Now all the time his eyes are tearing,
but there is no more Morris to cry.

Lovemaking wasn't so easy between us
in the early years. We both felt guilty.
We thought we weren't supposed to enjoy
it and I was always worried
about becoming pregnant.
Later on we worried the children would hear.
But after they grew up and moved out
and I couldn't bear anymore
we began to have fun.
It wasn't always before going to sleep either.
Sometimes during breakfast
he would say, Let's go
and roll his eyes up to the bedroom.
Luba, he would say, I'll help you
take out the hairpins.

Willa Schneberg, In the Margins of the World (Plain View Press, 2001)

When I Am Among the Trees

 

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Mary Oliver, Devotions: Selected Poems (Penguin Press, 2017)

Begin with the Faucet

On days when you think there is nothing
to be thankful for,
begin with the faucet you tweak
to the perfect temperature,
the shower cascading,
massaging your neck and spine.
Consider the soft water you rely on
that allows lather to rise on your head,
or the stout hands of the invisible dishwasher
that scrubbed your pots while you slept.
Notice curtains that frame the window
to whatever day will be discovered,
aroma of good coffee brewing
in the timed coffee maker,
about to rev up your engine,
dollop of cream
from Oreo cows munching grass,
the toaster, the toast,
and marmalade,
grain, crunch, and fruit.
Reach for bifocals on the end table.
Pet the dog or cat who says good morning
with its nose or tail or nudge.
If there is someone to kiss,
know you are blessed.
Open the front door as you do each day
for the paper delivered by the paper boy
on his pre-dawn rounds.
Listen to a sparrow,
then the radio humming and talking,
song or voice that buoys you
in just the first hour of this day.

Christine Swanberg, Wild Fruitions: Sonnets, Spells and Other Incantations (Puddin’head Press, 2017) 

Madam's Calling Card

I had some cards printed
The other day.
They cost me more
Than I wanted to pay.

I told the man
I wasn't no mint,
But I hankered to see
My name in print.

MADAM JOHNSON,
ALBERTA K.
He said, Your name looks good
Madam'd that way.

Shall I use Old English
Or a Roman letter?
I said, Use American.
American's better.

There's nothing foreign
To my pedigree:
Alberta K. Johnson—
American that's me.

Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersad (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994) 

classical

our English teacher in Jr. High,

Mrs. Gredis, didn’t sit behind

her desk, she kept the front

desk empty and she sat on

the top of the front desk

and crossed her legs high and

we saw those long silken

legs, those magical flanks,

that shining warm flesh as she

twisted her ankles and recrossed

her legs with those

black high-heeled shoes and

spoke of Hawthorne and

Melville and Poe and others.

we boys didn’t hear a word

but English was our favorite

subject and we never spoke

badly of Mrs. Gredis, we didn’t

even discuss her among ourselves,

we just sat in that

class and looked at Mrs. Gredis

and we knew that our mothers

were not like that or the girls

in the class were not like that.

nobody was like Mrs. Gredis

and Mrs. Gredis knew that too,

sitting there on that front desk,

perched in front of 20 fourteen-year-old

boys who would never

forget her

through the wars and the years,

never a lady like that

watching us as she talked,

watching us looking at her,

there was laughter in her eyes,

she smiled at us,

crossed and recrossed her legs

again and again,

the skirt slipping, inching

delicately higher and higher

as she spoke of Hawthorne and

Poe and Melville and more

until the bell rang

ending the class,

the fastest hour of our day.

thank you, Mrs. Gredis, for that

most marvelous

education, you made learning

more than

easy, thank you, Mrs. Gredis,

thank

you.

Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet (Ecco, 2002)

Scrapbook

 

I open my heart's scrapbook.
I bless every picture, every page:
the carefully posed triumphs,
the candid moments,
the ugly ones (how did they get in there?),
the scraps of memories, fond and not so.
I bless them all. Each is part of the tale.
The blessings I remember, those are easy.
I hold them up to the light and say thank you.
The blessings I don’t remember, never noticed:
those, too.
The wounds, the bent places,  the purple scars,
the lumps and limps
I take up in my arms and I kiss them,
for they belong, invisibly laden,
still teaching, still unfolding.
The times when fear overpowered love,
when the child overwhelmed the adult,
the mistakes, the terrors,
the little tender weak places that still tremble,
still fall to their knees—
each is a page in the story.
Each I take in my hands and bless:
holy, holy,
mystery...

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, September 21, 2020

Night Talks

 

When one would wake in the night, the other
followed. Then, in their bed, next to their window
that was always open, my mother and father
would talk to the sound of cars going by,
the hum of streetlights, the occasional bark
of a neighbor’s dog. They spoke of high school
dances, family vacations, raising children,
being grandparents. And their faces, soft
with age and sleep, were hidden in the dark,
so they could speak at last of their lost son,
without any need to shield each other from
that pain. It must have been a relief to unpack
the shared sadness they courageously carried,
to put it down, if only for an hour. It was like
I could hear them from my own bed
across town, as I slipped into a deeper sleep,
reassured and comforted by their beloved
familiar voices echoing among the stars.

Terri Kirby Erickson, oneartpoetry.com, August 31, 2020

As On a Day of Festival

 

Call it
the waters of salvation
or the garlands of gladness.

Call it
the grave-clothes
falling away
or call it the loosing
of the chains.

Call it
what binds us together:
fierce but
fragile but
fierce.

Call it
he will rejoice over you
with gladness;
call it
he will renew you
in his love;
call it
he will exult over you
with loud singing
as on a day
of festival.

Call it
the thin, thin place
where the veil
gives way.

Or call it this:
the path we make
when we go deep
and deeper still
into the dark
and look behind to see
the way has been lit
by our rejoicing.

Jan Richardson, uuwestport.org

To Say Nothing But Thank You

All day I try to say nothing but thank you,

breathe the syllables in and out with every step I

take through the rooms of my house and outside into

a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden

where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

 

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring

and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy

after a hot shower, when loosened muscles work,

when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly

hair combs into place.

 

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,

and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I

remember who I am, a woman learning to praise

something as small as dandelion petals floating on the

steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,

my happy, savoring tongue.

 

Jeanne Lohmann, cordella.org/issue-five# 

Making Sense

Finding what makes sense
In senseless times
Takes grounding
Sometimes quite literally
In the two inches of humus
Faithfully recreating itself
Every hundred years.
It takes steadying oneself
Upon shale and clay and solid rock
Swearing allegiance to an ageless aquifer
Betting on all the still hidden springs.

You can believe in a tree,
With its broad-leafed perspective,
Dedicated to breathing in, and then out,
Reaching down, and then up,
Drinking in a goodness above and below
Its splayed and mossy feet.
You can trust a tree’s careful
and drawn out way
of speaking.
One thoughtful sentence, covering the span of many seasons.

A tree doesn’t hurry, it doesn’t lie, 
It knows how to stand true to itself 
Unselfconscious of its beauty and scars, 
And all the physical signs of where 
and when it needed to bend,
Rather than break.
A tree stands solitary and yet in deepest communion,
For in the gathering of the many, 
There is comfort and courage, 
Perseverance and protection, 
From the storms that howl down from predictable 
Or unexplainable directions.    

In a senseless time
Hold close to what never stopped
Making sense.
Like love
Like trees
Like how a seed becomes a branch
And compost becomes seedlings again.
Like the scent at the very top of an infant’s head
Because there is nothing more right than that. Nothing.

It is all still happening
Even now.
Even now.

Carrie Newcomer, janicefalls.wordpress.com/blog 

I Tell You (excerpt)

 

In class today a Dutch woman split
in two by a stroke – one branch
of her body a petrified silence,
walked leaning on her husband

to the treatment table while we
the unimpaired looked on with envy.
How he dignified her wobble,
beheld her deformation, untied her

shoe, removed the brace that stakes
her weaknesses. How he cradled
her down in his arms to the table
smoothing her hair as if they were

alone in their bed. I tell you –
his smile would have made you weep.

Susan Glassmeyer, janicefalls.wordpress.com, June 24, 2020

Neighbors

Where I’m from, people still wave
to each other, and if someone doesn’t,
you might say of her, She wouldn’t
wave at you to save her life—

but you try anyway, give her a smile.
This is just one of the many ways
we take care of one another, say: I see you,
I feel you, I know you are real. I wave

to Rick who picks up litter while walking
his black labs, Olive and Basil—
hauling donut boxes, cigarette packs
and countless beer cans out of the brush

beside the road. And I say hello
to Christy, who leaves almond croissants
in our mailbox and mason jars of fresh-
pressed apple cider on our side porch.

I stop to check in on my mother-in-law—
more like a second mother—who buys us
toothpaste when it’s on sale, and calls
if an unfamiliar car is parked at our house.

We are going to have to return to this
way of life, this giving without expectation,
this loving without conditions. We need
to stand eye to eye again, and keep asking—

no matter how busy—How are you,
how’s your wife, how’s your knee?, making
this talk we insist on calling small,
though kindness is what keeps us alive.

James Crews, janicefalls.wordpress.com, September 2, 2020 

Flock

It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenberg Bible . . . required the skins of 300 sheep.

                                                 -- from an article on printing

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen

behind the stone building

where the printing press is housed,

all of the squirming around

to find a little room

and looking so much alike

it would be nearly impossible

to count them,

and there is no telling

which one will carry the news

that the Lord is a shepherd,

one of the few things they already know.

Billy Collins, The Trouble with Poetry (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007)

Lost and Found

Feeling lost on my life journey,

what I expected to see was not there,

what I hoped would come, did not.

I am numb with unsettling doubt.

Is this truly the pathway?

Did I miss a turnoff in my path this day or yesterday?

Has my inner compass lost true north?

Did I misread the signposts?

Be still. 

Christ has not forgotten me,

He relentlessly pursues me.

Christ desires intimacy with me,

He is seeking me.

I repent of lost hope.

From ashes my inner fire

burns once more.

 

The Holy Spirit is not lost, 

I am not abandoned.

The Spirit knows where I am, 

rejoice and welcome Him.

Be still. Sense His presence.

He sees the broken signposts,

now He leads the way.

 

Craig A. Roberts, craigrobertsauthor.com, August 27, 2020 

No Man Is an Island

 

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine

own were: any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind,

and therefore never send to know for whom

the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne, public domain

Wedding Cake

 

Once on a plane
a woman asked me to hold her baby
and disappeared.
I figured it was safe,
our being on a plane and all.
How far could she go?

She returned one hour later,
having changed her clothes
and washed her hair.
I didn't recognize her.

By this time the baby
and I had examined
each other's necks.
We had cried a little.
I had a silver bracelet
and a watch.
Gold studs glittered
in the baby's ears.
She wore a tiny white dress
leafed with layers
like a wedding cake.

I did not want
to give her back.

The baby's curls coiled tightly
against her scalp,
another alphabet.
I read new new new.
My mother gets tired.
I'll chew your hand.

The baby left my skirt crumpled,
my lap aching.
Now I'm her secret guardian,
the little nub of dream
that rises slightly
but won't come clear.

As she grows,
as she feels ill at ease,
I'll bob my knee.

What will she forget?
Whom will she marry?
He'd better check with me.
I'll say once she flew
dressed like a cake
between two doilies of cloud.
She could slip the card into a pocket,
pull it out.
Already she knew the small finger
was funnier than the whole arm.

Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel (BOA Editions, 1998)

The History Teacher

Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom
on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom
for the playground and torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.

Billy Collins, Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes: Selected Poems (Picador, 2000) 

Phenomenal Woman

 

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   

But when I start to tell them,

They think I’m telling lies.

I say,

It’s in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,   

The stride of my step,   

The curl of my lips.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,   

That’s me.

 

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,   

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.   

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honeybees.   

I say,

It’s the fire in my eyes,  

And the flash of my teeth,  

The swing in my waist,  

And the joy in my feet.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

 

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

 

Men themselves have wondered   

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can’t touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,   

They say they still can’t see.   

I say,

It’s in the arch of my back,   

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

 

Now you understand

Just why my head’s not bowed.   

I don’t shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.   

When you see me passing,

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It’s in the click of my heels,   

The bend of my hair,   

The palm of my hand,   

The need for my care.   

’Cause I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise (Random House, 1978)