Splits

The world of my youth was divided
into girls who could and girls who couldn’t
slide casually to the floor,
one leg aft and one fore, while their faces
retained a sprightly cheer.
All summer, all year
they stretched the critical tendons,
descending in increments
the way the willful enter a frigid lake,
their arms folded across their chests,
their backs burning in the sun
as their legs numb.
Yet the splits seemed less a skill
than a gift of birth: Churchillian pluck
combined with a stroke of luck
like a pretty face with a strong chin.
One felt that even as babies
some girls were predispositioned.

Connie Wanek, Poetry August 2004 

Bell Bottoms and Platform Shoes

 

A friend sends me a picture of herself
from the 70s—bell bottoms, platform shoes
a patterned button down shirt,
hair puffed up from a perm.

I can see the outline of the person she is now
and she reminds me of myself in the 70s—
married for eight years to a man
I knew I loved the moment I saw him,
two children who seem to me exquisitely
beautiful because they look like my husband
and not me.

The picture reminded me of all those evenings
When I dressed in bell bottoms and silky patterned shirts
and shoes with chunky heels. Those evenings
we’d invite friends over for drinks and conversation,
our children asleep upstairs. Those clothes, the perm
I got, because I wanted to be cool, though my hair
was already kinky, so the perm made me look
like I’d stuck my finger in a light socket.

I look at a picture of us from that time—Dennis and I
standing together at the head of the dining room table,
friends seated around us. Dennis’s face is flushed,
his eyes shining. I wonder if he is tipsy.
He is wearing a fitted shirt with little flowers on it.
I am grinning and looking up at him. I might as well be
wearing a neon sign that says I love you.

Looking back at us. I would like to tell
my younger self—look how fortunate you are,
the man you love beside you, your children sleeping
in their safe beds, your friends around you.
Listen, be grateful for the moments
caught in these photographs,
the world full of possibility,
the sky not yet darkened.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, What Blooms in Winter (NYQ Books, 2016)

Grandfather's Heaven

My grandfather told me I had a choice.

Up or down, he said. Up or down.

He never mentioned east or west.

 

Grandpa stacked newspapers on his bed

and read them years after the news was relevant.

He even checked the weather reports.

 

Grandma was afraid of Grandpa

for some reason I never understood.

She tiptoed while he snored, rarely disagreed.

 

I liked Grandma because she gave me cookies

and let me listen to the ocean in her shell.

Grandma liked me even though my daddy was a Moslem.

 

I think Grandpa liked me too

though he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Just before he died, he wrote me a letter.

 

“I hear you’re studying religion,” he said.

“That’s how people get confused.

Keep it simple. Down or up.”

Naomi Shihab Nye, Different Ways to Pray: Poems (Breitenbush Publications, 1980)

Advent of Midlife

 

I am no longer waiting for a special occasion;

I burn the best candles on ordinary days.

I am no longer waiting for the house to be clean;

I fill it with people who understand that even dust is Sacred.

I am no longer waiting for everyone to understand me;

It’s just not their task.

I am no longer waiting for the perfect children;

my children have their own names that burn as brightly as any star.

I am no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop;

It already did, and I survived.

I am no longer waiting for the time to be right;

the time is always now!!

I am no longer waiting for the mate who will complete me;

I am grateful to be so warmly, tenderly held.

I am no longer waiting for a quiet moment;

my heart can be stilled whenever it is called.

I am no longer waiting for the world to be at peace;

I unclench my grasp and breathe peace in and out.

I am no longer waiting to do something great;

being awake to carry my grain of sand is enough.

I am no longer waiting to be recognized;

I know that I dance in a holy circle.

I am no longer waiting for Forgiveness.

I believe, I believe.

Mary Anne Perrone, National Catholic Reporter December 15, 2006

Together

We are in this together.

Everything belongs to all of us: rough days
and rainbows, dirty wash and sun-drenched skies,
hungry hearts and fall harvests, angry words
and healing prayers. Whether you put your
foot in the water or not, the waves will roll
in and out. The starling in the snow finds
the squirrel’s discarded stash.
Smile. Breathe. Life goes on.
Be grateful.
We are in this together.

Arlene Gay Levine, Gratitude Prayers ( Andrews McMeel, 2013)

Pigeon and Hawk

 A new grad student far away from home,

I took every step on trembling ground.

I knew no one. Who were my friends?

The other black student in the program

ducked and rushed away when our eyes met.

Seminar rooms were full of hungry dogs

snapping up scraps of nodding approval.

At the end of a campus reception

I accepted the offer of a ride

from campus to my downtown room-with-bath.

 

October. Evenings were getting cool.

The walk over the bridge downtown

felt dangerously long when it was dark.

Did the young man who offered me a ride

tell me his name? What was it about him

that made me say Yes thanks, like a damn fool?

When we were in his car and he said oops,

he had forgotten something at his place

he had to pick up, and asked if I’d mind

if we stopped there, why did I say O.K.?

 

Did we talk during the drive? Was the radio on?

Did I just watch the businesses,

in thinning traffic, become a suburb

where his apartment complex was in a woods

already splendid in autumn colors

so beautiful they took my words away?

When he pulled up and said I should come in,

it would only take a minute, why did I go

upstairs with him, wait as the key unlocked

his apartment, and go inside?

 

The building was silent. A big window

in the living room looked at parking lots

with a few parked cars, and the glowing trees.

He said I’ll be right back, and disappeared

into the bedroom. I turned to the view,

thinking of nothing, my mind a blank page

that grew emptier as the minutes passed.

What was he doing during those minutes,

as I stood dreaming like a fat pigeon

in the keen purview of a circling hawk?

 

What could he have needed to go home for,

that was so important he had to go

there first, before he drove me home? Was he

wrestling with opportunity?

                                       Human horrors

are not inevitable. Some people stop

themselves, before they cross moral divides.

A drinking buddy might say Cool it, bro.

A cop might take his knee off a black man’s throat.

A young man might come out and say O.K.,

let’s go, and drive you home. What was his name?

 

Marilyn Nelson, The New Yorker June 15, 2020

COVID Quarantine

How will I remember quarantine?

By the shopping trips I didn’t take.
The concerts not attended.
The restaurants avoided.
 
Or what I did instead?
 
Call a cousin not seen in years. Bake
banana bread. Paint the bedroom pink.
Garden. Hike. Read. Sleep past 8 a.m.
 
Snuggle with an old man statistically
at risk to be gone in the next decade
whether he catches the virus or not.
 
Wonder if I inhaled each breath
with the honor it deserved.

Jacqueline Jules, yourdailypoem.com, October, 19, 2020

Not the Emperor's

        Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,

          and to God the things that are God’s.

                                                    —Matthew 22.21  

I am not the emperor's.
I owe him nothing.
Not my loyalty, my obedience, or my belief;
not my niceness, not my polite agreement,
not even my cooperation.
He does not own my hope;
and can't even lay hands on it.
He does not rule my freedom,
my power or my joy.
His is not the truth,
nor the way, nor the life.
The emperor, desperate bully
gentlemanly dressed,
has no claim on me at all.
I am wholly and irretrievably God's.
No one can snatch me from the Beloved,
the emperor's loyalists can't contain me,
nor can his proud boys drive me
from the cause of justice.
I belong wholly to God,
who by God's own gracious choice
belongs to the poor.
Today I freely and joyfully
give myself to God,

and to God alone.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, October 14, 2020

Wonder Woman

 

“Standing at the swell of the muddy Mississippi
after the urgent care doctor had just said, Well,
sometimes shit happens, I fell fast and hard
for New Orleans all over again. Pain pills swirled
in the purse along with a spell for later. It’s taken
a while for me to admit, I am in a raging battle
with my body, a spinal column thirty-five degrees
bent, vertigo that comes and goes like a DC Comics
villain nobody can kill. Invisible pain is both
a blessing and a curse. You always look so happy,
said a stranger once as I shifted to my good side
grinning. But that day, alone on the riverbank,
brass blaring from the Steamboat Natchez,
out of the corner of my eye, I saw a girl, maybe half my age,
dressed, for no apparent reason, as Wonder Woman.
She strutted by in all her strength and glory, invincible,
eternal, and when I stood to clap (because who wouldn’t have),
she bowed and posed like she knew I needed a myth—
a woman, by a river, indestructible.”

Ada Limon, The Carrying: Poems (Milkweed Editions, 2018)

Skinny-Dipping in Vathy

Above the azure inlet of the sea,

the path was steep, carved out between
the thistles, thorns, and wind-blown rock.
 
He left her at the top to find a sheltered place
they wouldn’t be seen descending to the shore.
She waited, fully clothed there,
till, looking down, she saw his gleaming skin
and upturned face above the churning deep,
as if he’d changed from man to seal
and loved this transformation.
 
She shed her clothes and picked her way
as far down as she could on tender feet—
then took a leap of faith, exchanging rock
for empty air, a rush of cold and bubbles
in her hair. Her toes touched seaweed
as she swam toward her selkie mate.
 
Two naked, slippery people,
seventy and sixty-five,
feeling so alive and filled with joy,
treading water side by side in the extra-salty,
turquoise blue Aegean Sea, rich in iodine,
they’d heard, with the power to heal
all kinds of wounds.
 
They tasted salt and kissed,
two shipwrecked sailors
who’d managed to survive.

Barbara Quick, The Bus to Appolonia, forthcoming from Blue Light Press

The Patience of Ordinary Things

 

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Pat Schneider, Another River: New and Selected Poems (Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2008)

A Blessing

“Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.”

James Wright, Above the River: The Complete Poems & Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1990) 

Minor Miracle

 

Which reminds me of another knock-on-wood   

memory. I was cycling with a male friend,

through a small midwestern town. We came to a 4-way   

stop and stopped, chatting. As we started again,   

a rusty old pick-up truck, ignoring the stop sign,   

hurricaned past scant inches from our front wheels.   

My partner called, “Hey, that was a 4-way stop!”   

The truck driver, stringy blond hair a long fringe

under his brand-name beer cap, looked back and yelled,

                “You f---- n------!”

And sped off.

My friend and I looked at each other and shook our heads.   

We remounted our bikes and headed out of town.   

We were pedaling through a clear blue afternoon   

between two fields of almost-ripened wheat   

bordered by cornflowers and Queen Anne’s lace   

when we heard an unmuffled motor, a honk-honking.   

We stopped, closed ranks, made fists.

It was the same truck. It pulled over.

A tall, very much in shape young white guy slid out:   

greasy jeans, homemade finger tattoos, probably   

a Marine Corps boot-camp footlockerful   

of martial arts techniques.

 

“What did you say back there!” he shouted.   

My friend said, “I said it was a 4-way stop.   

You went through it.”

“And what did I say?” the white guy asked.   

“You said: ‘You f------  n------”

The afternoon froze.

 

“Well,” said the white guy,

shoving his hands into his pockets

and pushing dirt around with the pointed toe of his boot,   

“I just want to say I’m sorry.”

He climbed back into his truck

and drove away.

Marilyn Nelson, The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 1997)

A Prayer for Our Nation

And then all that has divided us will merge

And then compassion will be wedded to power

And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind

And then both men and women will be gentle

And then both women and men will be strong

And then no person will be subject to another's will

And then all will be rich and free and varied

And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many

And then all will share equally in the Earth's abundance

And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old

And then all will nourish the young

And then all will cherish life's creatures

And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth

And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.

 

Judy Chicago, saltproject.org, October 6, 2020 

Walking Each Other Home

 

My friend lives on this road
the same as me, two hollows down,
two gladed mountainsides,

briar patches that go without saying,
fields in pumpkin or hay or fallow.
Once, we can never forget, a bear.

And once for too long a season
a road-killed deer whose return to dust
we both watched, the ragged pelt

dried to leather, the shipwreck of rib cage.
My friend alone saw the bear, and
told me of it, the winter of her chemo.

I was the one to see the deer
fresh struck, and had to find words,
though even now I can hardly bear

to say how I watched hooves beating air,
reaching for some blind heaven.
Between us, we know this map by heart.

I walk from my house to hers
and then together we speak of things—
or don’t, we are often quiet—

all the way back home to mine. Or she
walks here first, collects me for her return.
Either way, this is the road where we live.

Always we walk each other home.
And always we walk some of it alone.

Barbara Kingsolver, How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) (Harper, 2020) 

The Bald Truth

 

My hair went on a diet of its own accord.

Rogaine is the extent of my vanity.

It didn’t work but it was fun

treating my head with fertilizer

as if it were a phrenologist’s lawn.

They were on to something in believing

the skull you have is the soul you are,

that the brain is involved in the sport

of tectonics. My skull has a fault line

like California’s, which makes sense

given how the hemispheres of my brain

collide: the right side

wants to clean the house while the left

knows dancing is the best part

of who we are. Or vice versa,

I always have to look that up.

They say baldness means energetic things

about parts of me that aren’t

falling off. The real compensation’s

having no choice meeting the mirror

but to accept that tomorrow

will be different than today.

And greeting my wife,

not wondering, as pretty men must,

if I’m kissed for my soul or face,

to never doubt, as I become invisible,

that I’m seen by love.

Bob Hicock, Insomnia Diary (University of Pittsburg Press, 2004)

Mother, Washing Dishes

She rarely made us do it --
we'd clear the table instead --
so my sister and I teased
that someday we'd train our children right
and not end up like her, every meal stuck
with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring.
The one chore she spared us: gummy plates
in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas,
gobs of egg and gravy.

                           or did she guard her place
at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss
of the magnolia, the school traffic humming.
Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings
of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon,
delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.

Susan Meyers, Tar River Poetry (Fall, 2008)

Perseverance

Like artisans building a cathedral,

we are engaged in work that outlives us.

The building of justice will take generations;

knowing this, we do not grow weary or lose heart.

Sustained by those who have come before,

who endured so that we may be brought this far,

we carry on, against all odds, against all opposition.

We are not intimidated by the thought

that we will not achieve our goal in our lifetime.

Of course not. This is not for us,

but for our children's children's children.

Our little triumphs and failures are ennobled,

not by our successes, but by the immense grace

of the work to which we devote ourselves.

Discouragement, despair, and even death do not trouble us,

for our lives are insignificant in the shadow of this work,

which bestows its blessings to the ends of the earth,

and to generations far beyond us.

Friends, take courage. God is in this;

this is where, though you are small, you become immortal.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, August 18, 2019