Presence

The year has rocked this world to its roots.
What if for one day each being put down
their burdens, their words of hate, their inhumanity
and breathed in the presence?
Stopped fighting for history, for fears, hopes, dreams
and stood facing the morning sun
letting the warmth of the moment
and the next, the next, accumulate like dust at their feet
Listened instead of spoke, acknowledged truth,
embraced silence.

What if for one day each being acknowledged the fear
and let it go? Suspended beliefs
opened their arms, drew strength
through earth, grass, rock, sand
Found the sparrow singing from a lone bush
the small heart-shaped cloud
Felt the currents of air wash over them, mingle
with the breath, and let the seams unravel
borders blend, walls dissolve
and be as
one.

Melissa Shaw-Smith, janicefalls.wordpress.com December 30, 2020

Crosswords

The white and black squares
promise order
in the morning mess
of mulling over

the latest political morass,
what's on sale at Kohl's,
the book review.

Each letter, shared,
which lifts away
some sheen of loneliness I
can't quite explain.

This week, "arsenic" and "forsythia"
are joined by their i's
like long-estranged cousins.

And when they ask
for the French equivalent of sky,
I'm back on a wooden chair

in Madame Baumlin's
eighth-grade class, passing
a note to David, having

no idea, as my hand grazes his,
that he will drown sailing
that next summer.

I like doing the crossword
with my husband —
Source of support,
three letters.

I'm the one who guesses it,
glad he doesn't think
of " bra" in this way.

The puzzle rests
on the counter all week.

I like coming back,
looking at the same clue
I found insolvable
the day before, my mind

often a mystery to me,
turning corners when I sleep
or am upstairs folding clothes.

They get added to pounds.
Yesterday I thought
it had to do with money or meat;

now I can see the chain-link fence
at the local animal shelter.
Of course. "Strays"

Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Second Skin (Wind Publishers, 2010)

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations (Friends United Press, 1985)

Sonnet for Mary

The old lady who's walking along Concourse A
Rather slowly in front of you, is making her way
To get on a plane to fly to Denver.
Though she is in pain, she won't complain ever.
She walks all bent over. She's 91.
But her sister died and there's work to be done.
She must bury her sister and clean out the condo
And see to her niece who's retarded, sweet Rhonda.
There's a funeral to arrange, words to be said,
And her brother is useless, he's gone in the head.
Stuff to be cleaned out, a condo to sell,
And a 50-year-old child who can't care for herself.
She's an old lady who's needed out there.
She's heading for Denver on a wing and a prayer.

Ralph Edwards, writersalmanac.org January 9, 2008

Amazing Peace

Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.

Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.

We question ourselves.
What have we done to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?

Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.

It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.

Hope is born again in the faces of children.
It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors.

In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.

We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.

We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.

It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.

On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.

We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.

Maya Angelou, written for the 2005 White House Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony 

Item

 

They came in on Interstate 93

Past a dozen signs of NO VACANCY

And finally stopped at the Holiday Inn

Where she stayed in the car while he went in

 

And was politely given the information

They unfortunately had made no advance reservation

And although it was regrettable considering her condition

They were all booked up and in any case had no resident physician

 

So it was at Cohen’s Garage that it came about

With Cohen and his night man helping out

And some workers from the factory across the street

Bringing in beer and something to eat

And finding the babe wrapped in a tarpaulin

And lying in a station wagon

Between a pickup truck and a Dodge V-8

And staying all night to celebrate

 

So all in all it was quite a night

And she was relieved that everything went all right

And thought to herself that it could have been worse

And welcomed him into the universe

Scott Bales, unknown citation

God's Works

Sooner or later someone is going to say
God sent the coronavirus to punish
somebody (gays, probably, or maybe old people).
Baloney.

God is not a guy who does things like that.
God is not a guy.
God is Love.
Love is not a guy who causes things to happen,
like giving you a disease or a mishap
or a lottery ticket or a recovery from illness
as a test, lesson, punishment, or reward.
Love doesn't manipulate,
doesn't force you to experience something.
Love isn't in the past, settling accounts.
The pure, positive, life-giving energy of love is God.
Love doesn't play games.
It just blesses, nourishes. provides, connects, delights.
In our difficulties Love is with us, suffers with us,
gives us energy to prevail.
And sometimes that energy overflows in healing.
Love's works are revealed in blessing amid brokenness.

Ah! So love will cure my troubles?
No. Love will love you through your troubles.
But what good is a god who can't fix things?
A god who suffers our suffering and doesn't stop it?
That is the question, and the answer, of the cross:
a God who will not stop crucifixions, but be crucified.
Such a suffering, forgiving, loving presence
is deeply healing, miraculously life-giving.
It puts us in touch with the very force of life
that causes us to live, to be healthy, to be whole.
And it opens our eyes to the work of Love.

Steve Garness-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net., March 17, 2020

Going to Bed

I check the locks on the front door
               and the side door,
make sure the windows are closed
               and the heat dialed down.
I switch off the computer,
               turn off the living room lights.

I let in the cats.

               Reverently, I unplug the Christmas tree,
leaving Christ and the little animals
               in the dark.

The last thing I do
               is step out to the back yard
for a quick look at the Milky Way.

               The stars are halogen-blue.
The constellations, whose names
               I have long since forgotten,
look down anonymously,
               and the whole galaxy
is cartwheeling in silence through the night.

               Everything seems to be ok.

George Bilgere, Haywire (Utah State University, 2006)

Courage

           God, you have shown strength with your arm;
           you have scattered the proud
           in the thoughts of their hearts.
           You have brought down the powerful from their thrones,
           and lifted up the lowly.
                           ——Luke 1.51-52

Oh, Mary, you know perfectly well
how revolutionary this is,
how the power structures fight this,
how the world is opposed to God.
And you know in the fight
you will lose much.
Give me courage, Mother of Love,
to stand against the powers,
that they might be brought down,
to use what I have to lift the lowly,
to find my strength not in my powers
but in your love
that brings us all into one circle,
all your Beloved.
Mary, may your vision be my hope
and my courage.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 16, 2021

Making a Fist

“How do you know if you are going to die?”

I begged my mother.

We had been traveling for days.

With strange confidence she answered,

“When you can no longer make a fist.”

 

Years later I smile to think of that journey,

the borders we must cross separately,

stamped with our unanswerable woes.

I who did not die, who am still living,

still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,

clenching and opening one small hand.

Naomi Shihab Nye, Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poem  (Greenwillow Books, 2020)

In Our Mess

Oh Holy One, you come to us
in our need, in our mess.
To this low, rough manger, you come.
In the cesspool of pandemic and political distress
and racism and climate crisis, you come.
To people who are weary and depressed you come.
To those who are broken, to those who have lost,
to storms and to bullets, you come.
To people who are tired of fighting, weary of insisting,
exhausted from trying, you come.
To those who don’t have the strength
to lift up their heads for the dawn,
but gaze at the floor to gather the strength
to survive these times—you come.

We are amazed and grateful.
For this gift—not that the vision is fulfilled,
but that you come—we give thanks.
That you come to share this struggle,
our sorrow and even sometimes our despair,
to hurt and to hope with us—we rejoice.
Come, Beloved, come! 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 13, 2021 

Mary's Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest...
you who have had so far
to come.) Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by doves' voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

Luci Shaw, Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006)

Nest

 It wasn’t until we got the Christmas tree

into the house and up on the stand

that our daughter discovered a small bird’s nest

tucked among its needled branches.

 

Amazing, that the nest had made it

all the way from Nova Scotia on a truck

mashed together with hundreds of other trees

without being dislodged or crushed.

 

And now it made the tree feel wilder,

a balsam fir growing in our living room,

as though at any moment a bird might flutter

through the house and return to the nest.

 

And yet, because we’d brought the tree indoors,

we’d turned the nest into the first ornament.

So we wound the tree with strings of lights,

draped it with strands of red beads,

 

and added the other ornaments, then dropped

two small brass bells into the nest, like eggs

containing music, and hung a painted goldfinch

from the branch above, as if to keep them warm.

Jeffrey Harrison, poetryfoundation.org, accessed on December 10, 2021

Pearl Harbor

Bury me not

In an old church plot

Back in my hometown

No, bury me

Beneath the sea

Where my Navy mates went down

Please take me back

To that day of attack

Pearl Harbor in 41

I’d like my remains

With all of those names

When my time is finally done

I fought beside

So many who died

There on that fateful day

Just grant me this

As my dying wish

That I rest where my shipmates still lay

Mike Dailey, poetrysoup.com December 7, 2017

Advent

                                          (On a theme by Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Look how long
the tired world waited,
locked in its lonely cell,
guilty as a prisoner.

As you can imagine,
it sang and whistled in the dark.
It hoped. It paced and puttered about,
tidying its little piles of inconsequence.

It wept from the weight of ennui
draped like shackles on its wrists.
It raged and wailed against the walls
of its own plight.

But there was nothing
the world could do
to find its freedom.
The door was shut tight.

It could only be opened
from the outside.
Who could believe the latch
would be turned by the flower
of a newborn hand?

Pamela Cranston, Searching for Nova Albion (Wipf & Stock, 2019)

Christmas Sparrow

The first thing I heard this morning
was a soft, insistent rustle,
the rapid flapping of wings
against glass as it turned out,

a small bird rioting
in the frame of a high window,
trying to hurl itself through
the enigma of transparency into the spacious light.

A noise in the throat of the cat
hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in the cold night
through the flap in a basement door,
and later released from the soft clench of teeth.

Up on a chair, I trapped its pulsations
in a small towel and carried it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the nest of cloth.

But outside, it burst
from my uncupped hands into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
and disappearing over a tall row of hemlocks.

Still, for the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms whenever I thought
about the hours the bird must have spent
pent in the shadows of that room,
hidden in the spiky branches
of our decorated tree, breathing there
among metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,

its eyes open, like mine as I lie here tonight
picturing this rare, lucky sparrow
tucked into a holly bush now,
a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.

Billy Collins, allpoetry.com/Billy-Collins accessed on November 28, 2021

Meanwhile in Massachusetts

 Meanwhile in Massachusetts Jack Kennedy dreamed

Walking the shore by the Cape Cod Sea
Of all the things he was going to be.

He breathed in the tang of the New England fall
And back in his mind he pictured it all,
The burnished New England countryside
Names that a patriot says with pride
Concord and Lexington, Bunker Hill
Plymouth and Falmouth and Marstons Mill
Winthrop and Salem, Lowell, Revere
Quincy and Cambridge, Louisburg Square.
This was his heritage -- this was his share
Of dreams that a young man harks in the air.
The past reached out and tracked him now

He would heed that touch; he didn't know how.
Part he must serve, a part he must lead
Both were his calling, both were his need.

Part he was of New England stock
As stubborn, close guarded as Plymouth Rock
He thought with his feet most firm on the ground
But his heart and his dreams were not earthbound
He would call New England his place and his creed
But part he was of an alien breed
Of a breed that had laughed on Irish hills
And heard the voices in Irish rills.

The lilt of that green land danced in his blood
Tara, Killarney, a magical flood
That surged in the depth of his too proud heart
And spiked the punch of New England so tart
Men would call him thoughtful, sincere
They would not see through to the Last Cavalier.

He turned on the beach and looked toward his house.

On a green lawn his white house stands
And the wind blows the sea grass low on the sands
There his brothers and sisters have laughed and played
And thrown themselves to rest in the shade.
The lights glowed inside, soon supper would ring
And he would go home where his father was King.
But now he was here with the wind and the sea
And all the things he was going to be.

He would build empires
And he would have sons
Others would fall
Where the current runs

He would find love
He would never find peace
For he must go seeking
The Golden Fleece

All of the things he was going to be
All of the things in the wind and the sea.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, poetrypill.blogspot.com January 10, 2010

Blues

Bassey the bassist
loves his lady

hugs her to him
like a baby

plucks her
chucks her

makes her
boom

waltz or tango
bop or shango

watch them walk
or do the ’dango:

bassey and his lovely lady

bassey and his lovely lady
like the light and not the shady:

bit by boom
they build from duty

humming strings and throbbing
beauty:

beat by boom
they build this beauty:

bassey and his lovely lady

Kaman Brathwaite, americanscholar.org November 27, 2021

Ballad of Birmingham

On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

 

“Mother dear, may I go downtown

Instead of out to play,

And march the streets of Birmingham

In a Freedom March today?”

 

“No, baby, no, you may not go,

For the dogs are fierce and wild,

And clubs and hoses, guns and jails

Aren’t good for a little child.”

 

“But, mother, I won’t be alone.

Other children will go with me,

And march the streets of Birmingham

To make our country free.”

 

“No, baby, no, you may not go,

For I fear those guns will fire.

But you may go to church instead

And sing in the children’s choir.”

 

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,

And bathed rose petal sweet,

And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,

And white shoes on her feet.

 

The mother smiled to know her child

Was in the sacred place,

But that smile was the last smile

To come upon her face.

 

For when she heard the explosion,

Her eyes grew wet and wild.

She raced through the streets of Birmingham

Calling for her child.

 

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,

Then lifted out a shoe.

“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,

But, baby, where are you?”

Dudley Randall, Cities Burning (Broadside Press, 1968)

Fault

In the airport bar, I tell my mother not to worry.

No one ever tripped and fell into the San Andreas

Fault. But as she dabs at her dry eyes, I remember

those old movies where the earth does open.

 

There's always one blonde entomologist, four

deceitful explorers, and a pilot who's good-looking

but not smart enough to take off his leather jacket

in the jungle.

 

Still, he and Dr. Cutie Bug are the only ones

who survive the spectacular quake because

they spent their time making plans to go back

to the Mid-West and live near his parents

 

while the others wanted to steal the gold and ivory

then move to Los Angeles where they would rarely

call their mothers and almost never fly home

and when they did for only a few days at a time.

Ron Koertge, Geography of the Forehead (University of Arkansas Press, 2000)

Because Even the Word Obstacle Is an Obstacle

Try to love everything that gets in your way:

the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps

murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane

while you execute thirty-six furious laps,

one for every item on your to-do list.

The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water

like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side,

whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.

Teachers all. Learn to be small

and swim through obstacles like a minnow

without grudges or memory. Dart

toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking Obstacle

is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl

idly lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:

Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,

in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.

Be glad she’ll have that to look at all her life,

and keep going, keep going. Swim by an uncle

in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew

how to hold his breath underwater,

even though kids aren’t allowed at this hour. Someday,

years from now, this boy

who is kicking and flailing in the exact place

you want to touch and turn

will be a young man, at a wedding on a boat

raising his champagne glass in a toast

when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.

He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,

but he’ll come up like a cork,

alive. So your moment

of impatience must bow in service to a larger story, 

because if something is in your way it is

going your way, the way

of all beings; towards darkness, towards light.

 

Alison Luterman, The Sun June 2010 

Men Marry What They Need

Men marry what they need. I marry you,

morning by morning, day by day, night by night,
and every marriage makes this marriage new.

In the broken name of heaven, in the light
that shatters granite, by the spitting shore,
in air that leaps and wobbles like a kite,

I marry you from time and a great door
is shut and stays shut against wind, sea, stone,
sunburst, and heavenfall. And home once more

inside our walls of skin and struts of bone,
man-woman, woman-man, and each the other,
I marry you by all dark and all dawn

and have my laugh at death. Why should I bother
the flies about me? Let them buzz and do.
Men marry their queen, their daughter, or their mother

by hidden names, but that thin buzz whines through:
where reasons are no reason, cause is true.
Men marry what they need. I marry you.

John Ciardi, blog.bestamericanpoetry.com May 16, 2012

How Much

 When the boy asked the man,

“How much do you love me?”

the man went down on one knee,

then he leaned toward the child,

and opened his thick arms

as wide as the earth

until his hands were behind him,

and, like Atlas, the world rested

on his shoulders and back.

At the funeral home before the burial,

I asked to see my father’s body,

even though the Rabbi said,

“I would not recommend it.”

It laid in a black walnut casket

in a room behind drapes.

When they opened the casket,

I saw it dressed in a shroud.

A hood covered the head.

I wanted to see it.

The director said,

“It is not recommended,”

but Susan and I insisted,

so they undid the tie.

His skin was pale white.

The Rabbi said, “Jewish bodies

are not prepared for viewing.”

His face felt cool.

I ran my finger down his cheek.

When the ceremony began,

the Rabbi asked me to speak.

The measure of a father

is not only how much he loves children,

but also how much children love him.

I have a picture of him on my refrigerator

holding his grandson, Daniel, in his arms.

I can see my father beaming as Daniel sleeps.

Twenty-five years ago that baby was my son, Joshua.

Twenty-five years before that, he was me.

As I left his hospital room that last Sunday night,

I kissed him on the cheek and turned to go,

but then I turned back and kissed him again.

Then we flew home, and then he died,

so we all turned around again

and in the night between coming and going,

I stood at the side of my bed

with my suitcase laid open.

I saw the shirts, underwear, pants,

socks, belts, and ties, and I couldn’t remember,

was I packing or unpacking,

or for where or why?

Then, back in Tennessee,

the other pallbearers and I carried the casket

to the grave and lowered it into the ground,

and each family member in turn—

I was first, then Susan, Josh, Bonnie, Nancy,

and the rest, except for my mother—she couldn’t—

each threw a shovel-full of dirt.

The earth went thud as it hit the black walnut.

Later, Daniel asked his mother

why we throw dirt on Papa Joe?

Then he asked his father why are we sad?

Then he asked Joshua why we laugh when we’re sad?

So we told him, “When we love, we feel it all,”

and we showed him the world on our backs.

Robert S. Carroll, M. D. Rattle #8 (Winter 1997) 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,   

The only moving thing   

Was the eye of the blackbird.   

 

II

I was of three minds,   

Like a tree   

In which there are three blackbirds.   

 

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   

It was a small part of the pantomime.   

 

IV

A man and a woman   

Are one.   

A man and a woman and a blackbird   

Are one.   

 

V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendoes,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after.   

 

VI

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.   

The shadow of the blackbird   

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in the shadow   

An indecipherable cause.   

 

VII

O thin men of Haddam,   

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird   

Walks around the feet   

Of the women about you?   

 

VIII

I know noble accents   

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   

But I know, too,   

That the blackbird is involved   

In what I know.   

 

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,   

It marked the edge   

Of one of many circles.   

 

X

At the sight of blackbirds   

Flying in a green light,   

Even the bawds of euphony   

Would cry out sharply.   

 

XI

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.   

 

XII

The river is moving.   

The blackbird must be flying.   

 

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

 

Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Alfred A. Knopf, 1954)

Surprise Visit

 

She arrived with a small box of gifts—
two tree-ripened avocados, crispy kale
she’d roasted with spicy tahin,
a bar of dark chocolate laced with salt,
and a paperback book of koans.
I received them all with raw gratitude,
knowing what was really in that box
was devotion, compassion, integrity, hope.

But it was her arms that saved me
that day, her arms and the quiet song
of her breath, the way she held me
until I felt known—the way a shore
holds a lake, the way empty branches
hold sky, the way love holds us all.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com October 25, 2021 

Because You Left Me a Handful of Daffodils

I suddenly thought of Brenda Hatfield, queen

of the 5th grade, Concord Elementary.

A very thin, shy girl, almost

as tall as Audrey Hepburn,

but blond.

 

She wore a dress based upon the principle

of the daffodil: puffed sleeves,

inflated bodice, profusion

of frills along the shoulder blades

and hemline.

 

A dress based upon the principle of girl

as flower; everything unfolding, spilling

outward and downward: ribbon, stole,

corsage, sash.

 

It was the only thing I was ever

Elected. A very short king.

I wore a bow tie, and felt

Like a third-grader.

 

Even the scent of daffodils you left

reminds me. It was a spring night.

And escorting her down the runway

was a losing battle, trying to march

down among the full, thick folds

of crinoline, into the barrage of her

father's flashbulbs, wading

the backwash of her mother's

perfume: scared, smiling,

tiny, down at the end

of that long, thin, Audrey Hepburn arm,

where I was king.

Max Garland, The Postal Confessions (University of Massachusetts Press, 1995)

Perennials

I’ve betrayed them all:

columbine and daisy,

iris, daylily,

even the rain barrel

that spoke to me in a dream.

 

I inherited this garden, and

miss my grandmother

in her big sun hat.

My inexperienced hands

don’t know what to hope for.

 

Still, flowers come: yellow,

pink, and blue. Preoccupied,

I let them go

until weeds produce spikes

and seeds around them.

 

I never used the rain barrel.

Water froze in the bottom;

too late, I set it on its side.

 

Now lily-of-the-valley comes

with its shy bloom,

choked by a weed

I don’t know the name of. One day,

too late, I’ll weed around them,

and pull some lilies by mistake.

 

Next year we’ll all be back,

struggling.

 

Just look at these flowers

I’ve done nothing to deserve:

and still, they won’t abandon me.

 

Kathleen Norris, Journey (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001)