Free Breakfast

The Springhill Suites free breakfast area
was filling up fast when a man carrying his
disabled young son lowered him into his
chair, the same way an expert pilot’s airplane
kisses the runway when it lands. And all the
while, the man whispered into his boy’s ear,
perhaps telling him about the waffle maker
that was such a hit with the children gathered
around it, or sharing the family’s plans for the
day as they traveled to wherever they were
going. Whatever was said, the boy’s face was
alight with some anticipated happiness. And
the father, soon joined by the mother, seemed
intent on providing it. So beautiful they all
were, it was hard to concentrate on our eggs
and buttered toast, to look away when his
parents placed their hands on the little boy’s
shoulders and smiled at one another, as if
they were the luckiest people in the room.

Terri Kirby Erikson, A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53, 2020)

Three Gratitudes

Every night before I go to sleep
I say out loud
Three things that I’m grateful for,
All the significant, insignificant
Extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life.
It’s a small practice and humble,
And yet, I find I sleep better
Holding what lightens and softens my life
Ever so briefly at the end of the day.
Sunlight, and blueberries,
Good dogs and wool socks,
A fine rain,
A good friend,
Fresh basil and wild phlox,
My father’s good health,
My daughter’s new job,
The song that always makes me cry,
Always at the same part,
No matter how many times I hear it.
Decent coffee at the airport,
And your quiet breathing,
The stories you told me,
The frost patterns on the windows,
English horns and banjos,
Wood Thrush and June bugs,
The smooth glassy calm of the morning pond,
An old coat,
A new poem,
My library card,
And that my car keeps running
Despite all the miles.

And after three things,
More often than not,
I get on a roll and I just keep on going,
I keep naming and listing,

Until I lie grinning,
Blankets pulled up to my chin,
Awash with wonder
At the sweetness of it all.

Carrie Newcomer, janicefalls.wordpress.com July 19, 2017

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
just 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?

Oh if we lived only in human society
with its cruelty and fear
its apathy and exhaustion
what a puny existence that would be

but instead we live and move and have our being
here, in this curving and soaring world
so that when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
and when, even more rarely, we manage to 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, janicefalls.wordpress.com June 10, 2020

At Table

When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. Luke 24:30

We are taken:
gathered up in God's grace,
belonging not to ourselves now, but God,
taken out of our lives, and made part of something
greater -- infinite, gracious, and unendingly good.

We are blessed:
God's love and delight poured out upon us,
God's mercy filling us,
so no matter what our circumstances
our lives bear grace and the power of healing.

We are broken:
sinful and incomplete, brokenhearted in love,
perfectly weak and flawed,
we are broken open
so the love poured into us may flow out
into the world.

And we are given
to the world,
resurrected, vessels of blessing,
given to love,
bread of life for others.

God, in your mercy
take, bless, break, and give us,
raised, renewed, imbued with your spirit,
full of beauty, love, and courage,
the Body of Christ.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, April 23, 2020

I Married You

I married you

for all the wrong reasons,

charmed by your

dangerous family history,

by the innocent muscles, bulging

like hidden weapons

under your shirt,

by your naive ties, the colors

of painted scraps of sunset.

 

I was charmed too

by your assumptions

about me: my serenity—

that mirror waiting to be cracked,

my flashy acrobatics with knives

in the kitchen.

How wrong we both were

about each other,

and how happy we have been.

Linda Pastan, Queen of a Rainy Country (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006) 

I Love You

Early on, I noticed that you always say it
to each of your children
as you are getting off the phone with them
just as you never fail to say it
to me whenever we arrive at the end of a call.
It’s all new to this only child.
I never heard my parents say it,
at least not on such a regular basis,
nor did it ever occur to me to miss it.
To say I love you pretty much every day
would have seemed strangely obvious,
like saying I’m looking at you
when you are standing there looking at someone.
If my parents had started saying it
a lot, I would have started to worry about them.
Of course, I always like hearing it from you.
That is never a cause for concern.
The problem is I now find myself saying it back
if only because just saying good-bye
then hanging up would make me seem discourteous.
“But like Bartleby, I would prefer not to
say it so often, would prefer instead to save it
for special occasions, like shouting it out as I leaped
into the red mouth of a volcano
with you standing helplessly on the smoking rim,
or while we are desperately clasping hands
before our plane plunges into the Gulf of Mexico,
which are only two of the examples I had in mind,
but enough, as it turns out, to make me
want to say it to you right now,
and what better place than in the final couplet
of a poem where, as every student knows, it really counts.”

Billy Collins, senortao.com March 6, 2020

Long Shot

                   for Rich Strike

I have been the player benched

at tip-off, game by game, watched nets dance

with leather, felt the storm and wrench

of clumsy. I defied it. Made my chance

in cones lined up on pavement. Only

the sun to coach my feet, my hands.

I have been that lonely.

 

I have sought bouquets of crimson roses,

hid beyond the slides and swings at recess,

played in fields, held my princess poses

among the calves. I have worn a dress

and asked a boy to dance, as Sony

speakers belted love. He didn’t say yes.

I have been that lonely.

 

I have drained a three point shot, the one

that glitters memory like waves curl to sand,

felt all of that and more in a man’s hand.

I kicked, slapped, not knowing I had won

everything. When the long shot bites the pony

after he wins the roses, I understand.

I have been that lonely.

 

T. R. Poulson, Poems Respond rattle.com May 15, 2022

How Much Do You Weigh?

 A question asked often by old men or young, friends, strangers

on the road. How much? I didn’t know how to answer. Certainly

 

not a question you’d ask of a woman—not in America where

I’d come from—but common in the village where I lived, deep 

 

in the Land of the Lozi, people of cattle and sand. Zambians 

living twenty miles from Angola. Twenty miles from civil war. 

 

Tins of cheese from the United Nations, vividly marked Not for Sale 

gathered dust in our nearly empty market. Exorbitant price. Unobtainable.

 

When a fat campaigning politician came slick to our village, 

gaunt mothers with emaciated children gathered and pointed, astonished.

 

Admired his weight as if wealth. Look! He can eat and eat, 

more than enough! What to make of a man who is fat? Unimaginable.

 

fantasy to anemic mothers with brittle-boned children, bellies swollen

by hunger, legs weeping with sores. What a relief just to eat not defeated

 

by dry empty fields, crops gone to dust. Such ease to eat and eat

what you please and not stop. How much do you weigh? No longer

 

unseemly, no longer a goad. Compassionate. Tender. Driven by hunger,

rendered by need. A question which reconfigured might just as well ask,

 

do you have enough? Have you eaten today? Will you sleep hungry? 

Tell me. How much do you weigh?

 

Jill Kandell. Rattle #75  May 16, 2022

Kindness

Last week, a nurse pulled a warm blanket
from a magical cave of heated cotton
and lay it on my lap, even wrapping
my feet. She admired my red sandals.
Once, a friend brought me a chicken
she’d roasted and packed with whole lemons.
I ate it with my fingers while it was still warm.
Kindnesses appear, then disappear so quickly
that I forget their brief streaks: they vanish,
while cruelty pearls its durable shell.
Goodness streams like hot water through my hair
and down my skin, and I’m able to live
again with the ache. Love wakens the world.
Kindness is my mother, sending me a yellow dress in the mail
for no reason other than to watch me twirl.

Anya Silver, janicefalls.wordpress.com May 11, 2022

Getting It Right

In grammar school I stuttered,
felt the hot panic on my face
when my turn to read crept up the row.

Even when I counted the paragraphs
and memorized the passage,
I’d trip on the first or second word,

and then it would be over,
the awful hesitation, the word
clinging to the lining of my throat

rising only too late to avoid
the laughter around me. I was never
the smartest kid in the room,

but I had answers I knew were right
yet was afraid to say them.
Years later it all came out, flowing

sentences I practiced over and over,
Shakespeare or Frost, my own tall tales
in low-lit barrooms, scribbled

in black-bound journals, rehearsing,
anticipating my turn, my time,
a way of finally getting it right.

Kevin Carey, tidingsofmagpies.blogspot.com December 14, 2016 

Ode to Teachers

I remember

the first day,

how I looked down,

hoping you wouldn't see

me,

and when I glanced up,

I saw your smile

shining like a soft light

from deep inside you.

 

“I'm listening,” you encourage us.

“Come on!

Join our conversation,

let us hear your neon certainties,

thorny doubts, tangled angers,”

but for weeks I hid inside.

 

I read and reread your notes

praising

my writing,

and you whispered,

“We need you

and your stories

and questions

that like a fresh path

will take us to new vistas.”

 

Slowly, your faith grew

into my courage

and for you—

instead of handing you

a note or apple or flowers—

I raised my hand.

 

I carry your smile

and faith inside like I carry

my dog's face,

my sister's laugh,

creamy melodies,

the softness of sunrise,

steady blessings of stars,

autumn smell of gingerbread,

the security of a sweater on a chilly day.

Pat Mora, Dizzy in Your Eyes (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010) 

Dreams and Nightmares

Last night as I lay sleeping,
   I had a dream so fair . . .
   I dreamed of the Holy City, well ordered and just.
   I dreamed of a garden of paradise,
     well-being all around and a good water supply.
   I dreamed of disarmament and forgiveness,
     and caring embrace for all those in need.
   I dreamed of a coming time when death is no more.

Last night as I lay sleeping . . .
   I had a nightmare of sins unforgiven.
   I had a nightmare of land mines still exploding
     and maimed children.
   I had a nightmare of the poor left unloved,
     of the homeless left unnoticed,
     of the dead left ungrieved.
   I had a nightmare of quarrels and rages
     and wars great and small.

When I awoke, I found you still to be God,
   presiding over the day and night
     with serene sovereignty,
   for dark and light are both alike to you.

At the break of day we submit to you
     our best dreams
     and our worst nightmares,
   asking that your healing mercy should override threats,
     that your goodness will make our
       nightmares less toxic
       and our dreams more real.

Thank you for visiting us with newness
       that overrides what is old and deathly among us.
Come among us this day; dream us toward
       health and peace,
we pray in the real name of Jesus
       who exposes our fantasies.

Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People (Abingdon, 2008) 

They Sit Together on the Porch

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir (Counterpoint Press, 1998)

The Mercy

The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island
eighty-three years ago was named “The Mercy.”
She remembers trying to eat a banana
without first peeling it and seeing her first orange
in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman
who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her
with a red bandana and taught her the word,
“orange,” saying it patiently over and over.
A long autumn voyage, the days darkening
with the black waters calming as night came on,
then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space
without limit rushing off to the corners
of creation. She prayed in Russian and Yiddish
to find her family in New York, prayers
unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored
by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness
before she woke, that kept “The Mercy” afloat
while smallpox raged among the passengers
and crew until the dead were buried at sea
with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom.
“The Mercy,” I read on the yellowing pages of a book
I located in a windowless room of the library
on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days
offshore in quarantine before the passengers
disembarked. There a story ends. Other ships
arrived, “Tancred” out of Glasgow, “The Neptune”
registered as Danish, “Umberto IV,”
the list goes on for pages, November gives
way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore.
Italian miners from Piemonte dig
under towns in western Pennsylvania
only to rediscover the same nightmare
they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels
all night by train with one suitcase and an orange.
She learns that mercy is something you can eat
again and again while the juice spills over
your chin, you can wipe it away with the back
of your hands and you can never get enough.

Philip Levine, The Mercy (Knopf, 2000)

A Poem about Pain

I can feel myself slipping away, fading away, withdrawing
from this life, just as my father did. When the pain you’re in

is so great you can’t think about or pay attention to anything
but your own pain, the rest of the world and all other life

don’t matter.

I think about my friends with dementia, cancer, arthritis, and
how much more pain they are in than I am, but it does no good,

their pain is not mine, and therefore, no matter how magnanimous I might want to be, their pain is not as important to me as my own.

 

David Budhill, betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com June 7, 2021

Sleeping Next to the Man on the Plane

I'm not well. Neither is he.
Periodically he pulls out a handkerchief
and blows his nose. I worry
about germs, but appreciate how he shares
the armrest—especially
considering his size—too large
to lay the tray over his lap.
His seatbelt barely buckles. At least
he doesn't have to ask for an extender
for which I imagine him grateful. Our upper arms
press against each other, like apricots growing
from the same node. My arm is warm
where his touches it. I close my eyes.
In the chilly, oxygen-poor air, I am glad
to be close to his breathing mass.
We want our own species. We want
to lie down next to our own kind.
Even here in this metal encumbrance, hurtling
improbably 30,000 feet above the earth,
with all this civilization—down
to the chicken-or-lasagna in their
environmentally-incorrect packets,
even as the woman behind me is swiping
her credit card on the phone embedded
in my headrest and the folks in first
are watching their individual movies
on personal screens, I lean
into this stranger, seeking primitive comfort—
heat, touch, breath—as we slip
into the ancient vulnerability of sleep.

Ellen Bass, Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002)