A Measuring Worm

This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I, too, don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.

 

Richard Wilbur, The New Yorker February 11, 2008

Thank-You Notes

           . . . let me paint a thank-you on my palm . . .
                                                           Anne Sexton

This May morning as sunrise
turns my kitchen window to stained glass,
I paint thank-yous
on the palm of my hand,

thanks for the tulip that opened
red cups to receive sun and rain,
and for violets I transplanted from Grandmother's,
now blooming in my yard,

gratitude that I don't have to rise
like Grandfather did on cool mornings
to stoke dying ashes in a coal furnace
to resurrect the fire that heated the house,

and for the spin cycle on the washer
that saves me from the task
of wringing water from skirts,
shirts, shorts, towels and sheets.

I paint thank-yous on my palm
for the mother I saw at Panera yesterday
breaking bread, giving more than half to her son,
reminding me of my mother's generosity,

for the tune my husband whistled
as he came down the stairs,
his hugs, and for the "Pickles" cartoon
in the paper that makes us laugh.

All day, keep me from taking things for granted:
spring flowers, running water, indoor plumbing,
vacuum sweepers, phone calls from my daughters.
Keep me painting thank-yous on my palm.

Wilda Morris, yourdailypoem.com

Toward the End of August

Toward the end of August I begin to dream about fall, how
this place will empty of people, the air will get cold and
leaves begin to turn. Everything will quiet down, everything
will become a skeleton of its summer self. Toward

the end of August I get nostalgic for what’s to come, for
that quiet time, time alone, peace and stillness, calm, all
those things the summer doesn’t have. The woodshed is
already full, the kindling’s in, the last of the garden soon

will be harvested, and then there will be nothing left to do
but watch fall play itself out, the earth freeze, winter come.

 

David Budbill, Tumbling Toward the End (Copper Canyon Press, 2017)

The Family Doctor

I’ve tried the high-toned specialists, who doctor folks today;
I’ve heard the throat man whisper low “Come on now let us pray”;
I’ve sat in fancy offices and waited long my turn,
And paid for fifteen minutes what it took a week to earn;
But while these scientific men are kindly, one and all,
I miss the good old doctor that my mother used to call.
The old-time family doctor! Oh, I am sorry that he’s gone,
He ushered us into the world and knew us every one;
He didn’t have to ask a lot of questions, for he knew
Our histories from birth and all the ailments we’d been through.
And though as children small we feared the medicines he’d send,
The old-time family doctor grew to be our dearest friend.
No hour too late, no night too rough for him to heed our call;
He knew exactly where to hang his coat up in the hall;
He knew exactly where to go, which room upstairs to find
The patient he’d been called to see, and saying: “Never mind,
I’ll run up there myself and see what’s causing all the fuss.”
It seems we grew to look and lean on him as one of us.
He had a big and kindly heart, a fine and tender way,
And more than once I’ve wished that I could call him in today.
The specialists are clever men and busy men, I know,
And haven’t time to doctor as they did long years ago;
But someday he may come again, the friend that we can call,
The good old family doctor who will love us one and all.

 

Edgar A. Guest, pickmeuppoetry.org April 12, 2022

Lucky

All my life I’ve been lucky. Not that I made money,
or had a beautiful house or cars. But lucky to have
had good friends, a wife who loves me, and a good
son. Lucky that war and famine or disease did not
come to my doorstep. Lucky that all the wrong
turns I made, even if they did turn out well, at least
were not complete disasters. I still have some of my
original teeth. All that could change, I know, in the
wink of an eye. And what an eye it is, bright blue
contrasting with her dark skin and black hair. And
oh, what long eyelashes! She turns and with a slight
smile gives me a long slow wink, a wink that says,
“Come on over here, you lucky boy.”

 

Louis Jenkins, In the Sun Out of the Wind (Will of the Wisp Books, 2017)

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest-

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

 

Jane Hirshfield, Gravity and Angels (Wesleyan University Press, 1998)

We're All in the Telephone Book

We’re all in the telephone book,
Folks from everywhere on earth–
Anderson to Zabowski,
It’s a record of America’s worth.

We’re all in the telephone book,
There’s no priority–
A millionaire like Rockefeller
Is likely to be behind me.

For generations men have dreamed
Of nations united as one.
Just look in your telephone book
To see where that dream’s begun.

When Washington crossed the Deleware
And the pillars of tyranny shook,
He started the list of democracy
That’s America’s telephone book.

 

Langston Hughes, 125 Poems that Celebrate the American Experience, Carmela Ciuraru, ed. (Scribner Poetry, 2002) 

His Stillness

The doctor said to my father, "You asked me
to tell you when nothing more could be done.
That's what I'm telling you now." My father
sat quite still, as he always did,
especially not moving his eyes. I had thought
he would rave if he understood he would die,
wave his arms and cry out. He sat up,
thin, and clean, in his clean gown,
like a holy man. The doctor said,
"There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you." My father said,
"Thank you." And he sat, motionless, alone,
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
I sat beside him. This was my father.
He had known he was mortal. I feared they would have to
tie him down. I had not remembered
he always held still and kept quiet to bear things,
the liquor a way to keep him still. I had not
known him. My father had dignity. At the
end of his life his life began
to wake in me.

Sharon Olds, Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)

Philip's Birthday

I gave, 
to a friend that I care for deeply,
something that I loved.
It was only a small

extremely shapely bone
that came from the ear
of a whale.
It hurt a little

to give it away.
The next morning
I went out, as usual, 
at sunrise,

and there, in the harbor,
was a swan.
I don’t know
what he or she was doing there,

but the beauty of it
was a gift.
Do you see what I mean?
You give, and you are given.

 

Mary Oliver, Evidence, (Beacon Press, 2009) 

How to Be Together

Ask a second grader.

Mine stood at the top

of the stairs, masked,

looking down at me

in the basement, masked,

unable to hold her,

my skin white-green

and slick with virus.

I am teaching her

how to be separate,

how not to hug me

until the doctor says.

When she told me

she missed my arms

so much her knees

wobbled, her eyes

were two wet pebbles

dropped in a gutter.

For what do pebbles

give thanks? How does

a gutter say grace?

I couldn’t even ask

these questions aloud,

so how she discovered

the answer is a mystery

to me: she ran outside,

around the house

to the basement window.

All I had to do was

open it, and that was,

in fact, all I could do.

She found two stones

in the yard, one smaller

than the other, both

of them rough and cold,

then hopped them toward

each other on the bricks

of the window ledge:

uno, dos, aquí. Here we are,

she said, this is you

and this is me, together.

Simple and exact.

People, you know you

are not a child anymore

when love shocks you.

I laid there, amazed

by how much light

two chunks of rock

could give, dazed

by the feast of blankets

glowing around me.

Each shallow breath

was a divine bite.

My daughter was

curled up with me

outside in the late

November sun,

which becomes a new

shade of gold even

on grey surfaces, even

when you think

those colors couldn’t

be further apart.

Abby E. Murray, rattle.com November 23, 2021

Train Ride

 

All things come to an end;
small calves in Arkansas,
the bend of the muddy river.
Do all things come to an end?
No, they go on forever.
They go on forever, the swamp,
the vine-choked cypress, the oaks
rattling last year's leaves,
the thump of the rails, the kite,
the still white stilted heron.
All things come to an end.
The red clay bank, the spread hawk,
the bodies riding this train,
the stalled truck, pale sunlight, the talk;
the talk goes on forever,
the wide dry field of geese,
a man stopped near his porch
to watch. Release, release;
between cold death and a fever,
send what you will, I will listen.
All things come to an end.
No, they go on forever.

Ruth Stone, In the Next Galaxy (Copper Canyon Press, 2002)

Telephone Repairman

All morning in the February light
he has been mending cable,
splicing the pairs of wires together
according to their colors,
white-blue to white-blue
violet-slate to violet-slate,
in the warehouse attic by the river.

When he is finished
the messages will flow along the line:
thank you for the gift,
please come to the baptism,
the bill is now past due:
voices that flicker and gleam back and forth
across the tracer-colored wires.

We live so much of our lives
without telling anyone,
going out before dawn,
working all day by ourselves,
shaking our heads in silence
at the news on the radio.
He thinks of the many signals
flying in the air around him
the syllables fluttering,
saying please love me,
from continent to continent
over the curve of the earth.

 

Joseph Millar, Overtime (Eastern Washington Press) 

My Time in Better Dresses

I remember job hunting in my shoddy
and nervous working class youth,
how I had to wear nylons and white
gloves that were dirty in half an hour
for jobs that barely paid for shoes.

Don’t put down Jew, my mother
warned, just say Protestant, it
doesn’t commit you to anything.
Ads could still say “white” and
in my childhood, we weren’t.

I worked in better dresses in Sam’s
cut-rate department store, $3.98
and up. I wasn’t trusted to sell.
I put boxes together, wrapped,
cleaned out dressing rooms.

My girlfriend and I bought a navy
taffeta dress with cutout top, wore it
one or the other to parties, till it failed
my sophistication test. The older
“girls” in sales, divorced, sleek,

impressed me, but the man in charge
I hated, the way his eyes stroked,
stripped, discarded. How he docked
our pay for lateness. How he sucked
on his power like a piece of candy.

 

Marge Piercy, Made in Detroit (Knopf, 2015) 

Cheerios

 

One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago

as I waited for my eggs and toast,

I opened the Tribune only to discover

that I was the same age as Cheerios.

 

Indeed, I was a few months older than Cheerios

for today, the newspaper announced,

was the seventieth birthday of Cheerios

whereas mine had occurred earlier in the year.

 

Already I could hear them whispering

behind my stooped and threadbare back,

Why that dude’s older than Cheerios

the way they used to say

 

Why that’s as old as the hills, 

only the hills are much older than Cheerios

or any American breakfast cereal,

and more noble and enduring are the hills,

 

I surmised as a bar of sunlight illuminated my orange juice.

Billy Collins, otherpeoplespoemstoo.blogspot.com, November 19, 2017

What the Heart Cannot Forget

Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,
cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub
of watery fingers along its edge.


The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,
remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,
gathering itself together for the fall.


The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under
its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down
the sand under the beaks of savage birds.


The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years
of drought, the floods, the way things came
walking slowly towards it long ago.


And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches
where it was broken. The feet remember the dance,
and the arms remember lifting up the child.


The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.

 

Joyce Sutphen, Coming Back to the Body: Poems (Holy Cowl Press, 2000)