Mend

My Mama had the gift of hand sewing—one perfect stitch
after another perfect stitch, eyeballing the precise length 

of thread needed to repair what had ripped a gaping 
hole, unmaking the whole swath of cotton-polyester fabric

she draped across her delicate boney shoulders before 
a night out with my father—painting the town red 

she said of those early dates when he handed her his fat 
quarters hoping they would be enough to make something 

beautiful like the outfits she sewed: plaid culottes with matching 
vests, paisley dresses, fringed halters—she tells me this while 

I watch the needle bully a ruby rivulet from her thumb, sullying 
the myth of cotton without the blood, when she tries to mend 

my middle-school uniform skirt, a navy pleat I never noticed 
had been stretched into splitting—

 

L. Renee, poetrynw.org June 11, 2022

The Next Generation of Mourning

 

I have begun, like my mother before me,
to cross out names. She lived to read the obituaries
of all her friends. In my generation, the first girl
I ever kissed is dead, complications of pneumonia.

I saw the email on the way from something
important to something suddenly not, and felt
nothing, as if a high-powered bullet had passed
through me without hitting heart or head or bone.

Later: the ache as I remembered
when we were 16, in a state
of mutual crush, and rode to the lake—
that parent-approved, church-sponsored
alternative to a real beach trip,
and made out in the back seat of a red ’64
Chevy Impala with Ray driving and Mable
looking back now and then to wink and grin.

Soon the romance was over and we moved on,
but never forgot that date, and when
I saw her forty years later we still joked
and smiled about that ride and wondered
whatever happened to Ray and Mable.

 

Richard Allen Taylor, Armed and Luminous (Main Street Publishing Company, 2016)

Adage

 

When it’s late at night and branches
are banging against the windows,
you might think that love is just a matter

of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself
into the fire of someone else,
but it’s a little more complicated than that.

It’s more like trading the two birds
who might be hiding in that bush
for the one you are not holding in your hand.

A wise man once said that love
was like forcing a horse to drink
but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.

Let us be clear about something.
Love is not as simple as getting up
on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.

No, it’s more like the way the pen
feels after it has defeated the sword.
It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.

You look at me through the halo of the last candle
and tell me love is an ill wind
that has no turning, a road that blows no good,

but I am here to remind you,
as our shadows tremble on the walls,
that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

Billy Collins, Aimless Love (Random House, 2013)

Cathedrals

 We went out early

to water our tomato tree,

a ripening Park’s Whopper

potted beside the yellow onions.

 

From the stalk to the ledge

there was something

birthed overnight:

all air shine,

fine-threaded and intricate

it stretched,

holding court

with drops of dew,

gleaming in the light.

 

Oh! I gasped,

as I marveled

at the spider’s web.

How she must have

toiled in the dead

of night to produce

this holy silk:

so delicate, too,

and yet so indestructible.

Those tiny spires

and vaulted ceilings

patterned with her chisel,

all held tight at the center

and spun out hexagonal.

 

At once, I was gazing

at the Gothic turrets

of Notre Dame

before the fires

marred her.

At once, the flowers

in the foreground

became the spider’s

stained-glass windows,

and I felt the urge to kneel

and kiss the ground

in prayer.

 

And I heard:

Who needs the trappings

of four walls

or to travel to the city,

when everywhere

in nature

there are cathedrals?

 

Kimberly Phinney, radixmagazine.com April 12, 2023

At the Children's Violin Concert

          Firmly bowed
strands of horse hair
          tightened or
gathered up by
          a small hand to play
          a piece by J. S. Bach
who drank 36 cups of coffee every day.

I like him because he was
inspired by his belief in God
& he played an organ in a church
in Leipzig & he walked on
cobblestone streets to his home
every evening where he fathered
many children & wrote music
for his wife to clean house by.
He worked hard all his life
& when he died, he left us
all the little notes he made
for himself while he was alone.

Susan Cataldo, Drenched: Selected Poems of Susan Cataldo (Telephone Books, 2003)

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice"

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firecracker perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindedness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

Billy Collins

What the Janitor Heard in the Elevator

The woman in gold bracelets tells her friend:
I had to fire another one.
Can you believe it?
She broke the vase
Jack gave me for Christmas.
It was one of those,
you know? That worked
with everything. All my colors.
I asked him if he’d mind
if I bought one again just like it.
It was the only one that just always worked.

Her friend says:
Find another one that speaks English.
That’s a plus.

The woman in gold agrees
that is a plus.

 

Barbara Kingsolver, beeprint.wordpress.com January 11, 2010 

A Woman Is Not a Potted Plant

A woman is not a potted plant
her roots bound 
to the confines 
of her house

a woman is not
a potted plant
her leaves trimmed
to the contours 
of her sex

a woman is not
a potted plant
her branches
espaliered
against the fences
of her race
her country
her mother
her man
her trained blossom
turning this way
and
that
to follow
the sun
of whoever feeds
and waters
her

a woman
is wilderness
unbounded
holding the future
between each breath
walking the earth
only because
she is free
and not creeper vine
or tree

Nor even honeysuckle
or bee.

 

Alice Walker, anythingurban.typepad.com

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 Delaware

And the pillars of tyranny shook,

He started the list of democracy

That’s America’s telephone book.

Langston Hughes, Poems for America: 125 Poems that Celebrate the American Experience Carmela Ciuraru, ed. (Scribner Poetry, 2000) 

Safety Net

This morning I woke
thinking of all the people I love
and all the people they love
and how big the net
of lovers. It felt so clear,
all those invisible ties
interwoven like silken threads
strong enough to make a mesh
that for thousands of years
has been woven and rewoven
to catch us all.
Sometimes we go on
as if we forget
about it. Believing only
in the fall. But the net
is just as real. Every day,
with every small kindness,
with every generous act,
we strengthen it. Notice,
even now, how
as the whole world
seems to be falling, it
is there for us as we
walk the day’s tightrope,
how every tie matters.

 

Wahtola Trommer, janicefalls.wordpress.com, August 4, 2021

Alzheimer's

Chairs move by themselves, and books.
Grandchildren visit, stand
new and nameless, their faces' puzzles
missing pieces. She's like a fish

 

in deep ocean, its body made of light.
She floats through rooms, through
my eyes, an old woman bereft
of chronicle, the parable of her life.

And though she's almost a child
there's still blood between us:
I passed through her to arrive.
So I protect her from knives,

 

stairs, from the street that calls
as rivers do, a summons to walk away,
to follow. And dress her,
demonstrate how buttons work,

 

when she sometimes looks up
and says my name, the sound arriving
like the trill of a bird so rare
it's rumored no longer to exist.

 

Bob Hicok, The Southern Review Vol, Iss 2 (April 1, 1995) 

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not die in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Dawna Merkova, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Passion and Purpose (Conari Press. 2000)  

You Are a Family

Your children have many moods. Let them.
Let the playful one play with abandon.
Let the earnest one read the book.
Let the weeping one cry freely.
Hold the frightened one in your lap.
Give space for the one who is flying or dancing
or battling dragons or maybe just moving
to move without getting hurt.
They all belong. They are all beautiful.
Gather them to the table and eat together.
Bless them all. They all enrich your wisdom.
Do not forget or abandon any of them.
When you go out into the world
be sure to have listened to them all.
It is to such as these that the Realm of God belongs.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net October 7, 2023

To Be Ready See

Last night a lunar eclipse

reddened, deepened,

said its prayers above our heads,

shared its vision of darkness

and light, movement and embrace,

of roundness, withdrawal and return,

the grace of shadowed loveliness,

a hymn of mystery chanted soft.

We stood in awe on our porch,

necks craned, while I'm sure many

slept or partied or did dishes

or stared at TVs, unaware.

If only someone had told them,

some TV host, “Go outside,”

some crazy neighbor,

“You're missing beauty.”

But no one told them.

They snacked, or tinkered.

They went to bed believing

in a world without such marvels.

Grace moves in shadows,

and wonders are given

that we would see

if only we knew to look.

This is why we study and pray:

to know of the work of God,

unseen. To know to look.

To be ready to see.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net,  accessed on September 28,2023

Red Stilts

Seventy years ago I made a pair of stilts
from six-foot two-by-twos, with blocks
to stand on nailed a foot from the bottom.

If I was to learn to walk on stilts I wanted
them red and I had to wait almost forever
for the paint to dry, laid over the arms

of a saggy, ancient Adirondack chair
no longer good for much but holding hoes
and rakes and stakes rolled up in twine,

and at last I couldn’t wait a minute longer
and took the stilts into my hands and stepped
between them, stepped up and stepped out,

tilted far forward, clopping fast and away
down the walk, a foot above my neighborhood,
the summer in my hair, my new red stilts

stuck to my fingers, not knowing how far
I’d be able to get, and now, in what seems
just a few yards down the block, I’m there.

 

Ted Kooser, poetryonthecharles.net August 24, 2020

Losing Steps

1

It’s probably a Sunday morning
in a pickup game, and it’s clear
you’ve begun to leave
fewer people behind.

Your fakes are as good as ever,
but when you move
you’re like the Southern Pacific
the first time a car kept up with it,

your opponent at your hip,
with you all the way
to the rim. Five years earlier
he’d have been part of the air

that stayed behind you
in your ascendance.
On the sidelines they’re saying,
He’s lost a step.

2

In a few more years
it’s adult night in a gymnasium
streaked with the abrupt scuff marks
of high schoolers, and another step

leaves you like a wire
burned out in a radio.
You’re playing defense,
someone jukes right, goes left,

and you’re not fooled
but he’s past you anyway,
dust in your eyes,
a few more points against you.

3

Suddenly you’re fifty;
if you know anything about steps
you’re playing chess
with an old, complicated friend.

But you’re walking to a schoolyard
where kids are playing full-court,
telling yourself
the value of experience, a worn down

basketball under your arm,
your legs hanging from your waist
like misplaced sloths in a county
known for its cheetahs and its sunsets.

 

Stephen Dunn, poetrytreeonthecharles.net June 28, 2023

What the Doctor Said

He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong

Raymond Carver, All of Us: Collected Poems (Harvill Press, 1996)

The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

 

St. Francis of Assisi