Thanks for Remembering Us

The flowers sent here by mistake,

signed with a name that no one knew,

are turning bad. What shall we do?

Our neighbor says they're not for her,

and no one has a birthday near.

We should thank someone for the blunder.

Is one of us having an affair?

At first we laugh, and then we wonder.

 

The iris was the first to die,

enshrouded in its sickly-sweet

and lingering perfume. The roses

fell one petal at a time,

and now the ferns are turning dry.

The room smells like a funeral,

but there they sit, too much at home,

accusing us of some small crime,

like love forgotten, and we can't

throw out a gift we've never owned.

 

Dana Gioia, loc.gov November 14, 2023 

Waiting

The siren in the distance, then near,
Chester on a gurney wheeled to the raised hatch.

Eleanor then, in the waiting room, waiting.
The doctor didn’t come and didn’t come.

Neighbor Leon, leaning against the stone wall outside,
helping to wait.
His wife Eileen too, her bent wrist on one hip,
her old fingers laced with his,
their bow legged white dog came along.

Farm clothes and faces lined with practiced resignation,
the old boar, the old cow in the pasture,
they all knew how to wait.

At home, the two wingback chairs in the parlor waited.
Baggy trousers on the wash line,
goats napping in the dusty yard.

The heart attack that stopped for a visit,
now down the road to someone else.

At home, his silver razor on the porcelain sink,
the shave cream, the mirror.

Eleanor touched his smooth bare head,
his Picasso face,
her voice examining to get a sense of him.
She touched his chest inside his shirt, his palms
to see if he had much grip.

In the late afternoon, he gazed from the window to the blue mountain.
It looked different. From now on, everything different.

 

John Ziegler, autumnpoetrydaily.com July 12, 2023

Song

At her Junior High School graduation,

she sings alone

in front of the lot of us—

 

her voice soprano, surprising,

almost a woman's. It is

the Our Father in French,

 

the new language

making her strange, out there,

fully fledged and

 

ready for anything. Sitting

together—her separated

mother and father—we can

 

hear the racket of traffic

shaking the main streets

of Jersey City as she sings

 

Deliver us from evil,

and I wonder can she see me

in the dark here, years

 

from belief, on the edge

of tears. It doesn't matter. She

doesn't miss a beat, keeps

 

in time, in tune, while into

our common silence I whisper,

Sing, love, sing your heart out!

 

Eamon Grennan, Relations: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1998) 

At the Lake House

Wind and the sound of wind—
across the bay a chainsaw revs
and stalls. I’ve come here to write,

but instead I’ve been thinking
about my father, who, in his last year,
after his surgery, told my mother

he wasn’t sorry—that he’d cried
when the other woman left him,
that his time with her

had made him happier than anything
he’d ever done. And my mother,
who cooked and cleaned for him

all those years, cared for him
after his heart attack, could not
understand why he liked the other

woman more than her,
but he did. And she told me
that after he died she never went

to visit his grave—not once.
You think you know them,
these creatures robed

in your parents’ skins. Well,
you don’t. Any more than you know
what the pines want from the wind,

if the lake’s content with this pale
smear of sunset, if the loon calls
for its mate, or for another.

 

Jon Loomis, The Mansion of Happiness (Oberlin College Press, 2016)

A Blessing

     May the peace of deep belonging settle upon you,
the abundance of life's goodness surround you,
the warmth of divine delight burn within you.

     May the light of gentle wisdom guide you,
the courage of forgiveness set you free,
the wings of gratitude lift you.

     May your listening deepen,
your trust in grace flourish,
your joy be unleashed.

     Beloved, the Mystery envelops you,
the Wonder embraces you,
the breath of life flows through you always.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net September 27, 2023

Seeing Tina in the Produce Section at Safeway

A mini thunder rumbles.
A mist strokes the green onions,
sweeps across the delicate
acreage of parsley,
the lettuce’s skirts,
the cabbage's stiff petticoats.

Rain is sluicing down outside the store.
Then I see you striding towards me,
beads of water in your hair.

It’s as if you'd dropped out
of a cloudburst.
Only thunder
could introduce you again
into my life. You always preferred
drama to my quiet world
in high school of native
California plants.

I gather myself as the showers
in the spinach abruptly end.
“Hi,” you say sidling up,
fingering a scallion.
“You look good.”

Your glasses perch
atop your strawberry blonde hair,
every strand in place. Mine is as mussed
as a carrot’s. I can’t believe
we dated.

Casually you mention
you’ve just returned
from auditions in L.A.
—and teasing, boast
how your agent's
created more famous actresses
than my beloved Luther Burbank's
created varieties
of fruit. Always
the flirt, you
wink

just before Mr. Handsome
approaches, slides his paw
around your waist. You smile,
and the two of you push your cart
out of my life.

I follow, watching.
You turn around, throw me a kiss
just before leaving the store.

I turn my attention back to piling
pyramids of Fuji apples, their faces
as rosy and as luminous
as I remember yours
long ago. I can’t wait to get home
to my lovely wife
and precious baby daughter
to tell them about you.
Ah, I love my small
world….

Christine Klocek-Lim, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily (November 20, 2023)

A Prayer for Two Congregations

 Lord, bless our friends and all the members of Grace Methodist Church. We give thanks that the members of Grace are experiencing the excitement of beginning something new together. Already they have ministries in place that will make a difference in the lives of others.

Now that decisions have been made, may we extend forgiveness to each other and experience healing. The issues on which we disagree are important, but they stand alongside our mutual love and the shared history of serving Christ and community.

They will be in our prayers during illness and distress.

Open opportunities for us to once again work together in spreading the word and work of Christ. Lead our congregations to life-changing spirituality, life-saving service to others, and life-sustaining faith, hope, and love.

Let Scripture be our guide:

“Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God. Everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God . . . Indeed this command comes to us from Christ himself: that he who loves God must also love his brother and sister.” (1 John 4: 7-8, 21)

The Old Man and the Motorcycle

The old man had inoperable cancer.
The old man's wife was dead
And the old man's kids didn't like him,

So the old man sold most everything
And bought a motorcycle
And the old man got back

To the backroads, to the roads he'd so
Enjoyed as a young man,
And the old man figured what the hell,

I'm sick I don't have long I might
As well die falling off this thing
Somewhere; this affordable, this moving,

This very roaring thing on these last roads.

Liam Rector, The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago Press, 2006)

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, journeywithjesus.net October 31, 2021 

Half a Heritage

And then there’s Dad, sent off  
at twelve to boarding school  
where he learned the rudiments 
of Lutheran theology and how

to do his own laundry and how  
to smoke a pack a day, a thing  
so well learned that it became  
a 57 year old habit. Do the math

and you’ll know how short he  
lived, how long he blew smoke  
rings for me and my siblings  
as he wrote his sermons, graded

papers, sipped a martini, watched  
Gunsmoke and my brother’s baseball  
games and my mother as she lifted  
loaves from the oven, all with

the pleasure of a twelve-year-old,  
the devotion of a monk whose  
charge it is to focus on the cup,  
the host, open mouths all around.

 

Mary M. Brown, The Christian Century October 23, 2023

"To Be of Use"

 

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

 

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

 

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

 

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

Margie Piercy, Circles on the Water (Alfred A. Knopf, 1973)