Vocational Training

I sound so much like my mother
that when people called our house for help,
I’d have to stop them halfway through
their stories. Hold on, I’d say, I’m not her.
When I went with her on calls, I hovered
in doorways, holding her equipment, watched
her walk to the center of what was wrong.
I knew I could memorize facts, anatomy,
the math of giving oxygen or shock,
but I needed her to teach me what the body
wanted. What I learned was common sense:
Apply pressure to bleeding. Stay as calm
as you can. I’ll never have her hands,
the power I saw her wield, but sometimes
I feel her voice in my mouth: Get some ice
and you’ll be fine. It doesn’t need stitches,
it’s only a scratch. Even when I’m the one
speaking, my mother’s voice knows what to do.

 

Carrie Shipers, Family Resemblances (University of New Mexico Press, 2016)

The Wedding Doll

 She boxed me—saving me, she said, for the wedding.

She shall be my centerpiece, stand next to the cake.

That was when she was twelve.

 

I was a birthday gift to a girl who loved dolls. A girl who had

dreams, pictured herself, apron-clad, in a sunny kitchen

fixing pot roast for a husband, four children.

 

It is now 65 years later, and I’m stuck up in the attic,

like a child’s cradle outgrown or a rocking horse

no longer needed. And I am still in the turquoise box

 

with magenta lettering proclaiming Madame Alexander.

We, the most cherished dolls of the era. This was

before Barbie, Cabbage Patch kids, and American Girl.

 

My box itself has begun to collapse, its corners broken,

its top dented from move after move. The wedding dress

I wear now is tainted—tea brown with age. The lace

 

delicate, ready to dissolve at the touch. My face, too, is

cracked, but my blue eyes are still open. She takes me

out now and then and witnesses time, acknowledges

 

that I never got that center spotlight—nor did she.

How do I feel having been boxed for decades? How does

she feel never having had a man to hold at night,

 

children to embrace? She, too, has been in a box. Hers

constructed of societal expectations. No less imprisoned

than I. Do I pity her? Not really. She had choices whereas

 

I had none. She could have, at any time, lifted her lid,

flown over the edge.

 

Nancy Beagle, rattle.com April 11, 2024

The Faces of Children

Meeting old friends after a long time, we see
with surprise how they have changed, and must imagine,
despite the mirror's lies, that change is upon us, too.

Once, in our twenties, we thought we would never die.
Now, as one thoughtlessly shuffles a deck of cards,
we have run through half our lives.

The afternoon has vanished, the evening changing
us into four shadows mildly talking on a porch.
And as we talk, we listen to the children play
the games that we played once. In joy and terror,
they cry out in surprise as the seeker finds the one in hiding,
or in fairytale tableau, each one is tapped and turned

to stone. The lawn is full of breathing statues who wait
to be changed back again, and we can do nothing but stand
to one side of our children's games, our children's lives.

We are the conjurors who take away all pain,
and we are the ones who cannot take away the pain at all.
They do not ask, as lately we have asked ourselves,

Who was I then? And what must I become?
Like newly minted coins, their faces catch
the evening's radiance. They are so sure of us,

more sure than we are of ourselves. Our children:
who gently push us toward the end of our own lives.
The future beckons brightly. They trust us to lead them there.

 

Elizabeth Spires, Now the Green Blade Rises (W. W. Norton & Co. 2002)

Other Sheep

            I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
           I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
                                              —John 10.16


We think we're being open-minded
when we include “all of us,” Protestant and Catholic,
Orthodox and Coptic, as if we see the whole landscape.
But the pasture and the Shepherd are far greater than that.
Believer, unbeliever and other-believer alike
are all shepherded, each in their own language.
And still there are more, and more other, sheep.
Like, well, sheep.
Do not the deer and otter, whale and fungus
follow the Shepherd faithfully?
Is not the bird migrating its continents shepherded as well?
Christ is not the partisan figurehead of a religion,
Christ is the infinite embodied grace of God,
the Shepherd of all Creation,
who leads rivers to the sea and winter into spring
and each of us into life.
So there are still other, and more “other,” sheep.
For Copernicus isn't done with us yet:
we admit the sun doesn't revolve around the earth,
but we still think God does.
No, little one: we are in a small corner.
Yet even the far galaxies,
the trillion trillions of stars and their planets,
and yes, their doubtless forms of life,
are also under the calm eye of the Shepherd,
and follow the Shepherd's voice.
All of us, Baptist and Sufi, fish, bug and bird,
earthling and alien, village and nebula, all are one flock. One.
And, behold, even on the remotest planet
in the farthest flung galaxy—like ours—
or the most desolate spot in a life like yours,
under the loving gaze of the Shepherd who seeks out the one,
there is no one who is not at the center.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net April 16, 2024 

No Longer a Teenager

my daughter, who turns twenty tomorrow,
has become truly independent.
she doesn’t need her father to help her
deal with the bureaucracies of schools,
hmo’s, insurance, the dmv.
she is quite capable of handling
landlords, bosses, and auto repair shops.
also boyfriends and roommates.
and her mother.

frankly it’s been a big relief.
the teenage years were often stressful.
sometimes, though, i feel a little useless.

but when she drove down from northern California
to visit us for a couple of days,
she came through the door with the
biggest, warmest hug in the world for me.
and when we all went out for lunch,
she said, affecting a little girl’s voice,
“i’m going to sit next to my daddy,”
and she did, and slid over close to me
so i could put my arm around her shoulder
until the food arrived.

i’ve been keeping busy since she’s been gone,
mainly with my teaching and writing,
a little travel connected with both,
but i realized now how long it had been
since i had felt deep emotion.

when she left i said, simply,
“i love you,”
and she replied, quietly,
“i love you too.”
you know it isn’t always easy for
a twenty-year-old to say that;
it isn’t always easy for a father.

literature and opera are full of
characters who die for love:
i stay alive for her.

 

Gerald Locklin, The Life Force Poems (Water Row Books, 2002) 

Of History and Hope

We have memorized America,
how it was born and who we have been and where.
In ceremonies and silence we say the words
telling the stories, singing the old songs.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
except in the minds of those who call it Now?
The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
With waving hands -- oh, rarely in a row --
and flowering faces.
And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

Who were many people coming together
cannot become one people falling apart.
Who dreamed for every child an even chance
cannot let luck turn doorknobs or not.
Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become --
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
on a land we can never visit -- it isn't there yet --
but looking through their eyes we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
If we can truly remember, they will never forget.

Miller Williams, Some Jazz A While: Collected Poems (University of Illinois Press, 1999)

Shiloh

The Civil War battle of Shiloh was fought at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, April 6-7, 1862. It is considered the first large-scale battle of the war.

A Requiem

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
    The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
    The forest-field of Shiloh --
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched one stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
    Around the church of Shiloh --
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
        And natural prayer
    Of dying foemen mingled there --
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve --
    Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
    But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
    And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Herman Melville, in the public domain
   

How I Go into the Woods

Ordinarily I go to the woods alone,

with not a single friend,

for they are all smilers and talkers

and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds

or hugging the old black oak tree.

I have my ways of praying,

as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone

I can become invisible.

I can sit on the top of a dune

as motionless as an uprise of weeds,

until the foxes run by unconcerned.

I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me,

I must love you very much.

 

Mary Oliver

Re-imagine

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. 
        Revelation 21:1

The world has become 
a sad and sordid place 
full of absence, longing 
for what might have been. 
We are scattered, shattered, 
broken as bone china cups 
dropped on a tile floor. 
I shake accusatory fingers 
at the formless void,

from somewhere out 
beyond imagining 
hear a terrible Eloquence:

“What have you done 
with what I gave you? 
You made the pieces. 
Now pick them up, 
re-imagine them as 
fragments of possibility. 
Fit them together anew. 
Re-create my image 
in your damaged hearts.”

 

Bonnie Thurston, Christian Century, February 2024 issue

Vegan

My daughter hauls her sacks of beans
and vegetables in from the car and begins to chop.
My father, who has had enough caffeine,
makes himself a manhattan-on-the-rocks.

It's Sunday, his night for sausage and eggs,
hers for stir-fried lentils, rice, and kale.
Watching her cook eases his fatigue
and loneliness. Later, she'll trim his toenails.

He no longer has an appetite
for anything beyond this evening ritual.
But he'll fry himself an egg tonight
and eat dinner with his granddaughter. For a widower,

there is no greater comfort in the world
than his girls and his girls' girls.

 

Sue Ellen Thompson, The Golden House (Autumn House Press, 2006)

Easter Morning

On Easter morning all over America
the peasants are frying potatoes in bacon grease.

We're not supposed to have "peasants"
but there are tens of millions of them
frying potatoes on Easter morning,
cheap and delicious with catsup.

If Jesus were here this morning he might
be eating fried potatoes with my friend
who has a '51 Dodge and a '72 Pontiac.

When his kids ask why they don't have
a new car he says, "these cars were new once
and now they are experienced."

He can fix anything and when rich folks
call to get a toilet repaired he pauses
extra hours so that they can further
learn what we're made of.

I told him that in Mexico the poor say
that when there's lightning the rich
think that God is taking their picture.
He laughed.

Like peasants everywhere in the history
of the world ours can't figure out why
they're getting poorer. Their sons join
the army to get work being shot at.

Your ideals are invisible clouds
so try not to suffocate the poor,
the peasants, with your sympathies.
They know that you're staring at them.

 

Jim Harrison, Saving Daylight (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)

The Courtesy of the Blind

The poet reads his lines to the blind.

He hadn’t guessed that it would be so hard.

His voice trembles.

His hands shake.

 

He senses that every sentence

is put to the test of darkness.

He must muddle through alone,

without colors or lights.

 

A treacherous endeavor

for his poems’ stars,

dawns, rainbows, clouds, their neon lights, their moon,

for the fish so silvery thus far beneath the water

and the hawk so high and quiet in the sky.

 

He reads—since it’s too late to stop now—

about the boy in a yellow jacket on a green field,

red roofs that can be counted in the valley,

the restless numbers on soccer players’ shirts,

and the naked stranger standing in a half-shut door.

 

He’d like to skip—although it can’t be done—

all the saints on that cathedral ceiling,

the parting wave from a train,

the microscope lens, the ring casting a glow,

the movie screens, the mirrors, the photo albums.

 

But great is the courtesy of the blind,

great is their forbearance, their largesse.

They listen, smile, and applaud.

 

One of them even comes up

with a book turned wrongside out

asking for an unseen autograph.

 

Wislawa Szymborska, Monologue of a Dog: New Poems (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006)

School Prayer

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

 

Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer (Vintage Books)

Your Phone

Never empty-handed—you always hold your phone.
What will warm you when you’re feeling cold? Your phone.

A placid face of glass that glows, with precious guts
of copper, silver, lithium, and gold—your phone.

It’s always there to show the way, but when you’re stuck
in traffic do you scowl and curse and scold your phone?

How many of your words each day are typed with thumbs?
What midnight secrets have you only told your phone?

How often do you tap and blindly give consent?
How many corporations have bought and sold your phone?

A new one every other year—refresh, reset—
it keeps you safe from ever feeling old—your phone.

That ever-present, reassuring light—is the first
and final thing each day that you behold your phone?

Sure, Steven, you’re the user—but are you in control?
When was the last time that you controlled your phone?

 

Steven Searcy, autumnskypoetrydaily.com March 22,2024

The Cremation of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
……….By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
……….That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
……….But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
……….I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold, till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ’tain’t being dead — it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you, to cremate those last remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows — Oh God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”; … then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear, you’ll let in the cold and storm —
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
……….By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
……….That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
……….But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
……….I cremated Sam McGee.

 

Robert Service, public domain

Briefcases

Fifteen years ago I found my father's
    in the family attic, so used
       the shoemaker had to
repair it, and I kept it like love

until it couldn't be kept anymore.
    Then my father-in-law died
       and I got his, almost
identical, just the wrong initials

embossed in gold. It's forty years old,
    falling apart, soon
       there'll be nothing
that smells of father-love and that difficulty

of living with fathers, but I'd prefer
    a paper bag to those
       new briefcases
made for men living fast-forward

or those attaché cases that match
    your raincoat and spring open
       like a salute
and a click of heels. I'm going

to put an ad in the paper, "Wanted:
    Old briefcase, accordion style,"
       and I won't care
whose father it belonged to

if it's brown and the divider keeps
    things on their proper side.
       Like an adoption
it's sure to feel natural before long—

a son without a father, but with this
    one briefcase carrying
       a replica
comfortably into the future,

something for an empty hand, sentimental
    the way keeping is
       sentimental, for keep-
sake, with clarity and without tears.

 

Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems:1974-1994 (Norton, 1994)

Wife

I’m not yet comfortable with the word,

its short clean woosh that sounds like

life. At dinner last night my single girls

said in admonition, It’s not wife-approved

about a friend’s upcoming trip. Their

eyes rolled up and over and out their

pretty young heads. Wife, why does it

sound like a job? I want a wife, the famous

feminist wrote, a wife who will keep my

clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced

when need be. A word that could be made

easily into maid. A wife that does, fixes,

soothes, honors, obeys. Housewife,

fishwife, bad wife, good wife, what’s

the word for someone who stares long

into the morning, unable to even fix tea

some days, the kettle steaming over

loud like a train whistle, she who cries

in the mornings, she who tears a hole

in the earth and cannot stop grieving,

the one who wants to love you, but often

isn’t good at even that, the one who

doesn’t want to be diminished

by how much she wants to be yours.

 

Ada Limon, The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018)

To Stammering

 

Where did you come from, lamentable quality?

Before I had a life you were about to ruin my life.

The mystery of this stays with me.

“Don’t brood about things,” my elders said.

I hadn’t any other experience of enemies from inside.

They were all from outside—big boys

Who cursed me and hit me; motorists; falling trees.

All these you were as bad as, yet inside. When I spoke, you were there.

I could avoid you by singing or acting.

I acted in school plays but was no good at singing.

Immediately after the play you were there again.

You ruined the cast party.

You were not a sign of confidence.

You were not a sign of manliness.

You were stronger than good luck and bad; you survived them both.

You were slowly edged out of my throat by psychoanalysis

You who had been brought in, it seems, like a hired thug

To beat up both sides and distract them

From the main issue: oedipal love. You were horrible!

Tell them, now that you’re back in your thug country,

That you don’t have to be so rough next time you’re called in

But can be milder and have the same effect—unhappiness and pain.

Kenneth Koch, New Addresses (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)

Prayer in My Boot

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep

 

Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle (Greenwillow Books, 2006) 

Slow Children at Play

All the quick children have gone inside, called

by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands

honey-dinner’s-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-

and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off

paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths,

ohs, that glow and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering,

pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them

twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children,

thinking, Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?

 

Cecilia Woloch, Late (BOA Editions, 2004)

Turtle in the Road

It was the spring before we moved again, a list of what
we must do on the refrigerator, when my daughter
and I found a turtle in the road. He was not gentle
or shy, not properly afraid of the cars that swerved

around his mistake. I thought I might encourage him
towards safety with a stick but each time I touched
his tail he turned fiercely to show me what he thought
of my prodding. He had a raisin head, the legs of

a fat dwarf, the tail of a dinosaur. His shell was a deep
green secret he had kept his whole life. I could not tell
how old he was but his claws suggested years of
reaching. I was afraid to pick him up, afraid of the way

he snapped his jaws, but I wanted to help him return
to the woods which watched him with an ancient
detachment. I felt I understood him because I didn't
want to move either; I was tired of going from one place

to another: the introductions, the goodbyes. I was sick
of getting ready, of unpacking, of mail sent to places
where I used to live. At last I put my stick away
and left him to decide which direction was best.

If I forced him off the road he might return later.
My daughter and I stood awhile, considering him.
He was a traveler from the time of reptiles, a creature
who wore his house like a jacket. I don't know

if he survived his afternoon in the road; I am still
thinking of the way his eyes watched me go.
I can't forget his terrible legs, so determined
to take him somewhere, his tail which pointed
behind him at the dark spaces between the trees.

 

Faith Shearin, Moving the Piano (Stephen F. Austin State University, 2011)

Old Woodpecker

In the end, his tiny eyes won't focus.
Punchy, his snap gone, he spends his
Time banging on gutters and drain pipes.
He begins to slurr and churrrr,
His breath descending in a rattle,
He tells endless stories of old trees
Taken, but he has absorbed one too many
Hardwoods to his noggin, his brain
Is pudding. For the rest of his time
He will undulate around, patronized,
Spunky but sweet, remembering only
Nests of teeming carpenter ants,
Consenting grubs under flaps of bark,
The days when he was a contender
Amongst the great woods of his life.

 

Paul Zimmer, writersalmanac.publicradio.com April 20, 2001

Beaver Moon -- The Suicide of a Friend

When somewhere life
breaks like a pane of glass,
and from every direction casual
voices are bringing you the news,
you say: I should have known.
You say: I should have been aware. That last Friday he looked
so ill, like an old mountain-climber
lost on the white trails, listening
to the ice breaking upward, under
his worn-out shoes. You say: I heard rumors of trouble, but after all
we all have that. You say:
What could I have done? and you go
with the rest, to bury him. That night, you turn in your bed
to watch the moon rise, and once more
see what a small coin it is
against the darkness, and how everything else
is a mystery, and you know
nothing at all except
the moonlight is beautiful-
white rivers running together
along the bare boughs of the trees- and somewhere, for someone, life
is becoming moment-by-moment
unbearable.

 

Mary Oliver. Twelve Moons (Little, Brown and Company, 1972) 

Middle Age

The child you think you don't want
is the one who will make you laugh.
She will break your heart
when she loses the sight in one eye
and tells the doctor she wants to be
an apple tree when she grows up.

It will be this child who forgives you
again and again
for believing you don't want her to be born,
for resisting the rising tide of your body,
for wishing for the red flow of her dismissal.
She will even forgive you for all the breakfasts
you failed to make exceptional.

Someday this child will sit beside you.
When you are old and too tired of war
to want to watch the evening news,
she will tell you stories
like the one about her teenage brother,
your son, and his friends
taking her out in a canoe when she was
five years old. How they left her alone
on an island in the river
while they jumped off the railroad bridge.

 

Pat Schneider, Another River: New and Selected Poems (Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2015)

A Portrait of a Reader with A Bowl of Cereal

Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things—
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries—
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the window at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a cloud passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper,
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour—

then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you will look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.

 

Billy Collins, Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburg Press)

A New Lifestyle

People in this town drink too much
coffee. They're jumpy all the time. You
see them drinking out of their big plastic
mugs while they're driving. They cut in
front of you, they steal your parking places.
Teenagers in the cemeteries knocking over
tombstones are slurping café au lait.
Recycling men hanging onto their trucks are
sipping espresso. Dogcatchers running down
the street with their nets are savoring
their cups of mocha java. The holdup man
entering a convenience store first pours
himself a nice warm cup of coffee. Down
the funeral parlor driveway a boy on a
skateboard is spilling his. They're so
serious about their coffee, it's all they
can think about, nothing else matters.
Everyone's wide awake but looks incredibly
tired.

 

James Tate, Memoir of the Hawk (The Ecco Press)

A Church in Italy

Last summer, in church in Italy,

           I prayed for all of you, asked not for forgiveness

                      And strength, but that all the sadness of our days,


All the grief of our lives,

           All the loneliness given us be taken,

                      Without judgment — asked for life and light.


That was the first time in twenty-three years something

           Like that happened to me. Not knowing the modern prayers,

                      I fell back on the old way of ending prayer, recited:


Glory be to the Father and to the Son

           And to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning,

                      Is now, and ever shall be, world without end


Then dropped some lire coins in the metal offering box,

           Walked through the heavily curtained doorway into the

                      Mediterranean heat, into the hard traffic of the village,

                                 Into the harsh light of the afternoon

                                            Into this world without end.

 

Tom Tammaro, When the Italians Came to My Home Town (Spoon River Press) 

In the Beginning

I think this place was often a village,
and smoke from the fires hung like
ropes in the air. I think we are standing
on bones and feathers, broken shells.

This place was star-crossed, moon
beamed, earth-quaked. The wind
blew on a silver horn, and light
went around in a golden bowl.

This place was once a river,
and before that it was a garden
filled with every kind of fruit tree,
everything that is good to eat.

I think something happened here;
I think this is the place where
deals were made, and angels held
their breaths in the sky above.

 

Joyce Sutphen, Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow Press)

In View of the Fact

The people of my time are passing away: my

wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

 

died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's

Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

 

it was once weddings that came so thick and

fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

 

now, it's this that and the other and somebody

else gone or on the brink: well, we never

 

thought we would live forever (although we did)

and now it looks like we won't: some of us

 

are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know

what they went downstairs for, some know that

 

a hired watchful person is around, some like

to touch the cane tip into something steady,

 

so nice: we have already lost so many,

brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

 

address books for so long a slow scramble now

are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

 

index cards for Christmases, birthdays,

Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

 

at the same time we are getting used to so

many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

 

to the ones left: we are not giving up on the

congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on

 

the nice old men left in empty houses or on

the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

 

think the sun may shine someday when we'll

drink wine together and think of what used to

 

be: until we die we will remember every

single thing, recall every word, love every

 

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to

others to love, love that can grow brighter

 

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength

and getting more precious all the way. . . .

 

A.R. Ammons, Bosh and Flapdoodle (W. W. Norton & Co., 2005)

The Investigation

There were some things I would never know —

I realized that, but I wanted to understand
as much as I could before I let it go.

I couldn't stop making phone calls to Chicago —
to his doctor, his insurance agent, his doorman;
the coroner, who told me more than I wanted to know;

to his psychiatrist, who made a show
of sympathy and dismissed out of hand
my speculations — but I wouldn't let them go.

The detective sounded weary, which was no
surprise: it was 2 a.m. He patiently explained
what he could, then sighed, "You'll never really know."

I weighed the possibilities, made lists, wrote memos
to myself: was it spontaneous or planned —
and for how long? I couldn't let it go.

I kept calling my brother and sister to let them know
what I had figured out. Each time they listened
but then told me what I had always known:
we would never understand. I had to let it go.

 

Jeffery Harrison, Incomplete Knowledge: Poems (Four Way Books)

Hitchhiker

After a moment, the driver, a salesman
for Travelers Insurance heading for
Topeka, said, "What was that?"
I, in my Navy Uniform, still useful
for hitchhiking though the war was over,
said, "I think you hit somebody."
I knew he had. The round face, opening
in surprise as the man bounced off the fender,
had given me a look as he swept past.
"Why didn't you say something?" The salesman
stepped hard on the brakes. "I thought you saw,"
I said. I didn't know why. It came to me
I could have sat next to this man all the way
to Topeka without saying a word about it.
He opened the door and looked back.
I did the same. At the roadside,
in the glow of a streetlight, was a body.
A man was bending over it. For an instant
it was myself, in a time to come,
bending over the body of my father.
The man stood and shouted at us, "Forget it!
He gets hit all the time!" Oh.
A bum. We were happy to forget it.
The rest of the way, into dawn in Kansas,
when the salesman dropped me off, we did not speak,
except, as I got out, I said, "Thanks,"
and he said, "Don't mention it."

 

Galway Kinnell, Imperfect Thirst (Houghton Mifflin)

Chicken Killing

I was 5 and the chickens were my friends

I would pull an ear of corn from the crib
hack it against a brick and cry    here biddy biddy biddy

and they'd come running to peck between my bare
toes with beaks hard and smooth as sanded oak

when the crabapples rotted and fell off the tree into the yard
they would gobble them up and get drunk

then dance the crabapple dance  cluck
and strut, bump into each other, fly into the side

of the henhouse and stagger around laughing at chicken jokes

I laughed at their jokes    I partied
hard with those hens

one afternoon when we got back from
Hebron Baptist Church where you got to fan yourself
with funeral parlor fans

Uncle Wid went to the chicken yard with an ear
of corn    here biddy biddy biddy    he cried

and when the chickens ran up to peck
he grabbed two by the neck and swung them
over his head like sacks    wap    wap    and their heads
were off in his hands and their bodies were still

flying around the yard because no one had
told them they were dead
yet

 

Mary Mackey, Breaking the Fever: Poems (Marsh Hawk Press)

Nancy Drew

Merely pretty, she made up for it with vim.
And she got to say things like, "But, gosh,
what if these plans should fall into the wrong
hands?" and it was pretty clear she didn't mean
plans for a party or a trip to the museum, but
something involving espionage and a Nazi or two.

In fact, the handsome exchange student turns
out to be a Fascist sympathizer. When he snatches
Nancy along with some blueprints, she knows he
has something more sinister in mind than kissing
her with his mouth open.

Locked in the pantry of an abandoned farm house,
Nancy makes a radio out of a shoelace and a muffin.
Pretty soon the police show up, and everything's
hunky dory.

Nancy accepts their thanks, but she's subdued.
It's not like her to fall for a cad. Even as she plans
a short vacation to sort out her emotions she knows
there will be a suspicious waiter, a woman in a green
off the shoulder dress, and her very jittery husband.

Very well. But no more handsome boys like the last one:
the part in his hair that was sheer propulsion, that way
he had of lifting his eyes to hers over the custard,
those feelings that made her not want to be brave
confident and daring, polite, sensitive and caring.

 

Ron Koertge, Fever (Red Hen Press)

dharma

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.

If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

 

Billy Collins, peacefullpresence.blogspot.com December 16, 2023

Things You Didn't Put on Your Resume

How often you got up in the middle of the night
when one of your children had a bad dream,

and sometimes you woke because you thought
you heard a cry but they were all sleeping,

so you stood in the moonlight just listening
to their breathing, and you didn't mention

that you were an expert at putting toothpaste
on tiny toothbrushes and bending down to wiggle

the toothbrush ten times on each tooth while
you sang the words to songs from Annie, and

who would suspect that you know the fingerings
to the songs in the first four books of the Suzuki

Violin Method and that you can do the voices
of Pooh and Piglet especially well, though

your absolute favorite thing to read out loud is
Bedtime for Frances and that you picked

up your way of reading it from Glynnis Johns,
and it is, now that you think of it, rather impressive

that you read all of Narnia and all of the Ring Trilogy
(and others too many to mention here) to them

before they went to bed and on way out to
Yellowstone, which is another thing you don't put

on the resumé: how you took them to the ocean
and the mountains and brought them safely home.

 

Joyce Sutphen, writersalmanac.publicradio.org December 5, 2006

His Elderly Father as a Young Man

This happened before I met your mother:
I took Jennie Johanson to a summer dance,
and she sent me a letter, a love letter,
I guess, even if the word love wasn't in it.
She wrote that she had a good time
and didn't want the night to end.
At home, she lay down on her bed
but stayed awake, listening to the songs
of morning birds outside her window.
I read that letter a hundred times
and kept it in a cigar box
with useless things I had saved:
a pocket knife with an imitation pearl handle
and a broken blade,
a harmonica I never learned to play,
one cuff link, an empty rifle shell.

When your mother and I got married,
I threw the letter away -
if I had kept it, she might wonder.
But I wanted to keep it
and even thought about hiding places,
maybe in the barn or the tool shed,
but what if it were ever found?
I knew of no way to explain why
I would keep such a letter, much less
why I would take the trouble to hide it.

 

Leo Dangel, Home From the Field (Spoon River Poetry Press, 1997) 

For All of Our Thirty Years, My Husband Has Saved Birds

And once, on vacation, a little brown bat
trapped in a wood stove. So, things that fly:
a goldfinch that landed on our deck and

fluttered into the house, both our cats mad
with pursuit. Ken body-blocked the cats, dove
at the floor, grabbed the bird. I remember

its oil-dark eyes, its yellow and black head
turning to gaze at us from his gentle fist, then
its flight into the woods. A baby duck, lost

but too far gone to survive. Another duck,
full grown, attacked by a hawk: Ken ran
howling toward the struggle, his degree in

voice scaring the red-tail aloft: opera with
a joyous ending. He settled the duck back
in the creek and it paddled off. A pileated

woodpecker, tumbled down our unused
second chimney: Ken’s invention of ropes
pulled taut through an old stovepipe hole,

how the bird grasped that with claws and
beak, and flew, panicked, into my office--
at windows, at walls, seagull-lamenting,

until Ken got hands around it, too, as it
cursed him and tore his fingers. His calm
walk outside with the bird, how he filled

the hollow places on our patio with a hose
so it could drink. It did—and took off. Last of
all me, in no real peril except for my doubt

that any salvation lasts for long. Maybe,
back at our beginning, I was still a bit wild.
Maybe he liked knowing I could just fly away.

 

Christine Potter, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily January 24, 2024

Beginners

 Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Elliot Gralla

But we have only begun 

To love the earth. 

We have only begun

To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?

-- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?

-- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,

only begun to envision

how it might be 

to live as siblings with beast and flower, 

not as oppressors.

Surely our river

cannot already be hastening

into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot 

drag, in the silt,

all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet--

there is too much broken

that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other

that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know

the power that is in us if we would join

our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding

that must complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

Denise Levertov, Candles in Babylon (New Directions Publishing Corp, 1982) 

The Psychiatrist Says She Is Severely Demented

But she's my mother. She lies in her bed,
Hi Sweetie, she says.
Hi Mom. Do you know my name?
I can't wait for her answer, I'm Bobbi.
Oh, so you found me again, she says.
Her face and hair have the same gray sheen
Like a black and white drawing smudged on the edges.
The bedspread is hot pink, lime green. Her eyes,
Such a distant blue, indifferent as the sky. I put my hand
On her forehead. It is soft, and she resembles my real mother
Who I have not spoken to in so many years.
I want to talk to her as her eyes close.
She is mumbling something, laughing to herself,
All the sadness she ever had has fled.
And when she opens her eyes again, she stares through me
And her eyes well up with tears.
And I stand there lost in her incoherence,
Which feels almost exactly like love.

 

Bobbi Lune, Letters from the Lawn: Poems by Bobbi Lune (CustomWords) 

Night Talks

When one would wake in the night, the other
followed. Then, in their bed, next to their window
that was always open, my mother and father
would talk to the sound of cars going by,
the hum of streetlights, the occasional bark
of a neighbor’s dog. They spoke of high school
dances, family vacations, raising children,
being grandparents. And their faces, soft with age and sleep, were hidden in the dark,
so they could speak at last of their lost son,
without any need to shield each other from
that pain. It must have been a relief to unpack
the shared sadness they courageously carried,
to put it down, if only for an hour. It was like
I could hear them from my own bed
across town, as I slipped into a deeper sleep,
reassured and comforted by their beloved
familiar voices echoing among the stars.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson, Night Talks: New and Selected Poems (Press 53, 2023)

Trust

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

 

Thomas R. Smith, Waking before Dawn (Red Dragonfly Press)

Father

May 19, 1999

Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient, fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day — the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that at the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

 

Ted Kooser, Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004)

The Halls

 Five more books in a box to be carried out to the car;

your office door closes behind you and at that moment

you turn invisible—not even a ghost in that hall

from the hall’s point of view.

If the halls don’t know you, the halls and the rooms

of the buildings where you worked for seven years—

if the halls don’t know you,

                                                       and they don’t—

some new woman or two new men come clattering

down these halls in the month after your departure, indeed

just two days after you left forever

they come clattering with ideas about

the relation between mind and body or will and fate

filled with hormones of being the chosen workers here

and they feel as if the halls and rooms begin to recognize them,

accept them, as if there is a belonging in the world—

 

but these new workers are wrong, the halls don’t know

who is working under the unobtrusive fluorescent panels:

 

this is appalling and for a minute you are appalled

though your being so now is not an event

in the life of your new rented house or even

your new condominium . . .

So if they don’t, if they don’t know you,

the halls, the walls, the fixtures,

then what? Then there is for you

no home in that rock, no home in the mere rock of

where you work, where you briskly walk, not even

in the bed where your body sleeps alone or not—

 

so if there is to be a place for you, for you

it must not be located in plaster and tile and space,

it will have to be in that other house,

the one whose door you felt opening just last night

when you dialed from memory and your friend picked up the phone.

 

Mark Halliday, Selfwolf (University of Chicago, 1999)