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)