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)