Staying Put

How lucky we are to have found each other
on this huge planet. 

It’s not like we were supposed
to meet at a statue or there had been

any swiping left or right. No, we just danced
at a party, didn't even like each other that much,

so different we are. And yet.
Thirty-eight years later we still love 

a car wash. I still make the banana bread
we had each morning on our honeymoon in Maui, 

still have the index card with the recipe.
Is there a recipe for longevity? 

This morning in the gray light of early morning,
you whispered, "Don't ever leave me."

 

Sarah Dickerson Snyder, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal February 15, 2024 

'final note to clark (kent)' and 'note passed to superman'

final note to clark

they had it wrong,
the old comics.
you are only clark kent
after all. oh,
mild mannered mister,
why did i think you could fix it?
how you must have wondered
to see me taking chances,
dancing on the edge of words,
pointing out the bad guys,
dreaming your x-ray vision
could see the beauty in me.
what did i expect? what
did i hope for? we are who we are,
two faithful readers,
not wonder woman and not superman.

 

note passed to superman

sweet jesus superman,

if i had seen you

dressed in your blue suit

i would have known you.

maybe that choir boyclark

can stand around

listening to stories

but not you, not with

metropolis to save

and every crook in town

filthy with kryptonite.

lord, man of steel

i understand the cape,

the leggings, the whole

ball of wax.

you can trust me,

there is no planet stranger

than the one i'm from.

Lucille Clifton, POEMS (buffalo.edu) accessed on June 13, 2024

Still Singing

There comes a day when a woman knows
she’s more Mother Superior than Maria—
and though she spent decades dreaming
of spinning on stage singing The hills are alive,
she now knows she’s more likely
to be cast standing in a habit, clutching a rosary,
singing Climb every mountain.
How many dreams pass us
before we realize they’ve gone?
Already I know I will never climb Everest,
will not be an Olympic Nordic skier,
will not research the cure for AIDS.
Every day I am less the woman I dreamt I would be
and more the woman I am—
which is, apparently, a woman who sits in the balcony
to see “The Sound of Music” and drives home happy,
still singing about how her heart
wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise
from the lake to the trees.
A woman who is learning how,
now that her dreams have faded,
she can be more present than ever.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com October 24, 2022

Tornado

When we first see the blue line
along the horizon, we think it’s smoke
rising from a fire or maybe it’s blue rain
falling from the dark clouds.

We know, from the heat and humidity
of the day,  that it could be a wisp of mad air,
a column of air rising, tearing bits of cloud
as it spins. We know that it might grow long
and twisted like rope that drops to the ground
then whips back and forth as if by some unseen hand.

“Tornado,” Dad says, and we watch it disappear
back into the clouds as the storm moves forward
across the flat land.

We scan the horizon, see the tornado
drop, rise, then drop back to the ground,
closer now, the swirling wind picking up dust
and dark soil scoured from the newly planted fields.

Dad stands in the middle of the yard reading the clouds,
testing the wind, and the forward movement of the storm.
With no place to hide, we pile into the Ford
thinking we’ll be safe, if we drive south of its path.

In the middle of the tree-lined drive,
the explosion of an electric pole stops us,
splinters and sparks rain down on our car
that rocks softly back and forth in the wind.

The oak trees bend forward in deep respect,
allowing us to see the flashes of lightning
reflected off the sides of the silver grain silo
just before it’s sent flying over the fields like a kite.
We see the cattle circling the pens, open-mouthed,
bellowing; but we hear nothing but the roar.

 

Lenora Castillo, Tide-water Baptism (Iowa State University, 1998)

My Number

 Is Death miles away from this house,

reaching for a widow in Cincinnati

or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker

in British Columbia?

 

Is he too busy making arrangements,

tampering with air brakes,

scattering cancer cells like seeds,

loosening the wooden beams of roller coasters

 

to bother with my hidden cottage

that visitors find so hard to find?

 

Or is he stepping from a black car

parked at the dark end of the lane,

shaking open the familiar cloak,

its hood raised like the head of a crow,

and removing the scythe from the trunk?

 

Did you have any trouble with the directions?

I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this.

 

Billy Collins, The Apple That Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 2006)

Sleeping Next to the Man on the Plane

I'm not well. Neither is he.
Periodically he pulls out a handkerchief
and blows his nose. I worry
about germs, but appreciate how he shares
the armrest—especially
considering his size—too large
to lay the tray over his lap.
His seatbelt barely buckles. At least
he doesn't have to ask for an extender
for which I imagine him grateful. Our upper arms
press against each other, like apricots growing
from the same node. My arm is warm
where his touches it. I close my eyes.
In the chilly, oxygen-poor air, I am glad
to be close to his breathing mass.
We want our own species. We want
to lie down next to our own kind.
Even here in this metal encumbrance, hurtling
improbably 30,000 feet above the earth,
with all this civilization—down
to the chicken-or-lasagna in their
environmentally-incorrect packets,
even as the woman behind me is swiping
her credit card on the phone embedded
in my headrest and the folks in first
are watching their individual movies
on personal screens, I lean
into this stranger, seeking primitive comfort—
heat, touch, breath—as we slip
into the ancient vulnerability of sleep.

 

Ellen Bass, Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002) 

The first agreement

Fear begets violence.
Blame becomes assault.

Projecting our fear of harm,
we harm others.
To keep our place in the world
we try to remove others.
But it never works:
attempting to destroy each other
we only damage the world.

To “form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, and insure domestic Tranquility,”
our first agreement has to be
to live together.
To accept the other, regardless of how vile.
To live, even side by side,
with those we fear and blame and revile.

For they are here;
the only way to be without them
is to be without life.

Our first agreement and our highest goal
is not how we shall win,
but how we shall live together.
For either we live together
or we do not live.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net July 15, 2024

Do You Want to Be Made Well?

        One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
         When Jesus saw him lying there
         and knew that he had been there a long time,
         he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”
                  —John 5.5-6

Sometimes not.
We want to hang onto our hurt.
We’re accustomed to adapting; sanity seems odd.
Sobriety scares us. Wholeness intimidates us.
It’s uncertain beyond the prison gates.
There’s shelter in anger, in victimhood, in helplessness.
And how can we live without the pity?
What would life be like without the drama?

Do you want to be forgiven?
Sometimes not. There’s stability in despair.
You can get so far behind you don’t have to run.
You can get comfy in the doghouse.

And there is this: someone will tell you
it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.
Easier to stay paralyzed than to bring down the temple.

Sometimes the greatest courage is needed
not to fight monsters, but to live an ordinary life.

Do you want to be made well?
It will be work. It will bring on the unknown.
You will stand on new legs. It will hurt.

Take up your mat and walk.
He will find you.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net April 27, 2016

You Asked for It

There was a show on TV called
You Asked for It. Viewers would write in
and ask to see unusual things, such as
the world’s greatest slingshot expert.
I watched it every week
on our humble Motorola, although
the only episode I can remember now
is the one about the slingshot expert.

He was a grown man, as I recall,
and he lived in an ordinary place like New Jersey.
At a distance of ten or twenty paces
he could pulverize one marble with another.
He could hit a silver dollar
tossed into the air. He was the kind
of father I wanted to have,
an expert shot, never missing.

And I think of him now, perhaps long dead,
or frail and gray, his gift forgotten.
Just another old guy on a park bench
in Fort Lauderdale, fretting about Medicare,
grateful for the sun on his back, his slingshot
useless in this new world.

 

George Bilgere, “The Writer’s Almanac” May 13, 2015

Secret

Sometimes

when the morning sun streams

through the kitchen window

and I'm washing the dishes

or opening a can of cat food

or sweeping potato peels and onion skins

off the linoleum floor,

I get so taken with the way

my arms move back and forth with the broom

or how pretty my fingers look

all dressed up in soap bubbles

that I just have to jump up

and dance around the house

laughing out loud.

 

Other times

when I'm sitting in my favorite rocking chair

and the clock on my wall ticking

and the evening sky a particular shade of blue

halfway between periwinkle and midnight,

I feel so content with the way

my feet push off gently against the wooden floor

and how my belly moves up and down

with each breath I take

that I just have to sigh

with the sheer delight of knowing

that everything I want is

everything I have.

 

Leslea Newman, journaltherapy.com accessed on July 10, 2024

Mourners

 

After the funeral, the mourners gather
under the rustling churchyard maples
and talk softly, like clusters of leaves.
White shirt cuffs and collars flash in the shade:
highlights on deep green water.
They came this afternoon to say goodbye,
but now they keep saying hello and hello,
peering into each other’s faces,
slow to let go of each other’s hands.

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

With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath

In payment for those mornings at the mirror

while,                    

                              at her

                     expense, I'd started my late learning in

Applied

French Braids, for all

                              the mornings afterward of Hush

                    and Just stand still,

to make some small amends for every reg-

                              iment-

                    ed bathtime and short-shrifted goodnight

kiss,

I did as I was told, for once,

                             gave up

                    my map, let Emma lead us through the

woods

"by instinct," as the drunkard knew

                              the natural

                    prince. We had no towels. We had

 

 no "bathing costumes,"  as the children's' novels

                             call them here, and I 

                     am summer's dullest hand at un- 

premeditated moves. But when

                              the coppice of sheltering boxwood

                      disclosed its path and posted

rules, our unwonted bows to seemliness seemed

                              poor excuse.

                       The ladies in their lumpy variety lay

on their public half-acre of lawn,

                              the water

                        lay in dappled shade, while Emma

in her underwear and I 

                              in an ill-

                        fitting borrowed suit availed us of

 

the breast stroke and a modified

                              crawl.

                        She's eight now. She will rather

die than do this in a year or two

                              and lobbies, 

                         even as we swim, to be allowed to cut

her hair. I do, dear girl, I will,

                              give up

                         this honey-colored metric of augmented

thirds, but not (shall we climb 

                              on the raft

                         for a while?) not yet.

Linda Gregerson, Prodigal: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2014 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015)   

Crazy Quilt

The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia
is cracked. California is splitting
off. There is no East or West, no rhyme,
no reason to it. We are scattered.
Dear Lord, lest we all be somewhere
else, patch this work. Quilt us
together, feather-stitching piece
by piece our tag-ends of living,
our individual scraps of love.

 

Jane Wilson Joyce, Quilt Pieces (Gnomon Press, 2009)

Come, Let Us Dream

Come, let us dream God’s dream again.
Come, one and all, let us ascend
the mountain top where those of old
saw God’s new day on earth unfold.

The lame shall walk, the blind shall see,
the doors swing wide, all prisoners free,
the lowly raised, the proud brought low:
This is God’s dream: let justice flow.

When hatred ends and war shall cease,
so all may dwell in deepest peace,
then be assured the time is near
when perfect love casts out all fear.

But know the cost of claiming sight
of God’s new day, of wrongs made right,
for some have paid the highest price,
their lives for us, a sacrifice.

Prophets are scorned in their own lands
and martyrs slain by righteous hands;
Though dreamers die the dream will live
for we have yet our lives to give.

 

John Middleton, Worship and Song (Abingdon Press, 2011) 

Used

The conspiracy's to make us thin. Size threes
are all the rage, and skirts ballooning above twinkling knees
are every man-child's preadolescent dream.
Tabla rasa. No slate's that clean--

we've earned the navels sunk in grief
when the last child emptied us of their brief
interior light. Our muscles say We have been used.

Have you ever tried silk sheets? I did,
persuaded by postnatal dread
and a Macy's clerk to bargain for more zip.
We couldn't hang on, slipped
to the floor and by morning the quilts
had slid off, too. Enough of guilt--
It's hard work staying cool.

 

Rita Dove, The Circle Brothers Association math.buffalo.edu/~sww/circle.html accessed on June 24, 2024

Shaking Hands

Because what’s the alternative?
Because of courage.
Because of loved ones lost.
Because no more.
Because it’s a small thing; shaking hands; it happens every day.
Because I heard of one man whose hands haven’t stopped shaking since a market day in Omagh.
Because it takes a second to say hate, but it takes longer, much longer, to be a great leader.
Much, much longer.

Because shared space without human touching doesn’t amount to much.
Because it’s easier to speak to your own than to hold the hand of someone whose side has been previously described, proscribed, denied.
Because it is tough.
Because it is tough.
Because it is meant to be tough, and this is the stuff of memory, the stuff of hope, the stuff of gesture, and meaning and leading.
Because it has taken so, so long.
Because it has taken land and money and languages and barrels and barrels of blood.

Because lives have been lost.
Because lives have been taken.

Because to be bereaved is to be troubled by grief.
Because more than two troubled peoples live here.
Because I know a woman whose hand hasn’t been shaken since she was a man.
Because shaking a hand is only a part of the start.
Because I know a woman whose touch calmed a man whose heart was breaking.
Because privilege is not to be taken lightly.

Because this just might be good.
Because who said that this would be easy?
Because some people love what you stand for, and for some, if you can, they can.
Because solidarity means a common hand.
Because a hand is only a hand; so hang onto it.

So join your much discussed hands.
We need this; for one small second.
So touch.
So lead.

 

Padraig O Tuama, journeywithjesus.net June 30, 2024