Old Love

When my aunt died,
my uncle raised his hands
like a prophet in the Bible.
"I've lost my girl," he said
"I've lost my girl," over and over,
shaking his head.

I didn't know what to say,
where to look,
my quiet uncle raising his voice
to silence.

My aunt was eighty-seven.
"Listen," my uncle said, sighing
like a tree alone at night,
"women know.
Every midnight on New Year's Eve,
when others sang
and laughed and hugged,
your aunt looked at me,
tears in her eyes.
Sixty years.
She knew.
One day we'd kiss good-bye."


Pat Mora, Dizzy in Your Eyes (Alfred A. Knopf 2010)

The Tao of the Trial

From the trial transcript:

Miss Crandell's Boarding School

for Young Ladies of Color

Canterbury CT, 1833-34

Miss Crandall, you stand accused of knowingly

teaching colored persons not resident of the state,

without prior consent. What is your plea?

The Teacher does not instruct. The teacher waits.

Girl, has anyone been teaching anything to you and your friends?

Who taught you how to plead the Fifth Amendment?

Your honor, I submit as evidence

of alleged teaching of alleged students

this colored girl here, who openly reads books

and gazes skyward, who has been overheard

conversing animatedly in polysyllabic words

and referring off-handedly to the Ancient Greeks.

The Teacher teaches, without words and without action,

simplicity, patience, and compassion.

Marilyn Nelson, Poetry, September 2005

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.


Theodore Roethke, Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Doubleday 1942)

from Shape of Time

You aren't better than anyone.

You aren't worse than anyone.

You have been given the world.

See what there is to see.

Protect what is around you,

hold who is there beside you.

All creatures in their own way 

are funny --

and fragile.

The question isn't 

how to be in style

but

how to live in truth

in the face of all the winds?

With mindfulness, courage,

patience, sympathy  --

how to remain brave

when the spirit fails?

Idleness is often empowering,

recreating oneself --

just as the moon gradually

grows full again,

a battery surely and

steadily recharges,

so everything, everyone

must have time for the self  --

for mirth and laziness

time to be human.

Doris Kareva, trans. by Tiina Aleman, Shape of Time, (Arc Publications 2010)

Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad

I think you are most yourself when you're swimming;
slicing the water with each stroke,
the funny way you breathe, your mouth cocked
as though you're yawning.

You're neither fantastic nor miserable
at getting from here to there.
You wouldn't win any medals, Dad,
but you wouldn't drown.

I think how different everything might have been
had I judged your loving
like I judge your sidestroke, your butterfly,
your Australian crawl.

But I always thought I was drowning
in that icy ocean between us,
I always thought you were moving too slowly to save me,
when you were moving as fast as you can.


Jan Heller Levi, I Gazed at You in Wonder: Poems copyright 1999 by Jan Heller Levi

The Grasp of Your Hand

      Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
      Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.
      Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
      Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling
Your mercy in my success alone; but let me find
the grasp of Your hand in my failure.


Rabindranath Tagore, The Heart of God: Prayers of Rabindranath Tagore, by Herbert E. Vetter (Tuttle Publishing 1997)

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through the chinks, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.


Jane Kenyon, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (Gray WolfPress 1996)