Goldfinches

 

Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument
at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe, or
perhaps just to dip their heads and look at themselves,
and they were having trouble with who should be
first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood in
the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the old
holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or are
these birds really just that, bells come to us--come to
this road in America--let us bow our heads and
remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer.
Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a
good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings opening
from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny feet,
all washed, clasping the air.

Mary Oliver, tidingsofmagpies.blogspot.com, August 23, 2008

Girdle

 

In our teens we all bought girdles
with rubber knobs to hold up our stockings.
We wiggled into them, our “foundations.”

So many things look absurd from a distance
that people still take seriously,
like whether there’s a Heaven for pets.

What ever happened to my girdle?
One day I peeled it off for the last time
and all hell broke loose.

Connie Wanek, Rival Gardens (University of Nebraska Press, 2016)

Aunties

 

There's a way a woman

            will not

relinquish

 

her pocketbook

            even pulled

onstage, or called up

 

to the pulpit—

            there's a way only

your Auntie can make it

 

taste right—

             rice & gravy

is a meal

 

if my late Great Aunt

            Toota makes it—

Aunts cook like

 

there's no tomorrow

             & they're right.

Too hot

 

is how my Aunt Tuddie

            peppers everything,

her name given

 

by my father, four, seeing

            her smiling in her crib.

There's a barrel

 

full of rainwater

            beside the house

that my infant father will fall

 

into, trying to see

           himself—the bottom—

& there's his sister

 

Margie yanking him out

           by his hair grown long

as superstition. Never mind

 

the flyswatter they chase you

            round the house

& into the yard with

 

ready to whup the daylights

            out of you—

that's only a threat—

 

Aunties will fix you

           potato salad

& save

 

you some. Godmothers,

           godsends,

Aunts smoke like

 

it's going out of style—

             & it is—

make even gold

 

teeth look right, shining.

             saying I'll be

John, with a sigh. Make way

 

out of no way—

            keep they key

to the scale that weighed

 

the cotton, the cane

            we raised more

than our share of—

 

If not them, then who

           will win heaven?

holding tight

 

to their pocketbooks

            at the pearly gates

just in case.

Kevin Young, Dear Darkness: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008)

Red Rover, Red Rover

The only rule:
keep the chain intact.
I didn’t know
in the grade school gym
it was a way to practice
meeting all that would try
to break us apart,
practice being bombarded,
practice calling in our fear.
Red Rover, Red Rover
let sickness come over.
Once it felt like a game.
Now—oh friend.
Hold on to my wrist.
I’ll hold on to yours.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, wordwoman.com April 28, 2021 

Seven Haiku

recycling day

bundling up

all the bad news

      Ian Wiley, Frogpond 43.2 2020

 

drinks around the grill –

uncle Joe’s fish

get bigger and bigger

      Kendall Lot, Frogpond 43.1 2020

 

google earth

I zoom in on

my childhood

      Mark Dailey, Frogpond 42.1 2019

 

wanderlust

his license plate collection

nailed to the barn wall

      Michele L. Harvey, Frogpond 41.3 2018  

 

coffee table books

changed out

for the pastor’s visit

      Marsh Muirhead, Frogpond 41.3 2018

 

crowded subway

I let him have

my wiggle room

      Francine Banwarth, Frogpond 41.2 2018

 

downpour

the cows that fit

under one tree

      Jennifer Thiermann, Frogpond 41.2 2018 

Fifteen Years Later, I See How It Went

 

They say you fall in love with your child

the moment you first hold them,

the cord just cut, still covered in blood

and vernix. I held the strange being

just arrived from the womb and felt curious,

astonished, humble, nervous, but I didn’t feel love.

That didn’t come till later. Came from holding him

while he was screaming. Waking with him

when I wanted to sleep. Bouncing him

when I wanted to be still. Love grew as

my ideas of myself diminished. Love grew

as he came into himself. Love grew

as I learned to let go of what I’d been told

and to trust the emerging form.

Until I couldn’t imagine being without him.

Until I was the one being born.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com, April 23, 2020

Our Other Sister

 for Ellen

The cruelest thing I did to my younger sister

wasn't shooting a homemade blowdart into her knee,

where it dangled for a breathless second

 

before dropping off, but telling her we had

another, older sister who'd gone away.

What my motives were I can't recall: a whim,

 

or was it some need of mine to toy with loss,

to probe the ache of imaginary wounds?

But that first sentence was like a strand of DNA

 

that replicated itself in coiling lies

when my sister began asking her desperate questions.

I called our older sister Isabel

 

and gave her hazel eyes and long blonde hair.

I had her run away to California

where she took drugs and made hippie jewelry.

 

Before I knew it, she'd moved to Santa Fe

and opened a shop. She sent a postcard

every year or so, but she'd stopped calling.

 

I can still see my younger sister staring at me,

her eyes widening with desolation

then filling with tears. I can still remember

 

how thrilled and horrified I was

that something I'd just made up

had that kind of power, and I can still feel

 

the blowdart of remorse stabbing me in the heart

as I rushed to tell her none of it was true.

But it was too late. Our other sister

 

had already taken shape, and we could not

call her back from her life far away

or tell her how badly we missed her.

Jeffery Harrison, Feeding the Fire (Sarabande Books, 2001)