Regret

nothing. Not those years
when you were a single mother,
bologna casserole, and not enough
money for heat. Or the years before,
the ones spent trying to please a man
who couldn't be happy, no matter how
hard you tried to replicate his mother's recipes --
the marinara wasn't sweet enough, the lasagna
didn't have enough layers.
Don't regret the years that went up
in smoke, the glamour of the lit match,
the first drag, the curls that rose
to decorate the ceiling. Or the years
as a waitress, the customers who stiffed
you on tips, which were quarters
and nickles back then, every thin dime
counted. Instead, remember your friends,
those hours on the telephone, the artery
of the long black cord, a river of voice.
Don't tell me that broken places
make you stronger, and I won't mention
silver linings. Sometimes, there are scars.

Barbara Crooker, Some Glad Morning: Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

My God, It's Full of Stars (excerpt)

 

When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said
They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed
In papery green, the room a clean cold, a bright white.

He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks,
His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years,
When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled

To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons
Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find.
His face lit up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise

As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending
Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons
For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.

We learned new words for things. The decade changed.

The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed
For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time,
The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is —

So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

Tracy K. Smith (U. S. Poet Laureate, 2017-2019), Life on Mars: Poems (Graywolf Press, 2011)

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

 

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

 

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

 

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

 

Mary Oliver, medium.com February 14, 2017

For When People Ask

I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, gratefulness.org, accessed on January 28, 2023

Grecian Temples

Because I'm getting pretty gray at the temples,
which negatively impacts my earning potential
and does not necessarily attract vibrant young women
with their perfumed bosoms to dally with me
on the green hillside,
I go out and buy some Grecian Hair Formula.

And after the whole process, which involves
rubber gloves, a tiny chemistry set,
and perfect timing, I look great.
I look very fresh and virile, full of earning potential.
But when I take my fifteen-year-old beagle
out for his evening walk, the contrast is unfortunate.
Next to me he doesn't look all that great,
with his graying snout, his sort of faded,
worn-out-dog look. It makes me feel old,
walking around with a dog like that.

It's not something a potential employer,
much less a vibrant young woman with a perfumed bosom
would necessarily go for. So I go out
and get some more Grecian Hair Formula—
Light Brown, my beagle's original color.
And after all the rigmarole he looks terrific.
I mean, he's not going to win any friskiness contests,
not at fifteen. But there's a definite visual improvement.
The two of us walk virilely around the block.

The next day a striking young woman at the bookstore
happens to ask me about my parents,
who are, in fact, long dead, due to the effects of age.
They were very old, which causes death.
But having dead old parents does not go
with my virile, intensely fresh new look.

So I say to the woman, my parents are fine.
They love their active lifestyle in San Diego.
You know, windsurfing, jai alai, a still-vibrant sex life.
And while this does not necessarily cause her
to come dally with me on the green hillside, I can tell
it doesn't hurt my chances.

I can see her imagining dinner
with my sparkly, young-seeming mom and dad
at some beachside restaurant
where we would announce our engagement.

Your son has great earning potential,
she'd say to dad, who would take
a gander at her perfumed bosom
and give me a wink, like he used to do
back when he was alive, and vibrant.

 

George Bilgere, The White Museum (Autumn House Press, 2010) 

Learning Animals and Insects in 3rd Grade

I could hear the horse neigh in that
    third-grade class,
its big head poked over the picture's
    white picket fence
while Sister told us the old, useless
    ones were sent to Alpo
or Zweiger's Glue Factory on Cherry Road,
each of us looking around to see if it was true,
seeing all kinds of snakes sloughing their skins
and bats hanging by their claws in the dark
    caves underground,
a giant turtle on its back, gasping for breath
as we sat straight at our desks
and yelled out which ones lay eggs,
which ones bore their young, listening
to the whales as they circled the globe,
listening to Ray Martineau's asthmatic breathing
that fell like the falling snow, shhhh, shhhh,
    against the dripping window,
one of every kind of beast circling us,
all their eyes mirroring our eyes back
except for the ants who never stopped tunneling
busy from the second our lights went on
with their tunnels that went sideways and up
    and down,
sudden small pockets of silence in which they
    passed
along the shadowed, erratic trails that dead-ended
    against invisible walls
and then doubled back, again and again, in that
    late, upstate New York winter day.

 

Leo Roberts, Counting the Black Angels (University of Illinois Press, 1994) 

I Am an Onion

I am an onion

I have several layers

Each one different

The outermost layer is what everyone sees

That I am always loud and happy every day

Full of energy and can make anyone smile

The next layer is my judgment

What I do not say about people since I’m polite

My opinions on people of jealously and dislike

The next layer is the layer of hate

My hate can come out at any time with a foul smell

But I control it as best as I can

The layer under that is sorrow

My sadness of what I really am behind closed doors – sad.

Life isn’t always the best it is, many days of sadness

I hold back my tears so others don’t see them, so they don’t get tears themselves

But through all of these layers of emotion there is me,

While I am just an onion, I am a unique onion since there is only one me

While I have a family of where I came from with people similar

There is one type of me and that’s it

 

Graffiti008, powerpoetry.org December 15, 2014