Thirteen Below

 

It's thirteen below on my morning walk.
The snow is rock, the brook is a brick.
Everything crackles. The air itself is brittle.

Yet chickadees and nuthatches work the oaks
in their bare feet, on their tiny ankles.
Life prevails, sustained by a mystery within.

There are seeds that sprout after thousands of years.
Pine cones that open only after forest fires.
Survivors of child abuse who turn out lovely.

There is some force of life in you
that can't be put out, that is—what's the word?—
Eternal.

Shelter that spark. Give thanks.
Layer up if you have to. But trust it.
It will keep you. It will keep you.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net February 6, 2023

Why I'm a Terrible Bed and Breakfast Patron

I'm always afraid I'll break the antiques,
and frankly, I don't really care for them,
one chair as good as another to me—
as long as it accommodates my butt.
I don't like innkeeper small talk, refuse
to pet the resident dog or cat, not caring
how old the house is, or who owned it
before the current owners, or where
the drapes came from or how authentically
the grounds have been restored to former
glory. Reluctant to leave a cheery message
in the guest book—isn't the fact I stayed here
enough? —I know the owners want ooohing
and aahing from me, curiosity, expressions
of awe about floral patterns and chifforobes.
I'm sorry. I can't do it. I don't care about
who slept here a hundred years ago, or twenty
years ago, or last night. I don't care how
aged the trees are out front, what flowers,
freshly cut, reside in these vases one of my
clumsy elbows might send skidding to parquet
floors. I want to go home, where the chairs
don't match, the lawn's got stumps from sawing
down trees of no historical significance,
and the carpets came from the discount place
down the highway. I want to go home
where hands that only I know will cook
my breakfast, will caress my lips and face
to welcome me home, back to my own bed.

 

Allison Joseph, Lexicon (Red Hen Press, 2021)

What She Taught Me

She taught me linking verbs, predicate nouns,
long division, have a Kleenex ready, an apple
a day. She taught me three-quarter time, Greenwich

Mean Time. She taught me do re mi, Mexicali Rose,
Rose, Rose, my Rose of San Antone. She taught me
Peas Peas Peas Peas, Eating Goober Peas.
She taught me that a peanut is a goober pea

in certain parts of the world, that it is fine
for things to be different in different parts
of the world, no two goobers alike in their

dry red skins, their pock-marked pods,
that there are latitudes and longitudes we have
never seen, that she had seen some part,
and so would I, that I need not

forego either the swings or baseball, that spelling
is on Friday and it is OK to learn more
than one list, including the hard list; it is not

showing off—it is using what you have.
That using what you have will not please
everybody, that marrying a man of a different stripe

is not a popular thing in a small town in the fifties,
and divorcing and coming home with a child
is even worse, and that you
get up every morning anyway,
and do your work.

 

Marjorie Saiser, Lost in Seward County (The Backwaters Press, 2006)

Letter Home

I love you forever
my father's letter tells her
for forty-nine pages,
from the troopship crossing the Atlantic
before they'd ever heard of Anzio.

He misses her, the letter says,
counting out days of boredom, seasickness,
and changing weather,
poker games played for matches
when cash and cigarettes ran out,
a Red Cross package—soap,
cards, a mystery book he traded away
for The Rubaiyyat a bunkmate didn't want.
He stood night watch and thought
of her. Don't forget the payment
for insurance, he says.

My mother waits at home with me,
waits for the letter he writes day by day
moving farther across the ravenous ocean.
She will get it in three months and
her fingers will smooth the Army stationery
to suede.

He will come home, stand
beside her in the photograph, leaning
on crutches, holding
me against the rough wool
of his jacket. He will sit
alone and listen to Aïda

and they will pick up their
interrupted lives. Years later,
she will show her grandchildren
a yellow envelope with
forty-nine wilted pages telling her

of shimmering sequins on the water,
the moonlight catching sudden phosphorescence,
the churned wake that stretched a silver trail.

 

Ellen Steinbaum, Container Gardening (Custom Words, 2008)

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