Nine-Eleven

You passed me on the street
I rode the subway with you
You lived down the hall from me
I admired your dog in the park one morning
We waited in line for a concert
I ate with you in the cafes
You stood next to me at the bar
We huddled under an awning during a downpour
We dashed across the street to beat the light
I bumped into you coming round the corner
You stepped on my foot
I held the door for you
You helped me up when I slipped on the ice
I grabbed the last Sunday Times
You stole my cab
We waited forever at the bus stop
We sweated in steamy August
We hunched our shoulders against the sleet
We laughed at the movies
We groaned after the election
We sang in church
Tonight I lit a candle for you
All of you

 

Charlotte Parsons, writersalmanac.com September 11, 2023

For Love in a Time of Conflict

When the gentleness between you hardens
And you fall out of your belonging with each other,
May the depths you have reached hold you still.

When no true word can be said, or heard,
And you mirror each other in the script of hurt,
When even the silence has become raw and torn,
May you hear again an echo of your first music.

When the weave of affection starts to unravel
And anger begins to sear the ground between you,
Before this weather of grief invites
The black seed of bitterness to find root,
May your souls come to kiss.

Now is the time for one of you to be gracious,
To allow a kindness beyond thought and hurt,
Reach out with sure hands
To take the chalice of your love,
And carry it carefully through this echoless waste
Until this winter pilgrimage leads you
Towards the gateway to spring.

 

John O’Donohue, Benedictus: A Book of Blessings (Bantam Books, 2007)

Driving Nails

I learned to walk stud walls
setting rafters when I was six.
I straightened nails for my father
to re-drive, piecing a home together
after work or on weekends.

We were called Okies by some
when we moved to the valley,
putting up our tar-papered shack.
Two years later a house was rising
to face them across the pasture.

The only plans were sketched
on a six inch pad, but all the corners
were true. The septic tank hole
was dug with pick and shovel.
Lumber carted home from the mill.

The only time help came
was when we poured the foundation.
Guys from the mill rode springing planks
to deliver tons of wet concrete by wheelbarrow,
tamped down with shovel handles.

My father beveled the molding,
drilled and set each piece of hardwood flooring,
not a nail would show. I crawled insulation
into tight places above the ceiling
and helped with rolled roofing.

Nobody mentioned our low rank
when my mother joined the garden club.
And she never mentioned the hurt
they had caused – just came home
and parked the Buick in the shack.

Gary L. Lark, Getting By (Logan House, 2009) 

Middle-Class Blues

He has everything.
A beautiful young wife.
A comfortable home.
A secure job.
A velvet three-piece suite.
A metallic-silver car.
A mahogany cocktail cabinet.
A rugby trophy.
A remote-controlled music centre.
A set of gold clubs under the hallstand.
A fair-haired daughter learning to walk.

What he is afraid of most
and what keeps him tossing some nights
on the electric underblanket,
listening to the antique clock
clicking with disapproval from the landing,
are the stories that begin:
He had everything.
A beautiful young wife.
A comfortable home.
A secure job.
Then one day.

Dennis O’Driscoll, New and Selected Poems (Auval Press, 2005)

Gate A-4

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"
said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

 

 

Naomi Shihab Nye, Honeybee, 2008 copyright by author

BLT

  “Enjoy every sandwich.”

—Warren Zevon, talking with David Letterman about his terminal
lung cancer shortly before his death.

Here’s how to make a great sandwich:
country white bread lightly toasted,
contoured with mayonnaise, leaf
lettuce spilling over the borders,
overlays of tomatoes, train tracks
of bacon leading straight
out of town. No need for road
maps, potato chips, or pickles.
Yes, winter is waiting, just over
the horizon. But right now, I’m
going to sit in the sun and listen
to birdsong. I’m going to eat
every crumb, every plottable
coordinate, now, while I can.

 

Barbara Crooker, janicefalls.wordpress.com August 23, 2023

Love Sits by My Father

My parents love each other like a secret.

They follow each other into rooms 

making excuses for how they got there.

 

Every time my mother falls asleep on the couch,

my father meets pillow to living room tiles

and calls it a backache.

 

The first time I found love in our house,

it was disguised as loyalty.

The first time I understood love to have been there long before I arrived,

 

it came as an apology,

it came in an envelope I found in my mother’s purse

decades old.

 

It read:

لكي العذر حتى ترضي [To you, my apologies until you are satisfied].

How long she must have waited for regret to cross an ocean.

 

My aunt once told me that my parents have divorced twice. 

My mother neither denies nor confirms this;

instead, she sits by my father,

 

first in the big house with the high ceilings and the gypsum corners, 

then in the one bedroom with the dirty kitchen and white lights.

She sits by my father some more,

 

first covered in gold,

then thankful to have once held it.

She sits by my father

 

and teaches me that love can be doubtful,

and love can be scared, 

and when love is worried, love may falter.

 

And love may lose everything,

but love sits by my father,

and love stays there.

Qutouf Elobaid, New Generation of African Poets (Akashic Books, 2020)