I Want to Love the World

I want to love the world but I’m tired of it

walking by me on the street and not

even waving. And making so much noise

 

late at night. It’s a parked car with closed-

tight windows and the radio thumping.

It’s been outside my house for weeks. How

 

can you think of anything else with all

that artillery? I want to love the way early

afternoon looks on the stone floor of my

 

office, how pollen’s dust on my windows

casts a golden shadow. But that only

reminds me it’s getting later and now I

 

can’t tell you what I was trying to say. The

world has interrupted me. And why should

it care about that? I want to love the world

 

but I’m tired. In Kyiv, the coroner burns

church incense. To each face he uncovers,

he says, How? How did this happen to you?

 

Christine Potter, “Poets Respond” rattle.com April 24, 2022

 

Christine Potter: “The war in Ukraine continues to haunt me. I can’t remember a time in my life when I have felt quite so oppressed by the sheer hell people can unleash upon one another. Except for writing poetry, I feel helpless against it.” 

Disappearing Fathers

Sometime after I turned forty the fathers from my childhood
began disappearing; they had heart attacks
during business dinners or while digging their shovels
into a late April snow. Some fathers began forgetting things:
their phone numbers, which neighborhoods belonged
to them, which houses. They had a shortness of breath,
the world’s air suddenly too thin, as if it came
from some other altitude. They were gone:
the fathers I had seen dissecting cars
in garages, the fathers with suits
and briefcases, the fathers who slipped down
rivers on fishing boats and the ones
who drank television and beer. Most of my friends
still had mothers but the fathers
were endangered, then extinct.
I was surprised, though I had always known
the ladies lasted longer; the fathers fooled me
with their toughness; I had been duped
by their jogging and heavy lifting, misled
by their strength when they slapped
me on the back or shook my hand. I kept imagining
I would see them again: out walking their dogs
on the roads near my childhood house,
lighting cigars on their porches, waving to me
from their canoes while I waited on shore.

Faith Shearin, Telling the Bees (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2015)

For Those Who Have Died

‘Tis a fearful thing
to love
what death can touch.
To love, to hope, to dream,
and oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,
love,
but a holy thing,
to love what death can touch.

For your life has lived in me;
Your laugh once lifted me;
Your word was a gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing,
to love
what death can touch.

Rabbi Chaim Stern, otherpeoplespoemstoo.blogspot.com April 3, 2022)

Yarn Over -- Knitting for Three

 They are close

this husband and wife

tightly knit

but comfortable

like old pair of mittens

 

He holds her grey wool

coarse and scratchy

in a skein looped around and

around the back of his two hands

 

She gently pulls the strand

like an umbilical cord

this lifeline from her partner

wrapping his warmth

around and around

her fetus ball

 

There is no need to speak

their breath, a faint whisper,

against the crackle of flames

 

Their fieldstone hearth

more than a foundation

 

Tomorrow she will

click and clack

knit click, purl clack

yarn over, knit for three

and he will smell

the scent of lavender

watch how her rosy cheeks

might shimmer glow

 

her sweater stretched

as her stomach grows

 

Debbie Okun Hill, Ropedancer: The Ontario Poetry Society 2012 Member Anthology (Beret Days Press, 2012)

Resurrection

Long, long, long ago;
Way before this winter’s snow
First fell upon these weathered fields;
I used to sit and watch and feel
And dream of how the spring would be,
When through the winter’s stormy sea
She’d raise her green and growing head,
Her warmth would resurrect the dead.

Long before this winter’s snow
I dreamt of this day’s sunny glow
And thought somehow my pain would pass
With winter’s pain, and peace like grass
Would simply grow.  (But) The pain’s not gone.
It’s still as cold and hard and long
As lonely pain has ever been,
It cuts so deep and fear within.

Long before this winter’s snow
I ran from pain, looked high and low
For some fast way to get around
Its hurt and cold.  I’d have found,
If I had looked at what was there,
That things don’t follow fast or fair.
That life goes on, and times do change,
And grass does grow despite life’s pains.

Long before this winter’s snow
I thought that this day’s sunny glow,
The smiling children and growing things
And flowers bright were brought by spring.
Now, I know the sun does shine,
That children smile, and from the dark, cold, grime
A flower comes.  It groans, yet sings,
And through its pain, its peace begins.

from Rueben Job and Norman Shawchuck, A Guide to Prayer (The Upper Room, p. 144)

Strawberry

 When I got my period, there wasn’t any sweetness 

in sitting on the toilet waiting for my mother 

to return from the store with the white rowboat 

I’d have to wear between my legs once a month 

for the next 38 years. It was summer, the strawberries 

ripe in the backyard where my father was sweeping the patio, 

walking over to the bathroom window to say, “Okay in there?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, shuddering in embarrassment

& lying, but who told the raw sodden biological truth?

My mother, my father, my older sister, at least one of them

might have let me in on the devastation of menstruation.

I mean, I’d heard of it like I’d heard of death—

a vague rumor or something that happened  

to anyone other than me. I wasn’t even sure yet

if I wanted to be a girl. Being female was a truth

I couldn’t escape, but that didn’t keep me from trying. 

I left the baby dolls my aunts & grandmothers gave me 

in the dirt while I tore around the neighborhood

with Carl & Doug, riding bikes with our shirts off & throwing 

Swiss Army knives at each other’s feet, seeing how close we could get. 

I disliked curlers & cooking & sewing & women 

in movies looking stupid as drool, crying when some douche 

gave them a diamond ring in a glass of champagne with a strawberry in it.

I hated strawberries. Everybody making a big deal about how good 

they tasted when I thought they were way too sugary & sticky 

& the seeds got stuck in your teeth

& now they reminded me of my period, a word I couldn’t stand,

why the hell blood dripping out of a body  

was called a punctuation mark. Oh yeah, it was something about time 

& here I was at the beginning of this cycle that would ruin every season, 

including my favorite. How could I go swimming, wear a bathing suit

was all I could think about as my mother arrived & helped me strap on 

the contraption of doom. She, to my great relief, did not say anything 

as horrifying as you’re a woman now. I would have stabbed her 

with my Swiss Army knife. She tip-toed away as I sat in my bedroom,

my insides cramping like I’d swallowed a pitchfork, the sun blaring 

in the window & blowing strawberries at me. A few years later, I was allowed

to use a tampon, but no one told me how that worked, so I jammed it in 

with the cardboard still on & hobbled out of the bathroom, my legs bowed.

When I asked my sister & her friend why it didn’t fit, they laughed so hard,

rolling around on the floor. Another soggy kind of hell while I tried 

to get it out & they left for the beach.  

When they returned, eating strawberry Frosty cones, I was reading a novel 

& recovering from PTSD. I’m lying about the cones, but let’s say 

I took a taste anyway. I’d met a boy at a dance that summer.

It was like a line drawn in blood on the grass & I slid into another world.

Susan Browne, Rattle #72 Summer, 2021

Big Points for Trying

I was good to animals and small children.

Made room for the guy on the streetcar

who talked to himself.

Even gave him a few bucks.

But truth be told:

I never invited him home to tea.

 

Didn’t always take the easiest way,

but certainly enough times.

And, yes, vanity got in the way,

more than once —

the fight back from an ugly girlhood.

 

I frittered away talent,

pearls to swine, some might say,

churning out Annual Reports for rent money,

giving my all on corporate press tours,

with no energy left for the poem.

But a girl’s got to make a living,

long seemed a worthy excuse.

 

The world gives you too many reasons

to feel you’re not quite

good enough, talented enough.

accomplished enough.

And there was I —

Listening intently

to each

and every one.

Tricia McCallum, triciamccallum.com accessed on April 10, 2022