Staying Put

How lucky we are to have found each other
on this huge planet. 

It’s not like we were supposed
to meet at a statue or there had been

any swiping left or right. No, we just danced
at a party, didn't even like each other that much,

so different we are. And yet.
Thirty-eight years later we still love 

a car wash. I still make the banana bread
we had each morning on our honeymoon in Maui, 

still have the index card with the recipe.
Is there a recipe for longevity? 

This morning in the gray light of early morning,
you whispered, "Don't ever leave me."

 

Sarah Dickerson Snyder, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal February 15, 2024 

'final note to clark (kent)' and 'note passed to superman'

final note to clark

they had it wrong,
the old comics.
you are only clark kent
after all. oh,
mild mannered mister,
why did i think you could fix it?
how you must have wondered
to see me taking chances,
dancing on the edge of words,
pointing out the bad guys,
dreaming your x-ray vision
could see the beauty in me.
what did i expect? what
did i hope for? we are who we are,
two faithful readers,
not wonder woman and not superman.

 

note passed to superman

sweet jesus superman,

if i had seen you

dressed in your blue suit

i would have known you.

maybe that choir boyclark

can stand around

listening to stories

but not you, not with

metropolis to save

and every crook in town

filthy with kryptonite.

lord, man of steel

i understand the cape,

the leggings, the whole

ball of wax.

you can trust me,

there is no planet stranger

than the one i'm from.

Lucille Clifton, POEMS (buffalo.edu) accessed on June 13, 2024

Still Singing

There comes a day when a woman knows
she’s more Mother Superior than Maria—
and though she spent decades dreaming
of spinning on stage singing The hills are alive,
she now knows she’s more likely
to be cast standing in a habit, clutching a rosary,
singing Climb every mountain.
How many dreams pass us
before we realize they’ve gone?
Already I know I will never climb Everest,
will not be an Olympic Nordic skier,
will not research the cure for AIDS.
Every day I am less the woman I dreamt I would be
and more the woman I am—
which is, apparently, a woman who sits in the balcony
to see “The Sound of Music” and drives home happy,
still singing about how her heart
wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise
from the lake to the trees.
A woman who is learning how,
now that her dreams have faded,
she can be more present than ever.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com October 24, 2022

Tornado

When we first see the blue line
along the horizon, we think it’s smoke
rising from a fire or maybe it’s blue rain
falling from the dark clouds.

We know, from the heat and humidity
of the day,  that it could be a wisp of mad air,
a column of air rising, tearing bits of cloud
as it spins. We know that it might grow long
and twisted like rope that drops to the ground
then whips back and forth as if by some unseen hand.

“Tornado,” Dad says, and we watch it disappear
back into the clouds as the storm moves forward
across the flat land.

We scan the horizon, see the tornado
drop, rise, then drop back to the ground,
closer now, the swirling wind picking up dust
and dark soil scoured from the newly planted fields.

Dad stands in the middle of the yard reading the clouds,
testing the wind, and the forward movement of the storm.
With no place to hide, we pile into the Ford
thinking we’ll be safe, if we drive south of its path.

In the middle of the tree-lined drive,
the explosion of an electric pole stops us,
splinters and sparks rain down on our car
that rocks softly back and forth in the wind.

The oak trees bend forward in deep respect,
allowing us to see the flashes of lightning
reflected off the sides of the silver grain silo
just before it’s sent flying over the fields like a kite.
We see the cattle circling the pens, open-mouthed,
bellowing; but we hear nothing but the roar.

 

Lenora Castillo, Tide-water Baptism (Iowa State University, 1998)

My Number

 Is Death miles away from this house,

reaching for a widow in Cincinnati

or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker

in British Columbia?

 

Is he too busy making arrangements,

tampering with air brakes,

scattering cancer cells like seeds,

loosening the wooden beams of roller coasters

 

to bother with my hidden cottage

that visitors find so hard to find?

 

Or is he stepping from a black car

parked at the dark end of the lane,

shaking open the familiar cloak,

its hood raised like the head of a crow,

and removing the scythe from the trunk?

 

Did you have any trouble with the directions?

I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this.

 

Billy Collins, The Apple That Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 2006)

Sleeping Next to the Man on the Plane

I'm not well. Neither is he.
Periodically he pulls out a handkerchief
and blows his nose. I worry
about germs, but appreciate how he shares
the armrest—especially
considering his size—too large
to lay the tray over his lap.
His seatbelt barely buckles. At least
he doesn't have to ask for an extender
for which I imagine him grateful. Our upper arms
press against each other, like apricots growing
from the same node. My arm is warm
where his touches it. I close my eyes.
In the chilly, oxygen-poor air, I am glad
to be close to his breathing mass.
We want our own species. We want
to lie down next to our own kind.
Even here in this metal encumbrance, hurtling
improbably 30,000 feet above the earth,
with all this civilization—down
to the chicken-or-lasagna in their
environmentally-incorrect packets,
even as the woman behind me is swiping
her credit card on the phone embedded
in my headrest and the folks in first
are watching their individual movies
on personal screens, I lean
into this stranger, seeking primitive comfort—
heat, touch, breath—as we slip
into the ancient vulnerability of sleep.

 

Ellen Bass, Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002) 

The first agreement

Fear begets violence.
Blame becomes assault.

Projecting our fear of harm,
we harm others.
To keep our place in the world
we try to remove others.
But it never works:
attempting to destroy each other
we only damage the world.

To “form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, and insure domestic Tranquility,”
our first agreement has to be
to live together.
To accept the other, regardless of how vile.
To live, even side by side,
with those we fear and blame and revile.

For they are here;
the only way to be without them
is to be without life.

Our first agreement and our highest goal
is not how we shall win,
but how we shall live together.
For either we live together
or we do not live.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net July 15, 2024