Blame Dorothy

A Poem for David

2011-11-11T18:18:00.000-08:00

My son has a complicated relationship with the woman who shares his (2 bedroom) apartment. He never knows what she wants.

The following is poetry for thought.

Rent

If you want my apartment, sleep in it
but let’s have a clear understanding:
the books are still free agents.

If the rocking chair’s arms surround you
they can also let you go,
they can shape the air like a body.

I don’t want your rent, I want
a radiance of attention
like the candle’s flame when we eat.

I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us—
Not a roof but a field of stars.

Jane Cooper

A Poem for Veronica

2011-11-10T18:17:00.000-08:00

I got my annual rating at work today. I wasn't pleased. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Liar

Mary Karr

Swept overboard, unconscious in the breakers,
strangled with seaweed, may you wake up in a gelid
surf, your teeth, already cracked into the shingle
now set rattling by the wind, while facedown,
helpless as a poison cur, on all fours, you puke
brine reeking of dead fish. May those you meet,
barbarians as ugly as their souls are hateful,
treat you to the moldy wooden bread of slaves.
And may you, with your split teeth sunk in that,
smile, then, the way you did when speaking as my friend.

Halloween

2011-11-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

The scariest part of Halloween for me these days is the candy. I'm doing pretty good these days with healthy eating - I'm eating my fruits & vegetables, getting plenty of fiber, eating fish a couple times a week, choosing brown rice and black beans - but those little Snickers bars just call out to me. One is never enough. Five is not too many. My husband is going to take the left overs into his office tomorrow, if there are any.

Here's a creepy little poem I've always enjoyed this time of year.

Karl Krolow
translated by Herman Salinger

Someone, in the twilight, is taking a walk
And singing.

The wolf from the fable
Is in flight.

The wild plum thickets
Hover before him.
The man in the moon
Starts up out of the yellow straw
Whenever anyone goes past.

The wind’s hand rubs
The hazel nuts
Whenever the darkness
Likes anybody.

Somebody takes the night
Upon his shoulders,
Gives love her names,
And the hands of the dead
Begin again in the dust
To stir.

Enough

2011-10-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

I've had enough of working. It's not fun any more.
But do I have enough money to retire?
Who knows?

Somehow the following poem sums up my mood today.

Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.

David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

Revery

2010-02-21T17:02:00.000-08:00

Jane Austen wrote in a letter that her novel Pride and Prejudice was maybe a little too "light and bright and sparkling". Perhaps this description is what has often made me think that Jane Austin wrote prose the way Mozart wrote music. I find Mozart's music to be "light and bright and sparkling". Like Austen he is melodic, inventive, well structured and amazingly beautiful. I was thinking this the other day as I walked on the treadmill listening to "The Marriage of Figaro".

Then I was thinking that Beethoven reminds me of Emily Bronte - all stormy and brooding. Wonderful stuff, but I like the light and bright better.

Next my mind wandered to Bach. What author does he remind me of? I'm not sure. My father loved Bach. He said Bach was the father of modern jazz. My father had us listen to the Goldberg Variations because, he said, jazz has the same structure of theme and variations.

I never really developed this idea of comparing authors to composers. It was just a passing treadmill musing. But yesterday right after my treadmill walk, I logged on to twitter and saw a tweet refernce to a book comparing Jane Austin to Mozart. What a coincidence! I ordered the book on line and can't wait to read it.

The following poem by Emily Dickinson seems to fit because music and literature both start with revery.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Let it Snow Again

2010-02-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

The Weather Service is calling for more snow starting tonight. We are on the southern edge of the storm so it's hard to say what we'll get. It could be 10 to 20 inches, or not. We just got shoveled out to the street, the mailman delivered mail today, and now we'll have to start all over again.

I don't remember where I found the following poem. I looked up Jesse Winchester today and discovered he is a singer-songwriter, and these are song lyrics. I've never heard his stuff, but I can totally get behind the thought he expresses.

Jesse Winchester

Snow

Yes it can!

Now you know what they say about snowflakes
How there ain't no two the same
Well, all them flakes look alike to me
Every one is a dirty shame

My ears are cold my feet are cold
Bermuda stays on my mind
And I'm here to say that if winter comes
Then spring is a ways behind

Let It Snow

2010-02-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

What a winter this has been for snow! First we had the big storm right before Christmas. Next we had a small snow in, was it January? Then last Friday and Saturday we got two feet of snow, a real blizzard. Some winters we don't shovel at all, but this past weekend we shoveled for hours. Thank goodness my son spent the weekend with us and helped his two old parents clear the driveway out to the street.

He also shoveled a path to the bird feeder so we could continue to keep the birds happy. We've had two pairs of cardinals, a red headed woodpecker, a blue jay, and dozens of smaller birds taking turns at the feeder.

Now the Weather Service is calling for another 6 to 10 inches (or more) of snow starting tomorrow afternoon. The Federal government closed today and tomorrow so none of us has to go to work, and there is plenty of food in the house. Things aren't going too badly.

I found this bit of poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson recently, and it seems an appropriate time to share.

From The Snowstorm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Painting a Room

2010-01-03T17:06:00.000-08:00

My father could paint a window frame without masking tape and not leave a spot of paint on the glass. He had steady hands, and incredible patience.

My painting is more reckless, and I use lots of masking tape, but I am generally satisfied with the results. I painted a small room over the Christmas holidays to house my treadmill and it looks pretty good. I’m having bamboo flooring installed now that the painting is done, and I will be ready to start my new exercise program.

The woman in the following poem is painting a space that she has lived in for 10 years and is leaving. She is already feeling the loss of the life she leaves behind. In a way she is painting over that life in preparation for starting over somewhere else. I was thinking of this poem as I painted my new exercise room, and thinking of my father, who recently moved to a VA home. At 96 he is starting over.

I found the poem on the Poetry 180 website, one of my favorite places to find new poetry.

Painting a Room

Katia Kapovich

Here on a March day in ‘89
I blanch the ceiling and walls with bluish lime.
Drop cloths and old newspapers hide
the hardwood floors. All my furniture has been sold,
or given away to bohemian friends.
There is nothing to eat but bread and wine.

An immigration visa in my pocket, I paint
the small apartment where I’ve lived for ten years.
Taking a break around 4 p.m.,
I sit on the last chair in the empty kitchen,
smoke a cigarette and wipe my tears
with the sleeve of my old pullover.
I am free from regrets but not from pain.

Ten years of fears, unrequited loves, odd jobs,
of night phone calls. Now they’ve disconnected the line.
I drop the ashes in the sink, pour turpentine
into a jar, stirring with a spatula. My heart throbs
in my right palm when I pick up the brush again.

For ten years the window’s turquoise square
has held my eyes in its simple frame.
Now, face to face with the darkening sky,
what more can I say to the glass but thanks
for being transparent, seamless, wide
and stretching perspective across the size
of the visible.

Then I wash the brushes and turn off the light.
This is my last night before moving abroad.
I lie down on the floor, a rolled-up coat
under my head. This is the last night.
Freedom smells of a freshly painted room,
of wooden floors swept with a willow broom,
and of stale raisin bread.

The Revenge of the Maple Tree

2009-12-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

I finally had the maple tree in my front yard removed last summer. It was too big for the space, it kept the grass from growing, and the roots were threatening to crack my new driveway. I knew some day the limbs were going to take down the power lines to the house. Plus, every fall that maple dropped leaves all over the yard. So I paid an itinerant tree crew to remove it.

A month later I slipped on a wet leaf and broke my ankle in three places. Coincidence? I think not. I think the trees in the back yard heard the cries of distress as their colleague headed for the wood chipper and took their revenge when the opportunity presented.

The following poem speaks to cutting down a tree and also is a fine poem for a snowy winter day.

In winter in the woods alone
Against the trees I go.
I mark a maple for my own
And lay the maple low.

At four o’clock I shoulder axe
And in the afterglow
I link a line of shadowy tracks
Across the tinted snow.

I see for Nature no defeat
In one tree’s overthrow
Or for myself in my retreat
For yet another blow.

Robert Frost

My Mother Used to Say

2009-12-14T19:54:00.001-08:00

My mother gave me a bit of wisdom one time when she was teaching me to iron. Ironing was a weekly chore in the days when everything you wore needed to be ironed, and I was probably eight or so when my mother decided I could learn to help.

I started with my Dad's white handkerchiefs, and was doing my best to make them perfect, when my mother suggested that I hurry things up a bit. I told her, "If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well."

"That's not true", she replied. "There are a lot of things in life worth doing whether you do them well or not. Some things are only worth a little bit of effort, and ironing handkerchiefs is one of them."

My mother also used to say, "All cats are grey in the dark." I never asked her how she knew.

This poem by Tess Gallagher always reminds me of my mother.

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.

Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson

2009-12-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

Today is Emily Dickinson's birthday, so I am sharing the following two poems. Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite poets, and Billy Collins is another.

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes

by Billy Collins

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything—
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that Reason is a plank,
that Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

by Emily Dickinson:

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

Table Talk

2009-12-05T17:43:00.000-08:00

My son and I were talking about favorite books recently and I remembered doing a blog entry on that once. I just went back and re-read it and I'm not sure I would change the list although I've read a lot of books since. If you want to read my list follow the link to my November 2005 Blog.

The question that came up with my son was why do we like some books and not others? I tried to explain why each of my choices was on the list, but sometimes we just like what we like.

My poem to share today is by Wallace Stevens.

Table Talk

Granted, we die for good.
Life, then, is largely a thing
Of happens to like, not should.

And that, too, granted, why
Do I happen to like red bush,
Gray grass and green-gray sky?

What else remains? But red,
Gray, green, why those of all?
That is not what I said:
Not those of all. But those.
One likes what one happens to like.
One likes the way red grows.

It cannot matter at all.
Happens to like is one
Of the ways things happen to fall.

Now it's your turn to share by sending me your list of favorite books.

A Poem for Tiger Woods

2009-12-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

Tiger Woods is married to a super model, one of the most beautiful women in the world, yet he has been having sex with cocktail waitresses. This is difficult to understand, but maybe he married a really beautiful woman and then discovered she had nothing to say for herself, or maybe he married for status, but really just likes his women a little on the trashy side.

Here is a poem on the subject by Charles Bukowski:

the way it is now

I’ll tell you
I’ve lived with some gorgeous women
and I was so bewitched by those
beautiful creatures that
my eyebrows twitched.

but I’d rather drive to New York
backwards
than to live with any of them again.

the next classic stupidity
will be the history
of those fellows
who inherit my female
legacies.

in their case
as in mine
they will find
that madness
is caused by not
being often enough
alone.

Writer's Block

2009-11-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

I liked the following poem, but I couldn't really figure it out at first. Then my sister was talking about having writer's block (she blogs, too) and I realized that sometimes I have a story to tell, but I have to search for a relevant poem, and sometimes I have a poem to share, but I have trouble relating it to a story. Some days I don't have either a story or a poem. So those days I don't blog.

Bad Day

by Kay Ryan

Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it
was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are
the hard days
for the tailor elf.

My sister's blog.

The Day After Thanksgiving

2009-11-27T11:42:00.000-08:00

For my family, Thanksgiving was all about the food. My mother was not a spectacular cook, but she could do turkey. She found a recipe once for cooking a turkey in a greased paper bag, and that was her method of choice. She used the Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, adding onions and celery. She made mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans and peas. She put two packages of brown and serve rolls in the oven after the turkey came out, then usually forgot about them until they started to smoke. We always called them black and serve rolls, but we ate them anyway. Desert was pumpkin pie, apple pie and home make fruit cake. We started dinner in the early afternoon and it basically last all day. Desert was followed by several rounds of leftovers.

I have finally learned to practice a little restraint for Thanksgiving. We had a lovely meal yesterday, without overdoing it. My son helped me cook, which was wonderful, and my husband helped clean up, always appreciated. I talked to my daughter and my Dad, and both sounded happy, so my day of thanks was complete.

Here is a poem for those who were perhaps less restrained.

The Hymn of a Fat Woman

by Joyce Huff

All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.

Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.

Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.

Sometimes Stuff Just Happens

2009-11-21T14:18:00.000-08:00

We spend a lot of time in America trying to fix the blame. A madman shoots up Fort Hood and committees are formed right and left to try to blame it on Islam. The economy tanks and Congress wants to blame the Secretary of the the Treasury. There is a flu epidemic and people want to blame the president because the needed vaccine isn't growing fast enough. And if anything is not the president's fault, let's blame undocumented immigrants.

The two poems I am sharing today are only vaguely related, but I saw a connection.

by Emily Dickinson

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play
In accidental power.

The blond assassin passes on,
The sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another day
For an approving God.

A Brief for the Defense

by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music, despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Fireflies

2009-11-17T13:31:00.000-08:00

Are fireflies disappearing like the honey bees? I haven't seen one in a long time. When we were kids we used to go outside after supper on summer evenings and try to catch them in jars, then let them go again.

My father worked the evening shift at the plant, so we had our main meal of the day, dinner, at noon. Supper was a smaller meal, usually at 5 o'clock, leaving time in the evenings to chase fireflies or play hide and seek while my mother watched from the front steps.

The following poem is wonderful, even the title.

Slow Children at Play

by Cecilia Woloch

All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner’s-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-
and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off
paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths, ohs, that glow and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering,
pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them
twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children,
thinking, Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?

And, on the same subject, only different, a poem by Robert Frost.

Fireflies in the Garden

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.

For Veteran's Day

2009-11-11T12:03:00.001-08:00

My father is a veteran. He enlisted shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when he was 28 years old. The Army put him in the Signal Corp, taught him Morse Code, and sent him to fight for 39 months in the Pacific. Like many World War II veterans he didn't talk much about his war experiences, only sharing a few details. He said he was afraid on the landing boats because his brother had drowned as a young man and that event left him with a fear of the water. He said the Signal Corp wasn't usually in the first boats to come ashore so that wasn't as bad as being part of the initial wave of Infantry. His favorite story was about a portable outhouse that he built. It was a three-sided affair with hinges and a drop-down seat. It could be collapsed flat to stash in the back of a truck and unfolded to stand over a hole in the ground.

Of course it was during R & R in New Zealand that he met my mother, and they were married after the war. He didn't talk much about their courtship, either, but I have the letters my mother wrote to him, carefully saved through all those years.

My mother was a veteran, too. She claimed she was an anti-aircraft gunner in Auckland, New Zealand, part of the homeland defense. New Zealanders were very worried about the possibility of a Japanese invasion, and many young women were trained to defend against an invasion. I have her payroll books from her time in service.

My brother is a veteran. He joined the Army at 17 after dropping out of school. This was during the Viet Nam War, but he was sent to Korea. I'm not sure what he did there.

There are a lot of good poems for Veterans. I'm going to share two of my favorites, for veterans everywhere.

The first is actually song lyrics, translated from Spanish, I believe.

Tremo E T'Amo

I love you and I'm trembling
Said the woman
To her soldier
Who wouldn't be coming back.
Her plaintive voice
Was carried by the wind
Across the chilling snow
To where her soldier fought.

I'm trembling and I love you
She whispered as she cried
And in the darkness of the room
Somebody laughed
In conquest of the fear
That this love was about to end.

But sweet memories can betray you
The soldier doesn't feel anything anymore.

Too late, his enemy strikes
Suddenly
From behind
Who, strangely, was speaking
Of roses, of wine, of life's other joys
That were promised him in another life.
Oh, how many brides
Will war take away
From that first night's warm embrace?

I'm trembling and I'm cold
Said the soldier
To his enemy, a man, just like himself.
His voice hung motionless in the wind
Heard by the silent audience of those that fell before him.

The second is a poem by Louis Untermeyer. My father could play reveille on the trumpet.

Reveille

What sudden bugle calls us in the night
And wakes us from a dream that we had shaped;
Flinging us sharply up against a fight
We thought we had escaped?

It is no easy waking, and we win
No final peace; our victories are few.
But still imperative forces pull us in
And sweep us somehow through.

Summoned by a supreme and confident power
That wakes our sleeping courage like a blow,
We rise, half shaken, to the challenging hour,
And answer it -- and go.......

The Music Room

2009-11-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

In the house I grew up in, there was a room next to the living room that we called the music room. My father hung French doors to separate it, and built book shelves to line two walls. My mother bought an old upright piano and had it tuned. She played the piano pretty well. I remember a metronome that my father bought at the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. There was a music stand and chair for practicing the clarinet or trumpet. My father played a saxophone and sometimes a harmonica. He also had a ukulele that he must have brought back from Hawaii after the war. He only knew one song for the ukulele and every time he started to sing it my mother told him to hush up. I suspect the words weren’t suitable for young ears. My older brother and I took piano lessons for years. He turned into a wonderful musician. I struggled through the basics, but have no natural sense of musical pitch or rhythm. We had a record player in the music room, and my father would check out records from the public library to play for us. He loved jazz, but also loved J.S. Bach. I remember hearing the Goldberg Variations for the first time on that record player.

My mother would sit on the piano stool and read to us kids, while we all sat on the floor in front of her. She read stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne. I remember a story about a man getting bricked into a wall in the basement. (I’m still nervous in tight space - and basements.)

One day when I was about 11 or 12 years old, my brother was probably 13, and my two younger sisters were around 8 and 4, my mother called us kids into the music room to read a poem to us. She was taking a night class in poetry and studying T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, so she read us the whole poem – just read it – no explanations or discussions. It was kind of a strange choice for children our age, but I loved it. My mother had a beautiful reading voice. (Later in life she read books on tape for the blind.) So I’m sure she did a beautiful reading of Prufrock, and maybe that’s why it impressed me so much. Or maybe it’s just a wonderful poem. I’ve read it to myself numerous times since and always taken something new out of it.

Prufrock wasn’t the first poem I’d read. I had a Mother Goose book, and A Child’s Garden of Verses. I had a book of English poems my mother had given me. I had even memorized Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which starts out:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

And goes on for 32 some verses.

But Prufrock was different, and I think that afternoon in the music room was the real start of my love affair with poetry.

Poetry should be read out loud, for the pure enjoyment of the words, without worrying too much about what it means.

Introduction to Poetry

By Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

You thought I was going to give you Prufrock. No, not today. Discover it yourself.

No One Will Worry a Bit

2009-10-31T18:25:00.000-07:00

On the front page of the Washington Post this morning is a picture of a young soldier who lost both his legs to an IED in Afghanistan. One leg was amputated above the knee and another at the hip. Certainly puts my own recent temporary disability into perspective.

Does anyone know anymore what we are doing in Afghanistan, besides killing and injuring young Americans? What would victory there even look like?

Thank God we now have a president who thinks before he acts.

My daughter shared the following poem with me some time ago:

by Siegfried Sassoon.

Does it matter? – Losing your legs? . . .
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter? – Losing your sight? . . .
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? – those dreams for the pit? . . .
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won’t say that you’re mad;
For they’ll know you’ve fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

Paradise Lost

2009-10-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

Today I have two poems about change. Enjoy what you have, and if things change, find a way to enjoy that, too.

Otherwise

Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

The Expulsion

Katha Pollitt

Adam was happy -- now he had someone to blame
for everything: shipwrecks, Troy,
the gray face in the mirror.

Eve was happy -- now he would always need her.
She walked on boldly, swaying her beautiful hips.

The serpent admired his emerald coat,
the Angel burst into flames
(he'd never approved of them, and he was right).

Even God was secretly pleased: Let
History begin!

The dog had no regrets, trotting by Adam's side
self-importantly, glad to be rid

of the lion, the toad, the basilisk, the white-footed mouse,
who were also happy and forgot their names immediately.

Only the Tree of Knowledge stood forlorn,
its small hard bitter crab apples

glinting high up, in a twilight of black leaves.
How pleasant it had been, how unexpected

to have been, however briefly,
the center of attention.

Think Watch Think

2009-10-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

My daughter has a website Thinkwatchthink.com on which she summarizes and analysis television show episodes. She is really a good writer and quite thoughtful about what she sees and writes about. I don't watch most of these shows, but I enloy reading about them on her site.

I ran across this poem today on the Poetry 180 website and it reminded me of my daughter's television analysis.

Sidekicks

Ronald Koertge

They were never handsome and often came
with a hormone imbalance manifested by corpulence,
a yodel of a voice or ears big as kidneys.

But each was brave. More than once a sidekick
has thrown himself in front of our hero in order
to receive the bullet or blow meant for that
perfect face and body.

Thankfully, heroes never die in movies and leave
the sidekick alone. He would not stand for it.
Gabby or Pat, Pancho or Andy remind us of a part
of ourselves,

the dependent part that can never grow up,
the part that is painfully eager to please,
always wants a hug and never gets enough.

Who could sit in a darkened theatre, listen
to the organ music and watch the best
of ourselves lowered into the ground while
the rest stood up there, tears pouring off
that enormous nose.

The Peace of Wild Things

2009-10-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

I was feeling miserable and sorry for my self today. I caught some kind of intestinal bug, probably at the surgery center, and was sick at both ends. Just what I need when I can barely get to the bathroom.

My ankle is doing well. I now have a "boot" on it that can be removed for brief periods of time starting in a day or two. This will allow me to finally get in the shower. What happiness a shower will be!

I quit eating, took some Immodium, and lay on the couch to listen to my ipod until I started to feel better. I listened to Nora Jones, Enja, Lyle Lovett & a little Bob Dylan. I can feel my son rolling his eyes at Enja, but I enjoy her. I was going to include some some lyrics from the songs I liked, but changed my mind after talking to my daughter who asked for a happy poem. This is not quite happy, but is peaceful and that's the best I can do today.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Will it Get Any Worse?

2009-10-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about something global, like Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize, presumably because he is not George W. Bush, but I found the following poem today and I just had to share. Once again a poem has influenced the way I look at events, both global and local.

Can you imagine waking up to the news that you had won the Nobel Prize and thinking to yourself, "Crap. Now I'll have to come up with a speech." I almost expected Obama to pull out a list and say "There are a few people I'd like to thank..." as if he had just gotten a Golden Globe Award.

My ankle is healing. The pain meds made me throw up, so I'm doing without. I will definitely have a scar, but hopefully won't lose my job.

Afraid So

Is it starting to rain?
Did the check bounce?
Are we out of coffee?
Is this going to hurt?
Could you lose your job?
Did the glass break?
Was the baggage misrouted?
Will this go on my record?
Are you missing much money?
Was anyone injured?
Is the traffic heavy?
Do I have to remove my clothes?
Will it leave a scar?
Must you go?
Will this be in the papers?
Is my time up already?
Are we seeing the understudy?
Will it affect my eyesight?
Did all the books burn?
Are you still smoking?
Is the bone broken?
Will I have to put him to sleep?
Was the car totaled?
Am I responsible for these charges?
Are you contagious?
Will we have to wait long?
Is the runway icy?
Was the gun loaded?
Could this cause side effects?
Do you know who betrayed you?
Is the wound infected?
Are we lost?
Will it get any worse?

Jeanne Marie Beaumont

More My Left Ankle

2009-10-06T17:01:00.000-07:00

I had surgery on Monday to pin my ankle back together. Everything went well, I guess. I don’t remember much of it, thanks to some very good drugs. Someone dressed me in a paper gown that had an air hose attached to it, blowing warm air up my crotch and over my chest. It felt pretty good. My voice is hoarse today so I’m assuming they put me completely out and inserted an air tube down my throat. The ankle hurts quite a bit, even with narcotics, and I am supposed to keep my leg elevated above the level of my heart unless I get up to the pot by the couch. Tom continues to cook for me, keep ice on the ankle and track my medications. A good mate is a blessing.

There is a cherry tree outside my living room window so I can watch the birds come to the bird feeder. I found this poem several months back and have been waiting for a chance to share it. It really is addressed “for Carol”.

Cardinals

for Carol

I had seen them in the tree,
and heard they mate for life,
so I hung a bird feeder
and waited.
By the third day,
sparrows and purple finches
hovered and jockeyed
like a swarm of bees
fighting over one flower.
So I hung another feeder,
but the squabbling continued
and the seed spilled
like a shower
of tiny meteors
onto the ground
where starlings
had congregated,
and blue jays,
annoyed at the world,
disrupted everyone
except the mourning doves,
who ambled around
like plump old women
poking for the firmest
head of lettuce.

Then early one evening
they came,
the only ones—
she stood
on the periphery
of the small galaxy of seed;
he hopped
among the nuggets,
calmly chose
one seed at a time,
carried it to her,
placed it in her beak;
she, head tilted,
accepted it.
Then they fluffed,
hopped together,
did it all over again.

And filled with love,
I phoned to tell you,
over and over,
about each time
he celebrated
being there,
all alone,
with her.

by John L. Stanizzi

My Left Ankle

2009-10-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I broke my left ankle. My husband and I were grilling bratwurst and fresh pineapple on the barbecue. Tom said as he came from lighting the fire, “Be careful, the deck is slippery”. I wish I had paid attention. I put the pineapple skewers on the grill, came back across the deck, slipped on a wet leaf and went down. I landed on my butt with my left leg twisted under me. When I tried to move my leg I discovered two things: It hurt like hell, and my ankle was flopping in unnatural directions. Tom tried to get me into the house, but the flopping and screaming convinced him to call 911 instead. A fire rescue truck and an ambulance soon showed up. Some nice young medics carefully got me onto a stretcher and on the way to the hospital. Let me say that if you arrive in an ambulance, the ER will let you by-pass the waiting room. A nurse showed up pretty much right away to make sure I wasn’t dying and to take my medical history. It saves time if you have a list of your medications with you, but I spent some time explaining why in the last six months I had seen a dermatologist and plastic surgeon (skin cancer), a neurologist (ophthalmic migraines), an internal medicine doctor and a vascular doctor (cellulitis and swelling in my right leg). I sounded like a hypochondriac even to me, but the flopping ankle could not be ignored. A portable x-ray machine showed up to take some pictures and I was told that my ankle was broken in at least two places. (Later x-rays showed three breaks.) The resident doctor said not to eat or drink, then ordered an oral pain medication. I took it with water. No one started an IV, probably just as well considering my uncooperative veins. I was shaking with cold and asked for a heated blanket. The nurse promptly produced two of them, bless her heart. I’d have given her more points if she’d thought of it herself. There was talk of a shot of morphine, but it never materialized. An orthopedic doctor showed up to “put a splint” on my ankle. This seemed to involve dripping strips of plaster and a great deal of pain. You can’t put a splint on until the bones are maneuvered back into place, although this wasn’t mentioned by the doctor ahead of time. When I say a great deal of pain, I mean really real pain: having-a-baby pain, having-a-gall-bladder-attack pain, I’m-being-tortured-and-I’m-screaming-about-it pain. The splint did stop the flopping. I was given a pain pill prescription, a pair of crutches, and a referral to an orthopedic surgeon, and sent home. The pain pills work well, the crutches are useless and I found my own orthopedic surgeon. The surgery is scheduled for Monday.

My husband is a saint. I can’t make it up and down the stairs, so he has fixed up the living room for my crippled self and is waiting on me hand and ankle.

This poem is a little dark, but seems to fit.

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

Emily Dickinson

Faking the Leave

2009-09-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

Whenever my husband and I are trying to leave the house we seem to find other things that need to be done first. For example: we are going out to the grocery store and my husband will need to go to the bathroom. Then I will start unloading the dishwasher, so my husband will go to the basement to switch the laundry into the dryer and suddenly I will need to go to the bathroom. This is such a regular habit of ours that the kids named it - faking the leave: as in “are you ready to go or are you still faking the leave?”

I thought maybe ours was the only family where this happened until I found the following poem in the Washington Post Book World Poet’s Corner. The author is Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate of the United States. She says she wrote the poem because of her habit of “suddenly having to do all kinds of things” when it was time to go someplace. She says she was “spurred to action by not having time”. She says she could “now read it as a meditation on the approach of death” but that’s not where it started.

The Edges of Time

It is at the edges
that time thins.
Time which had been
dense and viscous
as amber suspending
intentions like bees
unseizes them. A
humming begins,
apparently coming
from stacks of
put-off things or
just in back. A
racket of claims now,
as time flattens. A
glittering fan of things
competing to happen,
brilliant and urgent
as fish when seas
retreat.

My father, who is 95 years old, has been hospitalized 3 or 4 times since Christmas. Every time he goes in I am frightened that this will be his last trip. But a couple days of intravenous antibiotics and he bounces right back. He will go when he is ready. Until then he is just faking the leave.

WWJD?

2009-08-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

If Jesus Christ were president, the Republicans would call him a Socialist. "Sell what you have and give to the poor" sure sounds like redistibution of wealth to me.

And they would worry that he was soft on foreign policy. The greatest nation on earth doesn't have to turn the other cheek for anyone.

If Jesus Christ were president, the Democrats would complain that he hasn't fixed the economy yet. What does he mean, "The poor will always be with you"?

And they would fret because he hasn't said anything yet about Gays in the military.

So I'm not surprised that people are disappointed in Obama.

All of which is just an excuse to share a poem I have enjoyed for a long time.

e e cummings

no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ

jesus ) my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed (as
close as I’m to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness

It's About Time

2009-07-29T14:20:00.001-07:00

I was listening to Willie Nelson in the car today. I'm not a big fan of country music, but I like some of it, and this song by Willie Nelson is a favorite of mine:

Funny How Time Slips Away

Well hello there. My, it’s been a long, long time.
How am I doing? Oh I guess that I’m doing fine.
It’s been so long now, but it seems like only yesterday.
Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away?

How’s your new love? I hope that he’s doing fine.
I heard you told him that you’d love him until the end of time.
Now that’s the same thing that you told me, seems like just the other day.
Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away.

I gotta go now. I guess I’ll see you around.
Don’t know when though; never know when I’ll be back in town.
But remember what I tell you; in time you’re gonna pay.
And it’s surprising how time slips away.

Hearing that song got me thinking about other bits of poetry I like. Please take the time to read them.

On An Old Sun Dial

Time flies,
Suns rise,
And shadows fall.
Let time go by.
Love is forever over all.

From the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Awake! for morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight:
And lo! the hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s turret in a noose of light.

Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of spring
Your winter-garment of repentance fling;
The bird of time has but a little way
To flutter—and the bird is on the wing.

Cervantes
The Time

There is a time for some things,
And a time for all things;
A time for great things
And a time for small things.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

The Flat Earth Society

2009-07-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Forty years ago this month, Americans landed on the moon. There are still people who don't believe it really happened. They say it was staged on a Hollywood set to make it look like Americans had the capability to go to the moon. That's ridiculous of course. NASA has the pictures taken on the moon, right?

Only they don't. I read in the paper this morning that NASA erased the tapes from the first moon landing and used them again, to save money. What were they thinking? How could they erase history to save a couple of thousand dollars? Historians everywhere are shuddering.

So here is the joke. NASA took tapes of television news from those dates and sent them to a Hollywood studio to be "cleaned up" so they could be used as the official record of the moon landing.

The conspiracy people will be going crazy.

At the time we all thought that the moon landing would be the start of regular travel to and from the moon. When my daughter was young she looked up at the moon and asked "When can I go to the moon?" and I told her that by the time she was grown up she would be able to buy a ticket and go. Didn't happen.

Moon
by Billy Collins

The moon is full tonight
an illustration for sheet music,
an image in Matthew Arnold
glimmering on the English Channel,
or a ghost over a smoldering battlefield
in one of the history plays.

It’s as full as it was
in that poem by Coleridge
where he carries his year-old son
into the orchard behind the cottage
and turns the baby’s face to the sky
to see for the first time
the earth’s bright companion,
something amazing to make his crying seem small.

And if you wanted to follow this example,
tonight would be the night
to carry some tiny creature outside
and introduce him to the moon.

And if your house has no child,
you can always gather into your arms
the sleeping infant of yourself,
as I have done tonight,
and carry him outdoors,
all limp in his tattered blanket,
making sure to steady his lolling head
with the palm of your hand.

And while the wind ruffles the pear trees
in the corner of the orchard
and dark roses wave against a stone wall,
you can turn him on your shoulder
and walk in circles on the lawn
drunk with the light.
You can lift him up into the sky,
your eyes nearly as wide as his,
as the moon climbs high into the night.

by Dylan Thomas

In my craft of sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages.
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

For Olivia

2009-07-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

Twenty five years ago, shortly after I moved into this area, I ended up in the hospital emergency room with a gall bladder attack. I needed a doctor, and Dr. Bhushan was on call, so in one of those lucky coincidences that shape our lives, I became his patient. He’s a wonderful doctor, competent and caring.

Dr. Bhushan has never had a partner, but several years ago he hired a Nurse Practitioner named Olivia who is every bit as wonderful as he. The woman knows what she’s doing. She is careful. She listens to what you say and she laughs with you about the absurdities of life. I never had a problem trusting my health to someone without an MD after her name.

Two days ago I went to see her about the cellulitis on my leg that is healing nicely under her care and she told me she was not going to be able to see me again because she was being laid off. The practice isn’t making enough money to keep her on the payroll.

I know Dr. Bhushan must feel bad about letting her go. She sees 20 patients a day, and her presence allows him to occasionally take a vacation while she keeps the office open. I will be waiting longer for appointments, I fear, and while I am perfectly happy to see Dr. Bhushan, Olivia will be greatly missed.

I have three poems she might like:

Life is no straight and easy corridor along
Which we travel free and unhampered,
But a maze of passages,
Through which we must seek our way,
Lost and confused, now and again
Checked in a blind alley.

But always, if we have faith,
A door will open for us,
Not perhaps one that we ourselves
Would ever have thought of,
But one that will ultimately
Prove good for us.

A.J. Cronin

If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.

Emily Dickinson

The Courage of Women

I think of the courage of women,
how they endure,
how they walk miles to carry back water,
silence their pain, apportion
what’s lift of the rice.
Keepers of eggs without shells,
they know how fragile the days are,
how hope can spill into the ground.

Jane Glazer

A Poem for My Dad

2009-06-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

I talked to my Dad today and wished him Happy Father's Day. He sounded a little short of breath, but he said he felt pretty good. He'd gotten a Father's Day card from someone at the nursing home, but they didn't sign their name to it. He liked the idea that someone remembered.

This is not so much a poem as song lyrics from a song Louis Armstrong sang. My Dad loved Louis Armstrong. He went to hear him in person one time, and got his autograph on a record album. I like the sentiment of these lyrics, and I'm sure my Dad did, too.

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD

(George Weiss / Bob Thiele)

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shakin' hands, sayin' "How do you do?"
They're really saying "I love you"

I hear babies cryin', I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world

Oh yeah

A Poem for David

2009-06-14T14:57:00.001-07:00

The other night at dinner my husband, son and I were discussing the origins of creative thought. How do mathematicians even start to think about string theory? How do writers start to write? Here is one answer.

Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?

by Ron Koertge

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

from Fever, 2006
Red Hen Press

Redecorating

2009-06-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

I'm having my office painted, along with my son's old room that will become my husband's new office. So, we went to the hardware store last weekend to look at paint colors. My husband took one look around, pointed at a paint sample on the shelf and said, "That's the color I want". Just like that. No agonizing. No hesitation. I, of course, brought home 8 sample cans of paint to try on the walls, and numerous little paper paint chips to hold against the furniture. I visited Home Depot to collect paint samples, too. I think I've decided on a beautiful blue that looks great with my dark wood desk and bookcase. But, I'll never really be sure.

What color did my husband pick? Something as close to white as he could get - without actually choosing white. There is a faint hint of gray-green in it. I'm sure he won't lose any sleep over whether it looks good next to the color of the hallway.

A poem to share:

Charles Harper Webb
Buyer’s Remorse

I’d hate to take a job teaching, then spend the rest of my life trying to get out of it. –Mary Oliver

No sooner do the ruck of us declare
“I do”, than we don’t anymore. Go out
for football, and we who never dared
stand up on a pair of ice skates, pout
that we can’t play pro hockey, too. The ink’s
still wet on our tickets to France, and we
wish we’d picked Japan or, come to think
of it, Kauai, New Zealand or Tahiti.
Open any one door and we’re deafened
by the roar—loud as the sea swallowing Atlantis—
as other doors slam shut, and their wind
knocks us down. The serpent didn’t hiss
to Adam and Eve, “Hide your nakedness!”
He wore his best suit and whispered, “Look at this.”

A Poem for Sonia Sotomayor

2009-05-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

I like the woman. I may not agree with everything she ever said or did. I may not agree with everything she says or does on the Supreme Court. But, so what? She seems like an intelligent, capable person, well grounded in reality. I think she is honest and will be fair. So here is a poem in celebration of strong women everywhere.

Dorothy Parker
Observation

If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.

Bowling for Jesus

2009-05-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

Not long ago my sister took me bowling. I had a wonderful time. Not that I'm a good bowler, because I'm not. I bowled maybe slightly better than President Obama, and that was with the bumpers on the lanes. But nobody took the game too seriously. We all laughed and talked and just generally enjoyed ourselves. I mentioned the following poem to my sister, but she hadn't seen it, so I'm sharing it again.

Heaven on Earth

I saw Jesus at the bowling alley,
slinging nothing but gutter balls.
He said, "You've gotta love a hobby
that allows ugly shoes."
He lit a cigarette and bought me a beer.
So I invited him to dinner.

I knew the Lord couldn't see my house
in its current condition, so I gave it an out
of season spring cleaning. What to serve
for dinner? Fish—the logical
choice, but after 2000 years, he must grow weary
of everyone's favorite seafood dishes.
I thought of my Granny's ham with Coca Cola
glaze, but you can't serve that to a Jewish
boy. Likewise pizza—all my favorite
toppings involve pork.

In the end, I made us an all-dessert buffet.
We played Scrabble and Uno and Yahtzee
and listened to Bill Monroe.
Jesus has a healthy appetite for sweets,
I'm happy to report. He told strange
stories which I've puzzled over for days now.

We've got an appointment for golf on Wednesday.
Ordinarily I don't play, and certainly not in this humidity.
But the Lord says he knows a grand miniature
golf course with fiberglass mermaids and working windmills
and the best homemade ice cream you ever tasted.
Sounds like Heaven to me.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Three Poems For Memorial Day

2009-05-25T08:12:00.001-07:00

By three of my favorite poets:

William Butler Yeats

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan’s Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seem waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Siegfried Sassoon

Does it Matter?

Does it matter? – Losing your legs? . . .
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter? – Losing your sight? . . .
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? – those dreams for the pit? . . .
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won’t say that you’re mad;
For they’ll know you’ve fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

Edward Arlington Robinson

The Dark Hills

Dark hills at evening in the west,
Where sunset hovers like a sound
Of golden horns that sang to rest
Old bones of warriors under ground.
For now from all the bannered ways
Where flash the legions of the sun,
You fade—as if the last of days
Were fading, and all wars were done.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all wars really were done?

Susan Boyle

2009-04-24T11:14:00.001-07:00

I got goose bumps as I watched and listened to Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream". Her performance on British television became an internet sensation - maybe because she is just so good - maybe because we all dream dreams.

The following poem reminds me of Susan Boyle:

The Dance

A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,
but when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man she’s with get up to dance,
her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained but confident ardor athwart his shoulder,
drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and moving him with such effortless grace
into the union she’s instantly established with the not at all rhythmically solid music in this second-rate café,

that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some sad conjecture, seems to be allayed,
nothing that we’d ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be admired or be repentant for,
but something to which we’ve never adequately given credence,
which might have consoling implications about how we misbe-lieve ourselves, and so the world,
that world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.

C.K. Williams

Earth Day

2009-04-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

Earth Day was this week, and my sister helped my father plant a flower in a pot for his room at the nursing home.

When my father was young he was in the Civilian Conservation Corps program, planting trees in northern Minnesota. I have a picture of him from then, lean and handsome, standing on the shores of a lake. He said he liked the CCC camp because they fed him all he wanted to eat three times a day.

They feed him three times a day at the nursing home, too.

Martin Van Dorn

Gardener

Under the window, on a dusty ledge,
He peers among the spider webs for seed.
He wonders, groping, if the spiders spun
Beneath that window after all. Perhaps
His eyes are spiders, and new veils are dropped
Each winter and summer morning in the brain.
He sees but silken-dimly, though the ends
Of his white fingers feel more things than are.
More delicate webs, and sundry bags of seed.
That flicker at the window is a wren.
She taps the pane with a neat tail, and scolds.
He knows her there, and hears her – far away,
As if an insect sang in a tree. Whereat
The shelf he fumbles on is distant, too,
And his bent arm is longer than an arm.
Something between his fingers brings him back:
An envelope that rustles, and he reads:
“The coreopsis.” He does not delay.
Down from the rafter where they always hang
He shoulders rake and hoe and shuffles out.

The sun is warm and thick upon the path,
But he goes lightly, under a broad straw
None knows the age of. They are watching him
From upper windows as his slippered feet
Avoid the aster and nasturtium beds
Where he is not allowed to meddle. His preserve
Is further, and no stranger touches it.
Yesterday he was planting larkspur there.
He works the ground and hoes the larkspur out,
Pressing the coreopsis gently in.
With as old hose he plays a quavering stream,
Then shuffles back with the tools and goes to supper.

Over his bowl of mil, wherein he breaks
Five brittle crackers, drifts the question: “Uncle,
What have you planted for the summer coming?”

“Why – hollyhocks,” he murmurs, and they smile.

Teaching Abstinence

2009-04-12T12:41:00.000-07:00

The following two poems are ones I've enjoyed for a while. They are not related to anything in particular going on in my life right now, but I felt like sharing.

She said:

Suitcases

Piled high in a corner of a second-hand store
in Toronto: of course,
it's an immigrant country. Sometimes

all you can take is what you can carry
when you run: a photo, some clothes,
and the useless dead-weight

of your mother tongue.
One was repaired
with electrician's tape—a trade

was all a man needed. A girl,
well, a girl could get married. Indeed
each case opened like an invitation:

the shell-pink lining, the knicker—
like pockets you hook back
with a finger to look

for the little linked keys.
I remember how each held a wraith
of stale air, and how the assistant seemed

taken aback by my accent;
by then, though, I was headed for home,
bored, and already pregnant.

Kathleen Jamie

He said:

Pregnant you sit, and pale,
How you have changed, poor girl.

Plucking at your dress, you sit
And you want to go on weeping, weeping. . .

What makes you women spoil us
And, falling, give us your lips,

Then run beyond the platforms,
Outstripped by speeding trains? . .

How hard you tried to keep up
With the blurring carriage windows. . .

Trains rattle by, express and mail,
Trains to Khabarovsk and elsewhere. . .

From Moscow all the way
To Ashkabad, like numb idols,

Women stand as if turned to stone,
Their bellies proffered to the moon.

And swinging into the light,
In the unpeopled life of the night—

How well the moon, with her
Big belly, understands them.

Andrey Voznesensky

Over My Head

2009-03-30T17:41:00.000-07:00

I guess I must be feeling a little overwhelmed at work these days because I've been re-reading the following two poems.

He said:

Robin Robertson

Waves

I have swum out too far
out of my depth
and the sun has gone;

the hung weight of my legs
a plumb-line,
my fingers raw, my arms lead;

the currents pull like weed
and I am very tired
and cold, and moving out to sea.

The beach is still bright.
The children I never had
run to the edge

and back to their beautiful mother
who smiles at them, looks up
from her magazine, and waves.

She said:

Stevie Smith

Not Waving, But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Pour chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

It's been a while since I've done a "he said" "she said" blog, comparing poems by male and female poets. Yes, Robin is a male poet, and Stevie is a female poet.

Barbie is 50

2009-03-15T10:28:00.001-07:00

I never had a Barbie doll. I did go to a Janis Joplin concert once.

Here is a poem for Barbie:

Hippie Barbie

Barbie couldn't grasp the concept
of free love. After all, she was born
into the world of capitalism
where nothing is free. And all she had
to choose from was a blond or dark-haired Ken
who looked exactly like Midge's boyfriend Alan.
Ken wouldn't even get bell-bottoms
or his first psychedelic pantsuit
until it was way too late, sometime in the mid-seventies.
And then, whenever Barbie tried to kiss him
his peel-off lamb-chop sideburns loosened
and stuck to her cheeks. There were no black male dolls yet
so she guessed a mixed-race love-child
was out of the question. Barbie walked her poodle
past the groovy chicks who showed their bellybuttons
and demonstrated against the war. She couldn't
make a peace sign with her stuck-together fingers.
She felt a little like Sandra Dee at a Janis Joplin concert.

Denise Duhamel

Signifying Nothing

2009-03-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

I planned to write about Rush Limbaugh, but decided he wasn't worth the trouble. He's just a celebrity, like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, only he eats more. He claims to have 20 million listeners. A lot of people read the Star magazine, too, but that doesn't make it gospel.

A bit of Shakespeare seems to relate:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

From MacBeth

Small Pleasures

2009-03-09T11:18:00.001-07:00

My father has always taken pleasure in small things.
He loved sardines in a can that opened with a key.
He loved the way a well-crafted hand tool fit in his palm and did its job.
He loved a mug of steaming black coffee.
He loved shoes that fastened with velcro.

For many years he took pleasure in having a job and working.
After he retired, he took pleasure in that.
He always lived within his means - never had a new car, never had a car payment.
He took pleasure in what he could afford.

The following poem is about one of life's small pleasures. In Bermuda they call it "tinned cream" and put it in tea or make Ovaltine with it. I like it on a bowl of cereal or fruit.

Carnation Milk

Carnation Milk is the best in the land;
Here I sit with a can in my hand—
No tits to pull, no hay to pitch,
You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch.

Anonymous

Uncle Jim

2009-02-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

There are some really interesting characters in my family.

I had an Uncle Herb, who worked at a brewery and drank free beer all day. My mother didn't approve of him, needless to say. Us kids were fascinated by him because he was funny, and because he gave us dimes and quarters whenever he saw us. He named his dog Lucky, which we thought was a pretty cool name. Lucky ate Uncle Herb's dentures one night and survived. I guess he was a lucky dog.

My kids have 2 Uncle Jims - one on each side of the family - neither particularly like the man in the following poem, but I had to share it, because every family has its share of members who don't quite fit the mold.

I heard the poem on "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR Radio one morning this week.

Uncle Jim

What the children remember about Uncle Jim
is that on the train to Reno to get divorced
so he could marry again
he met another woman and woke up in California.
It took him seven years to untangle that dream
but a man who could sing like Uncle Jim
was bound to get in scrapes now and then:
he expected it and we expected it.

Mother said, It's because he was the middle child,
and Father said, Yeah, where there's trouble
Jim's in the middle.

When he lost his voice he lost all of it
to the surgeon's knife and refused the voice box
they wanted to insert. In fact he refused
almost everything. Look, they said,
it's up to you. How many years
do you want to live? and Uncle Jim
held up one finger.
The middle one.

By Peter Meinke

Changes

2009-01-30T11:35:00.000-08:00

My son left home last week to move into his own apartment. I'm thrilled that he can support himself and make it on his own. At the same time, I'm missing his company. He took some stuff with him - a dining table and chairs, a bedside cabinet, a lot of books. He left some stuff behind - his old desk, his twin bed, a lot of books. He took his integrity and his independence and his sense of humor. He left behind the nightly burp and fart show while his parents eat dinner and watch Jeopardy on television.

My daughter got a cat last week. She has been on her own for 10 years and I'm delighted that she has some company in her apartment. I'm calling him my "grand-kitty".

Here is a poem about moving on:

Moving Day

Scraps and small reminders said the scissors to the shelf
Why do I feel empty said the oven to itself
Some of us are hungry said can opener to tin
Tell me said the radio how much you want to win
And take us along when you go.

All the way from Thailand said the topmost row of cans
Rise and turn around again explained the standing fan
None of us are broken said the tumblers to the towel
Scratch me up or polish me said banister to dowel
And take us along when you go.

When they come to get you said a carton to its box
Count your lucky hours said a doorjamb to its locks
Will she will he will she sang the plumbing to the void
Did you mean to build me will I ever be destroyed

Carpet said to ceiling Can I offer any more
Nothing I can give you said the lintel to the door
You always overlook me said the baseboard to the stair
Board games valise said the attic and a folding chair
And take us along when you go.

Stephen Burt

Fear of Flying

2009-01-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

When I fly I am afraid. I do not worry about terrorists taking over the plane. My fear of flying goes way back before 9/11. I am afraid that the wings will fall off, or the tail will fall off. (Don't laugh, it's happened.)

I read a book once that was supposed to help me get over my fear of flight. The book said that even a large jet that loses power to both engines will glide for long distances. Yeh, right, I thought, that jet is not going to glide, it's going to head straight down, crash and burn. The book also said that a plane will float for quite a while after coming down on the water. Sure it will - unless it loses structural integrity on the way down. Have you ever notice how they describe a plane "losing structural integrity" instead of just saying "the tail fell off"?

Then last week a jet took off from Le Guardia Airport and lost power in both engines after hitting a flock of birds. The pilot glided that plane into alignment with the Hudson River and came down with perfect control. The plane floated long enough to evacuate all 155 passengers and 5 crew. People stood on the wings and the inflated slides until rescued minutes later by ferry boats. That is an absolutely amazing story. I watched it over and over on the news channels and cried with relief watching those people get pulled up onto the ferries.

So here is a poem I've been wanting to share for some time. It's about a flight that didn't end so well.

Waiting for Icarus

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the
Worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.

Muriel Rukeyser

A Penny Saved

2009-01-14T11:14:00.001-08:00

Two weeks without shopping have flown by. It's too cold to go to the mall anyhow. Of course, not shopping does not mean not spending. I dropped $450 getting the cats examined, vaccinated and supplied with little packets of flea treatment to put on the backs of their little necks once a month for the next 6 months. Yesterday I spent $200 getting the little skins tags burned off my chest. They sat in a ring under my bra and complained. The insurance won't pay for this because it's cosmetic. Cosmetic? Who looks under my tits? I'm just trying to avoid the itching and irritation. Today I had a barium swallow x-ray of my esophagus and stomach. Apparently I have acid reflux disease. The insurance may not pay for this either as I have not yet met my deductible for the year. Someone once said, getting old is not for sissies. It's not cheap, either.

Ogden Nash wrote the following:

A Penny Saved Is Impossible

The further through life I drift
The more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.
Now thrift is such a boon to its possessor that years ago they began to tax it,
But it is a bane to him that lacks it
Because if you lack it you will go into a shoppe and pay two dollars for a gifte.
But if you possess it you find something just as good for a dollar fifte.
A penny is merely something that you pull several of out of your pocket before you find the nickel you need for a telephone call, if thriftlessness is in your blood,
Whereas to the thrifty a penny is something to be put out at stud.
Thrifty people put two-cent stamps on letters addressed to a three-cent zone,
And thriftless people on the other end pay the postage due and the thrifty people chuckle and rub their hands because the saving on every six letters represents a year’s interest on a dollar loan.
Oh that I were thrifty, because thrifty people leave estates to delight their next of kin with;
Oh that I were thrifty, because then not only would I have money in the bank to pay my bills, but I could leave the money in the bank because I wouldn’t have run up the bills to begin with;
Oh that I were not a spendthrift, oh then would my heart indeed be gladsome,
Because it is so futile being a spendthrift because I don’t know any places where thrift could be spent even if I had some.

You Can't Buy Love

2009-01-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

I plan to avoid unnecessary shopping again this year. I'm aiming for 6 months of no shopping and my husband has agreed to join me. This will probably be harder for him because he loves to shop more than I do. I seldom shop on line, for example, while little boxes come in the mail for him all the time. We can do this. We will have to find other forms of entertainment besides hanging out at the malls. We can still go out to eat, and we can stay home and play with the toys we already own. My daughter has said she will try to take the no-shopping pledge as well. I hope she can. We all have way too much stuff. Not adding to it is refreshing.

Naturally I found the perfect poem. I heard this on the Writer's Almanac on Christmas Eve morning. The line about the closet full of shoes particularly hit home.

Oniomania

Not so much the desire
for owning things
as the inability to choose
between hunter or emerald
green, to buy
just roses, when there are birds
of paradise, dahlias,
delphinium, and baby's breath.
At center an emptiness
large as a half-off sale table.
What could be so wrong
with a little indulgence?
To wander the aisles of fresh
new good things knowing
any of them could be hers?
With a closet full of shoes
unworn back home,
she's looking for love
but it's not for sale —
so she grabs three of
the next best thing.

By Peter Pereira

Christmas Day

2008-12-29T14:34:00.000-08:00

I spoke to my father on Christmas Day. He remembered who I was. He doesn't always. But he seemed puzzled to hear that it was Christmas Day. He said, "Is it really Christmas? It can't be. None of the kids came up to see me. Not even Alan." I asked about Christmas decorations, and he said he hadn't noticed any. I asked about what he had for Christmas dinner and he said he didn't remember, it wasn't anything special. He lives in a very nice nursing home and I know that the staff will have tried hard to make the holidays festive for the residents. I'm sure there were decorations and a good dinner. My Dad just didn't notice any of that. "None of the kids came up to see me," he said again. "Not even Alan."

My husband pointed out, not unkindly, that people may have gone up to see him, but my Dad hadn't remembered they were there. I hope that's true, although the thought carries its own kind of sadness.

I wasn't there. But I remembered to call.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of you spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins

Strike Dispair into the Heart

2008-11-29T11:28:00.000-08:00

Geraldine Brooks wrote a wonderful review about "The Jewel of Medina" by Sherry Brooks. I read it recently in the Washington Post Book World. The book itself sounds dreadful, but the review was a riot, and it reminded me of some of my daughter's reviews of books and television shows. The review starts out:

It's shocking that Random House got cold feet about Muslim reaction and refused to publish Sherry Jones's The Jewel of Medina. But what's even more shocking is that they paid good money to acquire such a dreadful novel in the first place.

And it ends up:

Not everyone has responded to this book negatively. Some respected Muslim feminists such as Irshad Manji and Asra Nomani have written in support of The Jewel of Medina. So perhaps the fairest thing is to let the book speak for itself. Aisha's crush, Safwan, is described as: "Tall, handsome Safwan, with the chiseled face of a purebred steed and hair as thick and glossy as a horse's mane." There are words that strike despair into the heart of a reader. "Steed" is one of them. "Loins" another: "Desire burned like a fire in Muhammad's loins, unquenchable in one night, or two, or three." On almost every page, similes jostle each other for room: "Terror snatched at my throat like the teeth of a crazed dog and hammered the city like a hailstorm." And words strain for meaning in sentences such as this: "Outside, a vulture's cry impaled my waning hopes."

Finally, there's the matter of Aisha's vital signs. Her pulse does some very odd things: "My pulse raced like that galloping horse I'd dreamt so often of riding on with him." "My pulse reared like a spooked horse." "I ignored the whirling of my pulse." "My pulse clipping my throat. . . ." "My pulse surged." "My pulse sped." "I willed my fluttering pulse to calm down." Someone clearly needs to find that girl a cardiologist. Given the other anachronisms in this book, I wouldn't have been surprised had one turned up.

My daughter will remember that I once stopped reading a novel about the childhood of King Arthur's Guinevere because the author kept referring to her as a "fosterling".

And there is that memorable sentence in one of the last "Clan of the Cave Bear" books that says, "Jondalar awoke with a desire to make some tools". I seem to remember some "loins" and "steeds" in those books, too. By her second book, Jean Auel was sadly in need of an editor.

Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

2008-11-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

My youngest sister got a tattoo. She used a quote from an Emily Dickinson poem the says "It's all I have to bring today, this and my heart besides" along with a small heart and a clover. You can't go wrong with Emily Dickson, she says. She likes that poem because she puts her heart into everything she does. So her tattoo represents how she sees herself, and how others know her to be.

This got me thinking about what poem I might use if I decided to get a tattoo. My favorite Emily Dickinson poem starts out "It was not death, for I stood up" and that's not exactly what I would want to put on my shoulder blade.

I love Emily Dickinson, but my favorite poem may be "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. My mother read that poem to us kids when I was about 12 years old, and I've loved it ever since. The poem starts with "Let us go then, you and I" and this is a phrase that my husband and I have used repeatedly to each other since our first date. At the start of that date, one of us said "Let us go then" and the other responded "You and I" and I was hooked. Here was guy who actually read poetry! Awesome. We still say that to each other when we are leaving the house. So I could have that tattooed on my body, or better yet my husband and I could each have half of the phrase immortalized on our flesh.

But, there is another line from Prufrock that I like even better. If you've never read the poem, I need to explain. Prufrock is going to make a visit to someone, and his intentions are to speak out, probably to a young woman, maybe make some kind of declaration. He wants to change his life, but he's afraid he will be misunderstood. He's afraid people will laugh at him. I get the feeling his life is not necessarily happy, but it's comfortable. He wants to change things, but he's frightened. He says "Do I dare disturb the universe?" Later comes one of the saddest lines in poetry - "And would it have been worth it after all?" and you know that Prufrock has chickened out. His moment has passed. He's not going to speak. He's going to get old and be alone because he didn't dare disturb the universe.

So the line I would get on a tattoo is "disturb the universe" - a statement, not a question. It doesn't necessarily represent who I am, but who I want to be. I want to be a person who is not afraid to take a chance. I want to be willing to disturb the universe.

Will I get a tattoo? Maybe some day. So far, I'm still afraid.

By Emily Dickinson

It's all I have to bring today--
This, and my heart beside--
This, and my heart, and all the fields--
And all the meadows wide--
Be sure you count -- should I forget
Some one the sum could tell--
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

Don't Ever Wink at Me Again

2008-10-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

To me the most telling moment of the Vice Presidential debate came when Biden talked about being a single parent after his wife and daughter died in a car accident that also severely injured his two young sons. I've twice ridden in an ambulance with a child of mine, so when Biden choked up, I started to choke up, too.

How did Palin react? She didn't. No murmur of sympathy, no kind look, not even a respectful moment of silence. She launched pertly right into her favorite talking point: "...and John McCain is a maverick..."

So, a poem for Biden, and for those who care.

Rispetti: On the Death of a Child

I thought I heard a knock on the door,
And I jumped up as if you were here again,
Speaking to me, as you so often did,
In a coaxing tone; “Daddy, may I come in?”

When at eventide I walked along the steep seashore
I felt your small hand quite warm in mine.

And where the tide had rolled up stones,
I said aloud; “Look out that you don’t fall!”

Paul Heyes

Work

2008-09-28T16:07:00.001-07:00

I found a part of this poem in the Washington Post Book World a couple of weeks ago.

Both of my children will some day be rain salesmen. It is probably too late for me.

by John Engman

WORK

I wanted to be a rain salesman,
because rain makes the flowers grow,
but because of certain diversions and exhaustions,
certain limitations and refusals and runnings low,
because of chills and pressures, shaky prisms, big blows,
and apes climbing down from banana trees, and dinosaurs
weeping openly by glacial shores, and sunlight warming
the backsides of Adam and Eve in Eden ...
I am paid
to make the screen of my computer glow, radioactive
leakage bearing the song of the smart money muse:
this little bleep went to market, this little clunk has none.

The woman who works the cubicle beside me has pretty knees
and smells of wild blossoms, but I am paid to work
my fingers up and down the keys, an almost sexy rhythm,
king of the chimpanzees picking fleas from his beloved.
I wanted to be a rain salesman , but that's a memory
I keep returning to my childhood for minor repairs:
the green sky cracking, then rain, and after,
those flowers growing faster than I can name them,
those flowers that fix me and make me stare.

I wanted to be a rain salesman,
carrying my satchel full of rain from door to door,
selling thunder, selling the way air feels after a downpour,
but there were no openings in the rain department,
and so they left me dying behind this desk—adding bleeps,
subtracting clunks—and I would give a bowl of wild blossoms,
some rain, and two shakes of my fist at the sky to be living.
Above my desk, lounging in a bed of brushstrokes flowers,
a woman beckons from my cheap Modigliani print, and I know
by the way she gazes that she sees something beautiful
in me. She has green eyes. I am paid to ignore her.

I Learned the Truth at Seventeen

2008-08-30T08:51:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton is an enormously intelligent and hard-working woman. She is a very capable Senator. She is knowledgeable about foreign policy and economics. She ran a good, hard campaign and lost fairly against an opponent whose time had come.

And now comes John McCain, who chooses an inexperienced, right-wing-extremist, former-beauty-queen female as his running mate so that he can attract Hillary supporters. He really doesn't get it, does he?

So, for all the women who, like me, learned the truth at seventeen that women will always be judged first by their looks, and second by their qualifications:

ARTIST: Janis Ian
TITLE: At Seventeen

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems at seventeen

A brown eyed girl in hand-me-downs
Whose name I never could pronounce said
Pity, please, the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve
The rich-relationed home-town queen
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company and haven for the elderly

Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity
Their small town eyes will gape at you in
Dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen

To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today
And dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me

We all play the game and when we dare
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen

I'm Sorry

2008-07-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

When I made a tricky turn out of the Home Depot parking lot this morning, I pulled in front of a speeding minivan. She honked at me, of course, to inform me of her displeasure at having to slow down. I honked back and waved to let her know I was sorry, but somehow I think she may have misinterpreted what I was trying to say.

Why don't we have a quick and easy hand signal to say "I'm sorry"? We have a signal to say "Go screw yourself, you're an idiot anyhow", why not a signal to say "I'm sorry that my actions inconvenienced you, but I didn't mean to be hurtful and I won't do it again"? It might stop some road rage.

Dogs hide their tail between their legs and rub their heads on the ground when they are sorry. This keeps the rest of the pack from tearing them apart.

If cats have a signal to say they're sorry, I've never seen it.

Here is a poem by Stevie Smith about forgiveness, which doesn't have a lot to do with driving sins, but I like it.

Forgive me, forgive me

Forgive me forgive me my heart is my own
And not to be given for any man’s frown
Yet would I not keep it for ever alone.

Forgive me forgive me I thought that I loved
My fancy betrayed me my heart was unmoved
My fancy too often has carelessly roved.

Forgive me forgive me for here where I stand
There is no friend beside me no lover at hand
No footstep by mine in my desert of sand.

Stevie Smith

The State of the Nation

2008-06-28T05:22:00.000-07:00

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

e.e.cummings

The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling —
True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex — cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
— Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud —

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.

Alicia Suskin Ostriker

A Poem for Eliot Spitzer

2008-03-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

Another politician has been caught with his pants down. I read somewhere that the same qualities that make a man a good politician, also make him more likely to be a philanderer. I suppose it's a power thing. But, it's nothing new and I find it hard to be shocked.

Authorship

King David and King Solomon
Led merry, merry lives,
With many, many lady friends
And many, many wives;
But when old age crept over them,
With many, many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.

James B. Naylor

What a Fool Believes

2008-03-01T06:44:00.000-08:00

Ralph Nader is running for president again.

His name on the ballot in Florida in 2000 probably led us to 8 years of George W. Bush, but Mr. Nader is unrepentant. He said last Sunday "If the Democrats can't win by a landslide this year, they don't deserve to govern." Well, that's one way to look at it.

Mr. Nader apparently believes that his is the only voice in America speaking about poverty, the environment or universal health care, and that running for president is the only way to be heard.

I struggled to find a poem to express my feelings about Ralph Nader, and finally came up with song lyrics written by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins:

What a Fool Believes

He came from somewhere back in her long ago
The sentimental fool dont see
Tryin hard to recreate
What had yet to be created once in her life

She musters a smile
For his nostalgic tale
Never coming near what he wanted to say
Only to realize
It never really was

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
Hes watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him...

Somewhere back in her long ago
Where he can still believe theres a place in her life
Someday, somewhere, she will return

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
Hes watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
Theres nothing at all
But what a fool believes he sees...

Possibilities

2008-02-07T13:31:00.000-08:00

One of the secretaries at work loves Obama. She says his speeches are so fine, they show her the possibilities. And I think that may be his appeal to a lot of people.

As Emily Dickinson said:

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of Eye –
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –

A Poem for McCain

2008-02-03T12:06:00.001-08:00

I won't vote for McCain. He's a conservative, and I'm not, and that's the end of it. I respect him as an opponent, however, which is more than I can say for some of the other Republicans.

Here is a poem by Lewis Carroll that reminds me of McCain:

Father William

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white,
And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old, "said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -
Pray, what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth, "said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment - one shilling the box -
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old, " said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my Jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -
What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think l can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off or I'll kick you down stairs!"

More Politics

2008-01-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

New Hamphire has spoken, and in the interests of fairness, a poem for Obama:

by Edna St Vincent Millay

Thursday

And If I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday—
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday,--yes-- but what
Is that to me?

Politics

2008-01-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

I love the political process. It would be a better game than football if there wasn't so much at stake. Poor Hilary. The media had crowned her invincible and inevitable, but now that Iowa has spoken, they are writing her off as finished. Neither bit of hype is true. And what about Huckabee? As someone said on TV this morning, all the Republican pundits in the the country are looking around saying "What the Huck happened?" Huckabee is pretty much an idiot in my book. His views on taxation alone are enough to show he doesn't know what he's doing. I've had enough prayer in the White House. Let's elect someone who is competent.

Any of the Democrats would do.

And now, a poem for Hilary:

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day.
You little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And vows were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

Shoe Envy

2007-10-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

I saw a woman go into the coffee shop yesterday wearing tight blue jeans turned up at the bottom, a form fitted black T-shirt, and a pair of high-heeled, pointy-toed, ankle strapped red shoes. She looked radiant. I know it was the shoes. A woman could conquer the world in shoes like that.

When I was a child I wanted a pair of red shoes. I saw them at the shoe store, shiny red shoes with bows on the toes. I could have been a princess in those shoes. I could have been a ballerina. But my mother wouldn't buy them for me. "Only whores wear red shoes", she said.

My mother definitely bought shoes in the "stump-along-like-that" category, as in the following poem:

Frida Wolfe
Choosing Shoes

New shoes, new shoes,
Red and pink and blue shoes.
Tell me what would YOU choose
If they'd let us buy?

Buckle shoes, bow shoes,
Pretty pointy-toe shoes,
Strappy, cappy low shoes;
Let's have some to try.

Bright shoes, white shoes,
Dandy dance-by-night shoes,
Perhaps-a-little-tight shoes;
Like some? So would I.

BUT Flat shoes, fat shoes,
Stump-along-like-that-shoes,
Wipe-them-on-the-mat shoes
O that's the sort they'll buy.

The working girl in this poem must have taken off her red shoes:

e e cummings

raise the shade
will youse dearie?
rain
wouldn’t that

get yer goat but
we don’t care do
we dearie we should
worry about the rain

huh
dearie?
yknow
I’m

sorry for awl the
poor girls that
gets up god
know when every

day of their
lives
aint you,

oo-oo dearie

not so
hard dear

you’re killing me

The Road

2007-09-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

I read some very good books over the summer. The one that I think about the most is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It starts with a sentence that is almost poetry:

"When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him."

Civilization has ended and the man and his son are on the road, moving towards the coast. We never find out what ended civilization. There are no big-headed aliens attacking humans, or anything like that. We don't even know for sure why the man and the boy are walking towards the coast, except they need to keep on the move, and the coast is warmer than the mountains.

There are gangs of "bad people" who roam the earth, seeking out the weak to kill them and eat them. The man and boy need to stay away from the "bad people" while trying to survive, and trying to remain one of the "good people". The man's wife kills herself before the book starts. She couldn't stand the fear of what might happen.

The book asks some basic questions: If all of civilization was gone, what would you need to do to survive? And more importantly, what would you be willing to do to survive? Would you be willing to kill to survive? Would you be willing to prey on the weak and eat them? Would you remain one of the "good people" even if it cost you your life?

Can we defeat terrorism by turning into terrorists ourselves?

I am reminded of a poem by Stephen Crane:

A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.

For Grady

2007-09-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

Grady died this week. I think he was ready to go. He didn't want a funeral, didn't want a minister talking about him, so they will get together and celebrate his life. I can't be there, but I will be remembering him, too.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

As Befits a Man

I don’t mind dying—
But I’d hate to die all alone!
I want a dozen pretty women
To holler, cry, and moan.

I don’t mind dying
But I want my funeral to be fine:
A row of long tall mamas
Fainting, fanning and crying.

I want a fish-tail hearse
And sixteen fish-tail cars,
A big brass band
And a whole truck load of flowers.

When they let me down,
Down into the clay,
I want the women to holler:
Please don’t take him away!
Ow-ooo-oo-o!
Don’t take daddy away!

Langston Hughes

If I should go before the rest of you,
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone.
Not when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must,
Parting is hell,
But life goes on,
So sing as well.

Joyce Grenfell

A Poem for Grady

2007-09-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

I found this poem in the Washington Post Book World Poet's Corner on Sunday.

Grady is a Viet Nam Veteran and a drummer. He married my sister many years ago, worked hard, liked to hunt, road a motor bike and occasionally raised hell. Now he's in Hospice care.

Morphine

The man lying in bed is dying
from cancer, flecks of bone
flow like ice in his blood.

Outside it’s snowing,
lightly in the street, white petals
from a pear tree.

Everything is starting
to feel immense. His children,
like four pylons,

quietly resemble each other.
They pull at glasses
of Dewar’s. They can’t help

but notice the petals, the snow
blowing together in the street.
They chat politely, take salt

from his forehead,
on their lips, as they go
out the door, agreeing

he looks bad. They don’t know
the man’s floating on
a blue raft, an ocean, a small

Pacific. He’s smoking
a pleasant cigarette; it’s nice,
lukewarm, no undertow.

James Hoch

I Shopped Today

2007-08-17T14:10:00.001-07:00

I didn't mean to, but I was at the mall waiting for my hair appointment and I wandered into the book store. I got three paperback books off the "3 for 2" table, paid for them, and walked out feeling a little guilty, but not much.

You will have to forgive me; I have already forgiven myself. We are leaving for Watervale next week, and the thought of a week at Watervale without a stack of new books to read was too dismal to contemplate.

So what did I buy? What brought to an end my year of not shopping?

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, recommended by my sister;
"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, recommended by my new boss and an Oprah's Book Club selection; and
"Blink" by Malcom Gladwell, the author of "Tipping Point", a book I really enjoyed.

This doesn't mean that I am going to go crazy with shopping. I plan to overlook this little lapse and continue to resist mindless shopping for the balance of the year. Not buying new things has helped me to appreciate the things I already own.

Two poems today, just because I like them:

Lending Out Books
Hal Sirowitz

You’re always giving, my therapist said.
you have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she’ll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn’t have the time
to read them, & she’s afraid if she sees you again
you’ll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.

The Fiddler of Dooney
William Butler Yeats

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.
I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.
When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,

He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:
And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"
And dance like a wave of the sea.

Of Jane and Emily

2007-08-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

I saw the movie "Becoming Jane" last week. It is a romance, based, very loosely, on Jane Austin's life, and in particular a sentence in one of her letters to her sister, saying that she had flirted with a Mr. Lefroy at a party. The movie got a lot of things just right - her father the country parson - her dashing brother who married cousin Philadelphia (whose first husband lost his head to the guillotine in France) - Jane's lively wit.

As for the romance between Jane and Mr. Lefroy - well, all the romantics in the theater wished it were true. Jane Austin wrote the most wonderful love stories and we all wanted to think that she had once experienced a passion of her own. But Jane Austin never married. She was very briefly engaged, but called it off, choosing to remain single rather than marry without love.

Another wonderful writer who never married is the poet, Emily Dickinson. There are rumors of an unrequited love for a married man, but no one really knows, and no one believes there was anything physical between them. However, there are tantalizing hints of passion in her writing that give one pause.

The following poems are by or about Emily, but are for Jane as well.

Emily Dickinson

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

Billy Collins

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything—
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that Reason is a plank,
that Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

For My Sister

2007-07-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

My sister is a remarkable person, and a whole lot of fun. She writes, too, though I won't publish what she's written. These poems are for her:

Ladies

Dorothy Parker

The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...

So far, I've had no complaints.

Touch Me

Stanley J. Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

From “Garden”
II

Hilda Doolittle

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

Nobody is Perfect

2007-07-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

The first baseball game I ever saw all the way through was on September 2, 1972. This was the year I was married. My husband and I had recently moved to the Chicago area, and we were finally able to watch the Cubs on WGN. Milt Pappas was pitching for the Cubs against the San Diego Padres. I was sitting by my husband trying to see what he found so fascinating about watching baseball, and particularly the Cubs. Of course, that was the game in which Pappas came within one pitch of a perfect game. He retired the first 26 batters. He went 2 and 2 to the next batter, then the umpire called the next 2 pitches balls and the player walked. Pappas retired the next batter for a no-hitter and the Cubs won. I think Jack Brickhouse must have been announcing, and he was hoarse with excitement.

I realize now what a great game that was. But I have to admit, at the time I was complaining to my husband that "nothing is happening - no one even gets to first base". I was almost convinced that baseball was the slowest, most boring game ever invented. I was not too bored to continue to watch the Cubs, however, and I've been something of a baseball fan ever since. I've never seen another no-hitter, but I haven't given up hope.

Bill Buckner used to be a Cub, so I was immediately attracted to the following poem. I like the poem, too, because of the image of life coming at you so fast you miss it.

This poem is also about forgiveness - not only forgiving Buckner, but forgiving yourself and being forgiven.

Forgiving Buckner
John Hodgen

The world is always rolling between our legs.
It comes for us, dribbler, slow roller,
humming its goat song, easy as pie.

We spit in our gloves, bend our stiff knees,
keep it in front of us, our fathers' advice,
but we miss it every time, its physic, its science,
and it bleeds on through, blue streak, heart sore,
to the four-leaf clovers deep in right field.

The runner scores, knight in white armor,
the others out leaping, bumptious, gladhanding,
your net come up empty, Jonah again.
Even the dance of the dead won't come near you,
heart in your throat, holy of holies,
the oh of your mouth as the stone rolls away,
as if it had come from before you were born
to roll past your life to the end of the world,
till the world comes around again, gathering steam,
heading right for us again and again,
faith of our fathers, world without end.

Empty Nest

2007-07-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

My son left home on Friday so I rented a carpet shampooer and cleaned the carpets upstairs. There are those who will remember that when my daughter left home I cleaned all the windows in the house. It's the same thing, really, cleaning the empty nest.

My husband does not clean when under stress. He buys himself something. (Ask him what he bought himself at the Apple store.) He did help with the carpet cleaning, moving furniture at my direction, and actually looking up the instructions on the website so I could use the machine properly. Unfortunately, I had already dumped about 2 gallons of water into my son's bedroom rug before we figured out what I was doing wrong. I got most of it vacuumed up. It will dry out.

My son will say, "I haven't really left. I'm just visiting my sister." But he only bought a one-way ticket, and he took his resume with him. It's OK. He needs to find his dream.

Edwin Arlington Robinson
From Tristram

I am not one
Who must have everything; yet I must have
My dreams if I must live, for they are mine.
Wisdom is not one word and often another,
Till words are like dry leaves under a tree;
Wisdom is like a dawn that comes up slowly
Out of an unknown ocean.

The Road Not Taken

2007-06-22T07:41:00.001-07:00

I understand that the Vatican recently issued the 10 Commandments of Driving. I haven't seen them, but I would like to propose another:

If you are in the LEFT TURN ONLY lane, TURN LEFT.

It's a simple concept, but one that a lot of people don't seem to understand. At least 3 times a week, I get into a left turn only lane, confidently expecting to turn left. The green arrow come on, and the idiot in front of me inches forward, then stops, throws on his right turn signal and waits to merge into the forward moving traffic. Does he imagine that a fast-moving rush-hour stream of traffic is going to let him merge? Does he think that the people behind him, who really do want to turn left before the light changes, are thinking sweet thoughts about him and wishing him well? Guess again. Yesterday I saw a dyslexic minivan suddenly swerve out of the left turn only lane, cross two east bound lanes of traffic, and turn right.

No, the only thing to do if you are in a left turn only lane is turn left. If you didn't want to turn left, turn anyways, find a safe place to turn around and go back. The people behind you will bless you. Anyhow, who knows what you might discover on your little side trip.

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

If Bees Are Few

2007-06-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the bees are disappearing? According to an article in the Washington Post, honeybees are vanishing. No one knows why. No one even knows where they are going. There are no piles of dead bees anywhere, but hives are empty. There is some concern because agriculture depends on bees for pollination; and, if the bees are leaving, what species will be checking out next?

Do I have a poem for the situation?

Of course.

Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

The Year of Not Shopping Continues

2007-05-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

OK, it's not really not shopping. I shop for food, I shop for gifts, I shop for plants and mulch to put in the yard. But I am still not buying things for myself. Still no new shoes, clothes, furniture, books, towels or gardening tools. The Bed, Bath & Beyond Store was a real challenge, with all the neat kitchen utensils, but I bought not a thing. I've gone to the mall (to buy my son some new clothes), but I hurried past the Nordstroms shoe department. Oh, the cute summer sandals, the darling little flats I saw from the corner of my eye, but I didn't even stop.

I've been shopping, too, for a sink and toilet and marble tiles to redo my first floor powder room. I haven't bought anything, but I've been to the Expo Design center twice now, dragging my husband along, to look. Some time this year I will get hold of Ivan, who repaired the kitchen ceiling when it got leaked on, who installed the pot lights above the fireplace, and who painted the outside of the house, and ask him if he can install tile and bathroom fixtures. I suspect he can do all of that. Once I show him what I want, and get an estimate, I may have the bathroom redone. I'm not in a hurry.

I read a book recently called The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith. It is the latest in his series about the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency; I really enjoyed it. His main character is Mma Ramotswe, in Botswana, who is a detective, but not a typical one. There is no violence in these books, not even a lot of suspense. They are simple, cheerful little stories. I'm including an excerpt:

From The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
by Alexander McCall Smith

"The world, Mma Ramotswe believed, was composed of big things and small things. The big things were written large, and one could not but be aware of them –wars, oppression, the familiar theft by the rich and the strong of those simple things that the poor needed, those scraps which would make their life more bearable; this happened, and could make even the reading of a newspaper an exercise in sorrow. There were all those unkindnesses, palpable, daily, so easily avoidable; but one could not think just of those, thought Mma Ramotswe, or one would spend one’s time in tears—and the unkindnesses would continue. So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one’s own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?"

I got a poetry collection for Mother's Day called Dancing With Joy. This poem seems to fit with the above quotation:

A Brief for the Defense
by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music, despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

What a Friend We Have in Jesus

2007-05-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

I've heard people say they have a personal relationship with Jesus, but I've never really understood what they meant until I read this poem:

Heaven on Earth

I saw Jesus at the bowling alley,
slinging nothing but gutter balls.
He said, "You've gotta love a hobby
that allows ugly shoes."
He lit a cigarette and bought me a beer.
So I invited him to dinner.

I knew the Lord couldn't see my house
in its current condition, so I gave it an out
of season spring cleaning. What to serve
for dinner? Fish—the logical
choice, but after 2000 years, he must grow weary
of everyone's favorite seafood dishes.
I thought of my Granny's ham with Coca Cola
glaze, but you can't serve that to a Jewish
boy. Likewise pizza—all my favorite
toppings involve pork.

In the end, I made us an all-dessert buffet.
We played Scrabble and Uno and Yahtzee
and listened to Bill Monroe.
Jesus has a healthy appetite for sweets,
I'm happy to report. He told strange
stories which I've puzzled over for days now.

We've got an appointment for golf on Wednesday.
Ordinarily I don't play, and certainly not in this humidity.
But the Lord says he knows a grand miniature
golf course with fiberglass mermaids and working windmills
and the best homemade ice cream you ever tasted.
Sounds like Heaven to me.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Then there is this poem by ee cummings:

no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ

jesus ) my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed (as
close as I’m to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness

Two Poems for Mother's Day

2007-05-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

You raise your children to be independent, and to think for themselves, but you still cry a little when they leave the nest.

Only a little, though. I still remember the thrill of accomplishment I felt the first time my husband and I said, "You kids feed yourselves, we're going out to dinner".

For my daugher:

To a Daughter Leaving Home

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Linda Pastan

For my son:

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

Robert Hershon

And no, my son's hair is not receding. It's just a poem.

Hate Radio

2007-04-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school women played "half-court" basketball. Each team had 3 forwards on one side of the court and 3 guards on the other side of the court and no team member could cross the center line. Full court basketball was considered too strenuous for developing females. I remember being warned that too much exercise could cause my female organs to become displaced, preventing future child bearing.

Things have changed somewhat. Women today play full court basketball and no one, to my knowledge, has had her uterus fall out as a result. Women now go to college on basketball scholarships.

But some things never change. Strong female atheletes still frighten some men. How else do you explain Don Imus calling the Rutger women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos"?

Women playing basketball never has been, and never will be, a joke. Don Imus is not a "good man" as he describes himself. Good people don't spew hateful ideas on the public airways in the name of having fun. Sexism and racism are hurtful.

I'm not sorry he got fired.

I am sorry for the atheletes who were the innocent victims of his attack. They deserved better.

Incident

Countee Cullen

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

April

2007-03-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

No particular reason for these poems. They are all by women, all mention April, and all reflect on death. Plus - I enjoy them.

Dorothy Parker

I shall come back without fanfaronade
Of wailing wind and graveyard panoply;
But, trembling, slip from cool Eternity-
A mild and most bewildered little shade.
I shall not make sepulchral midnight raid,
But softly come where I had longed to be
In April twilight's unsung melody,
And I, not you, shall be the one afraid.

Strange, that from lovely dreamings of the dead
I shall come back to you, who hurt me most.
You may not feel my hand upon your head,
I'll be so new and inexpert a ghost.
Perhaps you will not know that I am near-
And that will break my ghostly heart, my dear.

Sara Teasdale

When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Spring in the Garden

Ah, cannot the curled shoots of the larkspur that you loved so,
Cannot the spiny poppy that no winter kills
Instruct you how to return through the thawing ground and the thin snow
Into this April sun that is driving the mist between the hills?

A good friend to the monkshood in a time of need
You were, and the lupine’s friend as well;
But I see the lupine lift the ground like a tough weed
And the earth over the monkshood swell,

And I fear that not a root in all this heaving sea
Of land, has nudged you where you lie, has found
Patience and time to direct you, numb and stupid as you still must be
From your first winter underground.

Loch Ness

2007-03-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

When my daughter was in college she spent one summer working in Scotland. I joined her for the last three weeks of summer and we travelled Scotland, Wales and England, riding the British Rails and staying at various Beds and Breakfasts. The trip was one of the best of my life. I wouldn't have gone if not for my daughter, because I am normally afraid to fly, and flying is kind of necessary to get the Britain these days, but happily I made the flight.

One of the most memorable days of the trip was in Inverness, Scotland.

We signed up to go on "Gordon's Loch Ness Tour". Gordon was a retired biologist with a large van. He loaded up two American's (my daughter and I), a Canadian family of three, two Japanese and three Italians and drove us out to the Loch. Once there Gordon served us tea, kept hot in a couple of thermos jugs.

(I kept confusing the British by asking for "hot tea", because the British can't even imagine drinking tea any other way but hot. They don't drink iced tea. They don't drink iced anything.)

Once tea was served, Gordon asked if anyone wanted to swim, and offered his collection of bathing suits for our use. No one wanted to swim in the cold lake, but Gordon said he would. Then he calmly removed all his clothing on the beach and put on a pair of swim trunks. Now the Japanese and Italians took no notice at all of the brief public nudity. The Canadians looked vaguely uncomfortable, but kept talking, while the Americans dropped their mouths open in amazement and didn't know where to look. Americans just don't do nudity in public. I think most of them don't even do nudity in private. Maybe it's the Puritan in us.

After his swim, Gordon led us on a hike up the mountain above Loch Ness. It was a three or four hour hike through the trees, with a stop for sandwiches, and up to a glorious meadow of heather. The view from the top was spectacular, and well worth the climb. Getting down the mountain was actually harder than getting up, but the whole trip was exhilarating, and I am grateful to Gordon, and my daughter, for making it possible.

We didn't see the Loch Ness monster, we saw a little more of Gordon than we bargained for, and we saw some interesting cultural differences.

My Picture Left In Scotland

I now think love is rather deaf than blind,
For else it could not be
That she
Whom I adore so much should so slight me,
And cast my love behind;
I’m sure my language to her was as sweet,
And every close did meet
In sentence of as subtle feet,
As hath the youngest He
That sits in shadow of Apollo’s tree.

Oh, but my conscious fears
That fly my thoughts between,
Tell me that she hath seen
My hundred of grey hairs,
Told seven-and-forty years,
Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace,
My mountain belly and my rocky face;
And all these through her eyes have stopped her ears.

Ben Johnson

Forgive Me, Forgive Me

2007-03-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

So the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is calling homosexual acts immoral. This from a guy whose subordinates kill, maim and torture people.

Stevie Smith
Forgive me, forgive me

Forgive me forgive me my heart is my own
And not to be given for any man’s frown
Yet would I not keep it for ever alone.

Forgive me forgive me I thought that I loved
My fancy betrayed me my heart was unmoved
My fancy too often has carelessly roved.

Forgive me forgive me for here where I stand
There is no friend beside me no lover at hand
No footstep by mine in my desert of sand.

The Year of Not Shopping Part 2

2007-03-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

I continue not to shop for things, and it's going pretty well. I'm staying out of the malls entirely, and at the bookstore I grab a magazine to read and head for the coffee shop. Then after the family has shopped, I put the magazine back on the rack and leave. I did buy two bunches of tulips at the grocery store last Saturday, but they don't count because I won't have to store them. I've been reading and rereading books I already own. I went through the first six Harry Potter books, and loved them all over again. Fortunately, my husband has already pre-ordered the seventh Harry Potter book from Amazon.com (It's due out in July) so I can read it when he's done with it. Next, I actually went to the Blockbuster Video to rent, rather than buy, the four Harry Potter movies. I have not rented a movie in years, but why stop with the books? The second movie wasn't available (all checked out, I guess) and I was quite content to have three to watch, but the husband went to Best Buy to buy the missing movie so I could watch them all in order. He's a sweetheart, but is it cheating to not shop, and then have someone shop for you?

I've talked at least one person at work into not shopping with me.

Could two people not shopping account for the recent stock market losses? If so, I'm sorry.

Sara Teasdale
Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like the curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Hymns of a Fat Woman

2007-02-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

My sister lost about 40 pounds last year. She did it the old fashioned way, by eating healthy foods and exercising. She joined a gym and did aerobic exercise and strength training while eating less. She's a size 4 now, bless her heart. She goes with my nieces to the Karaoke Bar at the bowling alley. Men half her age hit on her at the gym. She will probably live forever.

Like many a reformed sinner, she now wants to save the rest of us who are mired in gluttony and sloth. She is trying to market herself as a "lifestyle coach". She will help you find a healthy diet and start an exercise program. She will help you join a gym and a hire personal trainer, if that's what you need. She will go through your pantry with you and toss out fattening foods. She will grocery shop beside you and help you read food labels and figure portion sizes. I think she's really on to something here. A lot of people need encouragement to be healthy, and most people don't get that encouragement from their environment.

I haven't signed up for her services, however. The following two poems are more my style.

The Hymn of a Fat Woman

Joyce Huff

All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.

Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.

Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.

Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale

Jane Yolen

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.

I am thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.

I found these two poems, and many other wonderful bits of poetry at the Library or Congress web site page, 180 Poems: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Birds

2007-02-09T12:43:00.000-08:00

My radio alarm goes off every week day morning at 6:30 a.m. I usually lie in bed for another half hour, listening to National Public Radio tell me the news, weather and traffic. They have such soothing voices on NPR, even the worst news or the most snarled traffic doesn't sound too threatening.

I keep the radio turned low; I can also hear the birds in the yard, excited about the food in the bird feeder.

This past week, every morning at 6:50, Garrison Keillor was on the radio for a brief monologue he calls The Writer's Almanac. He talks about a writer or two, usually on the writer's birthday. Then he reads a favorite poem.

I just love it. What a great way to start the day - soft voices, bird song and poetry.

Check out the associated web site: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2007/02/05/#thursday

I heard him read the following on Thursday as I lay in bed listening to the birds in my yard:

Why I Need the Birds

When I hear them call
in the morning, before
I am quite awake,
my bed is already traveling
the daily rainbow,
the arc toward evening;
and the birds, leading
their own discreet lives
of hunger and watchfulness,
are with me all the way,
always a little ahead of me
in the long-practiced manner
of unobtrusive guides.

By the time I arrive at evening,
they have just settled down to rest;
already invisible, they are turning
into the dreamwork of trees;
and all of us together —
myself and the purple finches,
the rusty blackbirds,
the ruby cardinals,
and the white-throated sparrows
with their liquid voices —
ride the dark curve of the earth
toward daylight, which they announce
from their high lookouts
before dawn has quite broken for me.

by Lisel Mueller

The Year of Not Shopping

2007-02-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I read about a man who gave up buying things for a year. He bought food, of course, and necessary medicines, and gifts for other people, but nothing else. Then last fall I read about a group of friends in California (where else?) who signed a compact to not buy anything new for a year. They allowed themselves to buy services such as haircuts and going out to eat, but no new things, only used or recycled things. They bought used gifts for people, even re-cycled brake pads for their car. The whole idea intrigued me and I decided to give it a try.

For 2007 I am not shopping for new things: no clothes, shoes, dishes, towels, books or furniture. I am not buying anything that will add to the burden of possessions I already own. I am spending money on food, medicine, gifts (even new items for gifts), and lattes. I am paying to have my hair done. And, as I pointed out to my husband, I have no prohibition against other people buying things for me.

So how is it going? Well, I did pretty well in January. I bought a new battery for my car because it needed one and I need my car to get to work, and I'm not sure I could have found a re-cycled battery. Then I bought new eye glasses, but only because my old ones broke and couldn't be fixed, and anyhow my vision insurance paid for most of them.

Norah Jones released a new album. I probably wouldn't have noticed, but both my kids pointed it out to me because they know I really liked her previous albums. But I wouldn't buy it. My son offered to get it for me for Mother's Day, which was really sweet of him, but then I remembered the itunes gift card my daughter got me for Christmas, so I ordered the album from itunes. I figured that wasn't really buying it because the gift card had already been paid for.

I went to Best Buy today and bought my son a birthday gift. That was a challenge. Any number of items caught my eye, but I didn't buy anything else. Then I went to the Barnes and Noble book store next to Best Buy, and that was really a challenge. So many interesting books! I almost bought one as a gift for David, but I put it back. He hadn't asked for it, and I really just wanted to give it to him and then borrow it back to read myself. I have unread books at home, so I was strong.

I've started a list of things I might want to buy in 2008. The funny thing is, I've already forgotten about most of the items I've put on the list.

My husband is quite amused by all this. He says he will shop twice as hard to make sure the economy doesn't suffer.

I plan to continue one month at a time. I will be saving money, time and energy. I will be enjoying the possessions I already own. I'll keep you posted.

I don't really have a poem about not shopping, but this poem amuses me, so I'm sharing it:

From “The Walrus and the Carpenter”

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.’

Lewis Carroll

Happy New Year

2006-12-19T10:49:00.000-08:00

When I was three I got a baby doll for Christmas - or it may have been my birthday which is right before Christmas. I already had one baby doll that I had cleverly named "Dolly", so I named the new doll "Big Dolly". My mother told me it was nice to have two dolls, but that there was a little girl she knew who didn't have any dolls at all and suggested that I give my old doll away. We washed and dressed "Dolly" and set off up the street. I remember very clearly a thin woman in a housedress with a little girl behind her skirts. I gave the little girl "Dolly" and, after some prodding from her mother, she thanked me. Then my mother and I walked home, me clutching "Big Dolly" to my chest. I had lots of dolls through the years, but have never forgotten the first one.

When my children were young I asked them one year to clean out their toy boxes between Thanksgiving and Christmas and to donate any unused toys to the Salvation Army so that there would be room for new toys from Santa. I found out later that my son went to school and told his teacher, "My mother says if I don't give away half my toys, Santa won't bring me anything." I hope she understood what I was trying to teach him.

I still get bouts of nervousness when I think I have too much stuff, or too many unused items around the house. Having is nice, but sharing is nicer.

I went to my diabetic education class today, and found the following poem on the door:

To leave the old with a burst of song;
To recall the right and forgive the wrong;
To forget the things that bind you fast
To the vain regrets of the year that’s past;
To have the strength to let go your hold
Of the not worth while of the days grown old;
To dare go forth with a purpose true,
To the unknown task of the year that’s new;
To help your brother along the road,
To do his work and lift his load;
To add your gift to the world’s good cheer,
Is to have and to give a Happy New Year.

---Author Unknown

The Library of Congress

2006-11-18T16:58:00.000-08:00

When my son was in high school he was given an assignment to "shadow" someone at work for a day and write about the experience. Most of the students followed a parent at work, which is what my daughter had done a few years before. David, however, chose to spend the day with the owner/manager of a small, used-book store where we frequently buy books. He got along well for the day, and Edie enjoyed his company so much she offered him a job. He ended up working there on and off for about eight years.

Now in his last year of college, David needs to complete an intership before he can graduate. He applied at the Library of Congress, because that seemed like a good fit for him. He loves books of all sorts, and is really quite organized. This week they called and offered him an internship with their Folk Life Project. It's not a paid internship, but you never know. Maybe it will be like the book store, and eight years from now he will still be there.

And now a couple of poems about work:

Like the star
Shining afar
Slowly now
And without rest,
Let each man turn, with steady sway,
Round the task that rules the day
And do his best.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To Be Of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Marge Piercy

We Won

2006-11-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

I dragged my son out of bed Tuesday morning to vote. He didn't want to vote, didn't like either of the candidates, was tired of voting for people who didn't win, etc., etc., being his usual Mr. Contrary Man. I drove him to the polling place and threatened to leave him to walk home unless he voted for the right man. Now that control of the Senate has come down to who wins the Senate race in Virginia I'm telling my son that it is his vote that made the difference. His, and the votes of 7000 other good citizens who maybe didn't think voting was worth the trouble, but who voted anyhow.

So, I don't want to gloat, but my spirits were definitely lifted by the election results.

By Robert Browning:

The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven—
All’s right with the world!

Siegfried Sassoon
Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields; on, on, and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted,
And beauty came like the setting sun.
My heart was shaken with tears, and horror
Drifted away…O but everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Some Poems

2006-11-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

Three poems today, two for Halloween and one for the midterm elections.
(I realize I posted one of these poems recently, but I like it, so I'm using it again.)

Don't forget to vote!

Karl Krolow
Someone
translated by Herman Salinger

Someone, in the twilight, is taking a walk
And singing.

The wolf from the fable
Is in flight.

The wild plum thickets
Hover before him.
The man in the moon
Starts up out of the yellow straw
Whenever anyone goes past.

The wind’s hand rubs
The hazel nuts
Whenever the darkness
Likes anybody.

Somebody takes the night
Upon his shoulders,
Gives love her names,
And the hands of the dead
Begin again in the dust
To stir.

Charles Simic
Something Large Is in the Woods

That's what the leaves are telling us tonight.
Hear them frighten and be struck dumb
So that we sit up listening to nothing,
Which is always more worrisome than something.

The minutes crawl like dog fleas up our legs.
We must wait for whatever it is to identify itself
In some as-yet-unspecified way
As the trees are rushing to warn us again,

The branches beat against the house to be let in,
And then change their minds abruptly.
Think how many leaves are holding still in the woods
With no wish to add to their troubles

With something so large closing upon us?
It makes one feel vaguely heroic
Sitting so late with no light in the house
And the night dark and starless out there.

Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave a stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

Make It Work

2006-10-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

I hired a new secretary last week. She is a strange, sad soul. She possesses neither beauty nor brains not the social skills that would make her likeable. What else can I say about someone who wonders if Thanksgiving will be on a Thursday again this year? What can I say about someone who breaks down in tears and leaves the room when asked to introduce herself at a staff meeting? We want to like her. We want to clasp her to our collective bosom and make her one of our own. But so far she is giving us very little to go on. Well, as Tim Gunn always says on Project Runway, we will just have to make it work.

You may wonder why I hired her. I had a lovely secretary, a delightful, intelligent woman, but she moved on to a better job, and I can't blame her. I advertised for a replacement and fate sent me Sharon as the only candidate.

I could have non-selected and tried again, but I heard a rumor that another manager was leaving and his secretary Evelyn would be given the next available vacancy.

I'll take Sharon, thank you very much.

Sharon may be out in left field, but Evelyn is up in the bleachers laying religious tracts on seats, unaware that there is a game in progress.

Purple Cow: Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.

Frank Gelett Burgess

There Once Was a Guineable Ami-pig

2006-08-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at the Hole-in-the-Wall used book store I found a copy of Beatrix Potter's Nursery Rhyme Book. This was a favorite of my daugher's when she was very young. We used to read them together until she knew them by heart. She liked to say, "There once was a guineable ami-pig." instead of "There once was an amiable guinea-pig" and it cracked us both up. Is there anything more fun than discovering your child has a sense of humor?

Two poems for my daughter:

There once was an amiable guinea-pig,
Who brushed back his hair like a periwig—

He wore a sweet tie
As blue as the sky –

And his whiskers and buttons
Were very big.

Beatrix Potter

Appley Dapply, a little
brown mouse,
Goes to the cupboard in
some-body’s house.

In somebody’s cupboard
There’s everything nice,
Cake, cheese, jam, biscuits,
-- All charming for mice!

Appley Dapply has little
sharp eyes,
And Appley Dapply is so fond
of pies.

Beatrix Potter

The Sunday Paper

2006-07-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about the plumbing leak that ruined my kitchen ceiling, but after reading the Sunday paper I don't like to complain. Most of the world is so much worse off than I am.

Charles Simic
Something Large Is in the Woods

That's what the leaves are telling us tonight.
Hear them frighten and be struck dumb
So that we sit up listening to nothing,
Which is always more worrisome than something.

The minutes crawl like dog fleas up our legs.
We must wait for whatever it is to identify itself
In some as-yet-unspecified way
As the trees are rushing to warn us again,

The branches beat against the house to be let in,
And then change their minds abruptly.
Think how many leaves are holding still in the woods
With no wish to add to their troubles

With something so large closing upon us?
It makes one feel vaguely heroic
Sitting so late with no light in the house
And the night dark and starless out there.

Wislawa Szymborska
The End and the Beginning

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.

But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.

The Maple Tree

2006-07-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

I have a maple tree in the front yard. It's too close to the driveway and to the power lines. The roots come up through what's left of the grass. It doesn't shade the house, only the yard, preventing me from growing grass or anything else. And, the bottom limbs are too low so I bump my head on it when I'm trying to mow. So I should have it taken out.

I know some tree guys who would be happy to remove it (for a price, of course). The main tree guy says maple trees are just the weeds of the tree world anyhow. But still, it's a tree. It's a living thing. Can I really just have it chopped down for my own convenience? What would the other trees think?

The Hawthorne Tree

Side by side, not
hand in hand: I watch you
walking in the summer garden—things
that can’t move
learn to see; I do not need
to chase you through
the garden; human beings leave
signs of feeling
everywhere, flowers
scattered on the dirt path, all
white and gold, some
lifted a little by
the evening wind; I do not need
to follow where you are now,
deep in the poisonous field, to know
the cause of your flight, human
passion or rage: for what else
would you let drop
all you have gathered?

Louise Gluck

Three Poems

2006-07-02T19:31:00.000-07:00

I get some of my best poems from the Sunday Washington Post Book World. Here are two I found recently and loved.

The first makes reference to "folding chairs":

Moving Day

Scraps and small reminders said the scissors to the shelf
Why do I feel empty said the oven to itself
Some of us are hungry said can opener to tin
Tell me said the radio how much you want to win
And take us along when you go.

All the way from Thailand said the topmost row of cans
Rise and turn around again explained the standing fan
None of us are broken said the tumblers to the towel
Scratch me up or polish me said banister to dowel
And take us along when you go.

When they come to get you said a carton to its box
Count your lucky hours said a doorjamb to its locks
Will she will he will she sang the plumbing to the void
Did you mean to build me will I ever be destroyed

Carpet said to ceiling Can I offer any more
Nothing I can give you said the lintel to the door
You always overlook me said the baseboard to the stair
Board games valise said the attic and a folding chair
And take us along when you go.

Stephen Burt

Don't think about this next poem too hard - just enjoy.

Pumpkin Envy

How many hours did I lie in bed, thought stapling
my sixteen-year-old arms to the sheets,
thought’s curare, when I finally did dial Tami Jamison,
numbing my lips too much to speak?

How often did I think, “I’m dead,” feeling
my strength leak away, phlegm drown my lungs,
sarcoma thrust like red toads up out of my skin
in the three days between the blood-drawing

and the doctor’s benediction: “Negative.”
Thought is a rope that pulls the kite out of the sky—
a cramp that locks the boxer’s chin as fists hiss
toward his head. “What sharks?” my friend demands,

launching the sea-kayak that gives him so much fun.
How many odes would Keats have traded for one
night with Fanny Brawne? What did understanding do
for Nietzsche, but make him more insane?

Thought is more deadly than crack or heroin.
Its pipe to my lips, the needle in my vein.
I loll in my dark room, and envy pumpkin vines.
Whatever’s in their way, they overrun. Unafraid

of blight, birds, drought, or humans’ being
they stretch out in the heat, let their roots drink deep
and—never giving a thought to anything—
make a million copies of the sun.

Charles Harper Webb

And one final poem from Billy Collins.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

Instructions

2006-06-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

I read two books recently by Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere and Stardust. They were rather sweet fantasies, with a touch of whimsy, and I enjoyed them very much. Thank you to my daughter for sending them to me. Nowhere was the darker of the two. I enjoyed the author playing with the names of the London subway stations, and with the homeless who seek shelter there. A man falls into an alternate reality where he becomes part of the community of street people living below London. He is suddenly invisible to those in his previous life, including his former co-workers and former fiance, even when he is standing right in front of them. At the same time his life is more real than it ever was before.

Just in case you ever drop into another reality:

Instructions
by Neil Gaiman

Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never
saw before.
Say "please" before you open the latch,
go through,
walk down the path.
A red metal imp hangs from the green-painted
front door,
as a knocker,
do not touch it; it will bite your fingers.
Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat
nothing.
However, if any creature tells you that it hungers,
feed it.
If it tells you that it is dirty,
clean it.
If it cries to you that it hurts,
if you can,
ease its pain.

From the back garden you will be able to see the
wild wood.
The deep well you walk past leads to Winter's
realm;
there is another land at the bottom of it.
If you turn around here,
you can walk back, safely;
you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.

Once through the garden you will be in the
wood.
The trees are old. Eyes peer from the under-
growth.
Beneath a twisted oak sits an old woman. She
may ask for something;
give it to her. She
will point the way to the castle.
Inside it are three princesses.
Do not trust the youngest. Walk on.
In the clearing beyond the castle the twelve
months sit about a fire,
warming their feet, exchanging tales.
They may do favors for you, if you are polite.
You may pick strawberries in December's frost.
Trust the wolves, but do not tell them where
you are going.
The river can be crossed by the ferry. The ferry-
man will take you.
(The answer to his question is this:
If he hands the oar to his passenger, he will be free to
leave the boat.
Only tell him this from a safe distance.)

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.
Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that
witches are often betrayed by their appetites;
dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;
hearts can be well-hidden,
and you betray them with your tongue.

Do not be jealous of your sister.
Know that diamonds and roses
are as uncomfortable when they tumble from
one's lips as toads and frogs:
colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

Remember your name.
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found.
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped
to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story.
When you come back, return the way you came.
Favors will be returned, debts will be repaid.
Do not forget your manners.
Do not look back.
Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall).
Ride the silver fish (you will not drown).
Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur).

There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is
why it will not stand.

When you reach the little house, the place your
journey started,
you will recognize it, although it will seem
much smaller than you remember.
Walk up the path, and through the garden gate
you never saw before but once.
And then go home. Or make a home.
And rest.

And, another bit of fantasy:

Song
by John Donne

Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’ stinging
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be’est born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet,
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come to two, or three.

Father's Day

2006-06-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

I don't have many poems specifically for fathers, or mothers either, for that matter. Do poets not have parents? Do they not love them? Maybe loving parents just make boring poetry - not enough angst. I tried Googling mother +poetry, but the results were more greeting card verse than anything. So I am posting a couple of poems that sort of relate to fathers, and that will have to do.

My own father is wonderful. The greatest gift he gave me was an ability to be myself. He always said I could be anything I wanted if I worked for it. He expected the same things from all his children, son and daughters, except in one area: He always told us girls, "Put a little lipstick on before you go out. You never know who you might meet."

My husband is also a wonderful father, but that is a blog my son or daughter must write. Liz?

Poor children, with such stable parents, can they ever be poets?

This first poem is about a father "dancing" with his child, something I remember my father doing with me.

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Theodore Roethke

I love this next poem. The poet does not actually have a child, so he holds on to his "inner child" and shows it the moon.

Moon

The moon is full tonight
an illustration for sheet music,
an image in Matthew Arnold
glimmering on the English Channel,
or a ghost over a smoldering battlefield
in one of the history plays.

It’s as full as it was
in that poem by Coleridge
where he carries his year-old son
into the orchard behind the cottage
and turns the baby’s face to the sky
to see for the first time
the earth’s bright companion,
something amazing to make his crying seem small.

And if you wanted to follow this example,
tonight would be the night
to carry some tiny creature outside
and introduce him to the moon.

And if your house has no child,
you can always gather into your arms
the sleeping infant of yourself,
as I have done tonight,
and carry him outdoors,
all limp in his tattered blanket,
making sure to steady his lolling head
with the palm of your hand.

And while the wind ruffles the pear trees
in the corner of the orchard
and dark roses wave against a stone wall,
you can turn him on your shoulder
and walk in circles on the lawn
drunk with the light.
You can lift him up into the sky,
your eyes nearly as wide as his,
as the moon climbs high into the night.

Billy Collins

Three Poems for Memorial Day

2006-05-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

The Bivouac of the Dead

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on Life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

Theodore O'Hara

Not for a Nation

Not for the flag
Of any land because myself was born there
Will I give up my life.
But I will love that land where man is free,
And that I will defend.

Edna St Vincent Millay

War Song

Soldier in a curious land
All across a swaying sea,
Take her smile and lift her hand—
Have no guilt of me.

Soldier, when were soldiers true?
If she’s kind and sweet and gay,
Use the wish I send to you—
Lie not lone til day!

Only, for the nights that were,
Soldier, and the dawns that came,
When in sleep you turn to her
Call her by my name.

Dorothy Parker

Love Your Neighbor Part 2

2006-05-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

Interval of Joy

just as I was saying I would stop writing about love and lust
and write something instead about the unhappiness of my neighbor
I met you and fell into complete confusion
and all my resolutions went up in air
now see where I sit and write songs again
burning for your somewhat green eyes
thirsting for your saliva
recollecting our one love-walk in the country
when the mosquitoes bit us in confused bewilderment
at this incomparable devotion of ours
and the thorns pierced into our bodies
astonished at the extent of our indifference

it was an interval of joy

may the unhappy forgive me for it
I have not yet suffered enough
for the pain of my neighbor to touch me

Dinos Christianopoulos

Love Your Neighbor

2006-05-07T15:03:00.000-07:00

We are to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves. If you don’t know who your neighbor is, I refer you to the parable of the Good Samaritan. I refer you to my parents.

If you needed help, my parents would give you help – not always money, which wasn’t plentiful – but certainly a bed to lie in and a place at the table.

When I was quite young a woman and her two children came to stay with us for a couple of weeks while she was getting a divorce. My father worked with her husband, which made it kind of awkward for him, but “He was abusing them”, my mother said, and that was enough.

A young woman living next to us had two illegitimate children. The oldest, a boy about two, was taken away from her for neglect about the time the baby was born. My mother thought she was neglecting the baby, too, so she told her, “If you don’t want to take care of that baby, give it to me.” The baby came home with her. She got the crib and bottles out of the attic, and the baby stayed for about three months before the woman went to court, got both the children back, and moved away.

Foreign students stayed with us, sometimes for only a few days while they were touring America. One, a college student from Zanzibar stayed a year. He was a dark skinned Muslim, rather quiet and modest. He was afraid of the family dog. My mother, never one to turn down an opportunity to learn something, studied the Koran with him.

We lived near the state fairgrounds, so in August we sometimes had workers or entertainers stay with us during Fair Week. I remember one summer a group of acrobats stayed. I don’t think my parents even charged them room and board. My mother said they had a hard life.

My sister broke up with a guy one time and when he lost his apartment, my mother gave him a room until he could find another. My sister was pissed, to tell the truth.

Then, after I left home and got married, my folks gave shelter to a family of Laotian refugees and their blind baby. They gave my mother parasites.

A Vietnamese high school student stayed for two years.

A Chinese college student stayed for about six years. My parents loaned her money to start law school so she wouldn’t have to go back to China. She is still close to the family. My father gave her away at her wedding.

This all in addition to various family members who stayed for varying lengths of time, Democratic campaign workers who stayed during the Iowa caucuses, and people they invited home from the soup kitchen they cooked at on Thursday nights.

My parents knew who their neighbors were.

Geranium

2006-04-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

Last week I forgot the word "geranium." I plant these flowers every summer in the planter box by the front stoop. The seem happy there, and bloom very nicely all summer long. Last year I put a couple of geraniums in an open-work bronze pot lined in moss. They bloomed so well, I took them inside before the first frost and put them on the counter top in the kitchen. They stopped blooming inside, but I fed and watered them and they stayed healthy looking. This spring I went to move them outside again and I could not remember what they were called.

I've always had trouble remembering names, and I have no musical memory at all. I still forget the names of people I've worked with for years, and I can hear a song 10 times, and still say to my kids, "That's a nice song. What's it called?" But I don't usually just forget a common noun like geranium.

I asked my husband what they were called, but he didn't know. We saw them in hanging pots at the grocery store and both snuck over to look at the label to see what they were: "Hanging Pot". That's a big help. The Safeway doesn't have to label them because everybody knows what they are, except my husband and me.

After about 4 days it suddenly came to me. I was thinking about something else and the word geranium popped into my head. Where had it been? Memory is a strange thing.

I think Billy Collins sums it up nicely.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of you spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins

It's possible I have used the Billy Collins poem before. I can't remember.

I don't think I've shared this one:

Gardener

Under the window, on a dusty ledge,
He peers among the spider webs for seed.
He wonders, groping, if the spiders spun
Beneath that window after all. Perhaps
His eyes are spiders, and new veils are dropped
Each winter and summer morning in the brain.
He sees but silken-dimly, though the ends
Of his white fingers feel more things than are.
More delicate webs, and sundry bags of seed.
That flicker at the window is a wren.
She taps the pane with a neat tail, and scolds.
He knows her there, and hears her – far away,
As if an insect sang in a tree. Whereat
The shelf he fumbles on is distant, too,
And his bent arm is longer than an arm.
Something between his fingers brings him back:
An envelope that rustles, and he reads:
“The coreopsis.” He does not delay.
Down from the rafter where they always hang
He shoulders rake and hoe and shuffles out.

The sun is warm and thick upon the path,
But he goes lightly, under a broad straw
None knows the age of. They are watching him
From upper windows as his slippered feet
Avoid the aster and nasturtium beds
Where he is not allowed to meddle. His preserve
Is further, and no stranger touches it.
Yesterday he was planting larkspur there.
He works the ground and hoes the larkspur out,
Pressing the coreopsis gently in.
With as old hose he plays a quavering stream,
Then shuffles back with the tools and goes to supper.

Over his bowl of mil, wherein he breaks
Five brittle crackers, drifts the question: “Uncle,
What have you planted for the summer coming?”

“Why – hollyhocks,” he murmurs, and they smile.

Martin Van Dorn