For My Sister

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

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

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

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 comes 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

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.