Remember This?

Here's a poem I wrote about the spirit that gripped our nation on Inauguration Day.  Now that the rubber is hitting the road - real legislative battles, criticism pro and con, and all the rest - it seemed like a good time to remember that spirit and that day.

January 20, 2009

A man walks down the oldest halls
and even the walls lean in to listen

to his footsteps Even the mirrors turn away
from faces of long years, and watch him go out

And even the wind holds its breath
for the roar of the crowd And even the children

strain to hear the story he tells to the years
gone by and the years to come And even the ghosts

on aging battlefields hold still as he raises
his right hand And even the book itself trembles


Even the cities stop a moment, and the dying
fields believe again that they can grow

And even the oaks turn to one another and nod
and even the rivers pause, listening

Even the sky pales and swoons over a land
stitched together, barely Boiling, simmering, gathering


strength And even a preacher speaks the shema
and the ragged shore rolls over, heals itself, says

Hear O Israel
The sea parts anew.

Note:  The photo is public domain from the Department of Defense; photographer is Master Sargent Cecilio Ricardo, Air Force.  If you are interested in more Obama-inspired poetry, visit this blog.

To the Poet, On Her Dilemma

Do you wonder
where to begin?

Should you begin
with the way the bridge stands
at the straits gleaming?

Or with children
glimpsing bluegills?

Consider the bridge: a miracle-lace
of steel and concrete wrought
by warm, rough men; their hands.

Some fell. Plunged and drowned.

Now drive across, awed by winter
sunlight and by ladders rising
up to it. Plates of silver

pancake ice drifting
over depths below.

But, children glimpsing bluegills
near shore in August, wading
in the reeds. That’s a miracle too.

The way they’re knit together,

small packages of souls
and bones.  That they can stand
and see the sun touching
scales in the shallows.
Heaven’s light.



Poet's note: A poem about not always knowing where to begin telling the story of a life, or a day, or a moment. A poem claiming a place for darkness and light, and for the impersonal and the personal, in writing. Photos are of the Mackinaw Bridge courtesy the Library of Congress (public domain), and of our three miracles at Burntside Lake (personal collection).

Before Dawn, Winter Solstice

This darkest morning, this smallest day.
Outside the window there could be nothing.

Or there could be the frozen edge of the lake
built up into small hills and valleys,

a landscape wrought by winds and waters,
a lacy edge that cedes to angry waves.

Or, there could be quiet covered land made soft
and beautiful by new snow. Girlish deer

nosing the edge of a lost meadow, their shy eyes
cast sideways toward the sun just waking.

But now all is blackness, nothing to see.
What we know is the daylight

will be slim today. What we know
is the Ancients set a trap

to catch the first few rays of sunrise
so they could be amazed, again.

What we know is nothing will change.
Nothing we can see. A minute here and there.

A minute here and there for months
and months. And only then will we know

how the world is different: A shady grey
at morning, no black wondering.

The lake quieter, brooding. The shore
gone soft or fierce. Meadows edging toward wild,

toward bursting. Days and days from now
we will awaken, look out from tentative doorways.

We will see how minutes changed things
after all. We will see what the world is now.

We will wonder when it happened,
and walk out in joy. Or lay our faces down

upon our hands, weeping.




Poet's note: I sometimes refer to this poem as "my global warming poem." It really isn't about global warming, though; it's about how small things can result in big changes over time. It's about not always realizing this as we go along in life, then suddenly realizing it. It's about wondering how the world, or a life, will be changed somewhere out there in the future. And it really was written on the morning of the winter solstice a few years ago.... which got me thinking about small things and big changes.

For Daphne, Anne Sexton, and Me, Where We Live In This Honorable House of the Laurel Tree

Somebody already wrote this poem,
sifting words like wind through laurel leaves.
The woman in her bark-bound home

who only wished to live alone
across the river bank, even she believed
that somebody already wrote this poem.

Each passing year, another layered ring had grown
around her, wreathing her desire to live free.
The woman in her bark-bound home

chased, instead, what could be found inside: a wound
the leaden arrow made to bleed and bleed and bleed.
Somebody already wrote this poem,

she said. But grew on, though her wish became a stone.
And O her hands were green and green,
the woman in her bark-bound home.

The one for whom the golden arrow’s thrown
will never know quite what it means to flee.
Somebody already wrote this poem:
The woman, in her bark-bound home.



Poet's note: In a word, this poem is about constraints. It refers to the story of Apollo and Daphne from ancient Greece, and also to an Anne Sexton poem that refers to the same story. For those of you who are interested in such things, this poem is a villanelle.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy

I.
Among seven dark hills
the only glowing things
were the eyes of the black boy.

II.
I was of two minds, old and young.
Sadness at the sound of his taps
on the sidewalk, Bourbon Street.
And bare disdain. The black boy
wanting money
for shuffling his feet.

III.
The black boy speeding
down a London street on his moped,
gunned down by police. The black boy
speeding down a London street on his moped,
gunned down by police in a song.

IV.
A swing and a swing set are one.
A swing and a swing set
and a black boy are one.
A swing and a swing set and a black boy
and the shadow of a black boy
are one, too.

V.
I don’t know which to fear more:
the murmur of flesh about to meet,
his warmth hovering near mine.
The black boy slapping my cheek,
or just before.

VI.
The dry cracked pavement
of the schoolyard court.
The streak of the black boy
slicing it open at its seam.

VII.
O white men on the hill,
why do you imagine blinding smiles?
Do you not see how the black boy circles
around the edge of your city, humming?

VIII.
I know southern accents,
words slung low, laid out
like on a porch swing in summer,
saying this about the black boy:
He’s black, you know.

IX.
When the black boy ducked
out of sight behind his afro,
halo or hood,
the teacher bent her head down, too,
to whisper fiercely.

X.
At the sight of the black boy
tripping by in his too-long pants,
choirs of angels burst
forth in song.

XI.
In a glass house
I pelt out my words
at the black boy.
Hello, I say.
He is bored
by my bright voice.

XII.
The pedals are turning.
The black boy, he must be ridin’.

XIII.
It was the dead of night all night.
It was burning, and it was going to burn.
The black boy swung from the live oak tree.


Poet's note: A poem about encountering race and racism in our society. Do you know the poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens? My poem borrows from it in terms of form. It was shortly after I last read the Stevens poem that the words "thirteen ways of looking at a black boy" kept going through my head. They wouldn't stop going through my head, so I wrote a poem.

Fisherman

I don’t know if my father prays,
but he fishes in a stream running wild
and I have watched him.

He is not graceful,
not gentle, not free.
Standing there amidst
the swirling water,

he casts his line.
And I have heard the hissing,
seen the silken arc divide the river;
the small, small curve of metal
hidden in the current.

It catches him his harvest,
and he rips the buried hook.
Glances at the gleaming.
Throws his catch aloft
to meet the water, free.

Begins again his rosary.



Poet's note: A poem about making one's life a prayer.

Still

a love poem


This could only be my poem
This road, my road
My poem
is spun around you

I have driven westward
under skies, over miles
Once I thought I knew
where I was going
I was going
straight in circles
I was going straight in circles

Calling home
I am careful not to mention
your name,
my weakness,
my strength

I have driven westward
dark or light
to your door
Driven by in silence,
morning piquing



Poet's note: Just a love poem.

She's Leaving Home

I floated on the lake’s green waves today
as if to make some thin or grand escape
from him, the children, the needs that weigh
upon me. Below, smooth shadows soon took shape

and swimming in hot summer tears I saw
dark strangers: rocks and wood I’d never seen before,
the sketches winter’s pen strokes like to draw.
And I looked back to ask the ragged shore:

How could you rearrange yourself without me here?
As if the sands had been unfaithful when
I made winter quarters in the dimming of the year,
packing up for town with him, the children.

One autumn I promised I’d always be true.
This is my love letter to you.


Poet's note: A poem about being tied to a place in a deep and lasting way, and then, having to leave it. A poem that wonders about how place and self commingle, and to what extent are they one and the same; and again, a poem that looks at the boundaries of self versus family through the lens of place.  Photo is of Torch Lake in northern Michigan; personal collection.

First Taste

As I wean her
I visit primal places
Headwaters of rivers
Beginnings of valleys
Watching things
that brew and build
unbidden Alchemy
makes its way to daylight

There are women at the river
filling vessels
where the waters pool
against the rocks
And I have been there once
and long ago

And I too left a trail
of puddles Wet footprints
Looking back I see
they are gone
Warmed and dried
by some strange sun

And she strains and searches
against me Her mouth
a sweet hot blister
I am carved out
by her cries So deep
I think I may flow again
Sweet honey First food

Let me tell you this
She is still so small
and perfect Wild berry
Too small even to breathe
my name that first word

How soon
How soon we hunger



Poet's note: I wrote this poem when I was weaning my daughter at a very young age because of my need to take medications that were not safe for nursing babies. The process was wrenching for both of us (she staged a four-day hunger strike!). The poem tries to capture the experience of loss.

Prophecy

My parents have come home laughing,
a daring sound on my careworn ears.
Instead of the breeze of her yawn,
the thunder and rain of his keys
on the counter, his feet on the floor,
there is a soft tap on a taut drum,
a clinking together of glasses.

Their laughter is a prophecy fulfilled,
a secret kept too long, then shared
in the middle of my own years thick
with the dreadful magic of children
too close together. Years of remembering
what love looked like once –
a strong but youthful birch in spring –
and how I danced in the waves.

They walk into the kitchen
where I am alone, waiting.
Catch themselves a moment,
hot cheeks and eyes singing,
then laugh, and laugh again, and I

have waited my whole life for this.



Poet's note: A poem about how other people's happiness can remind us of, can foretell, our own future happiness, when things feel bleak.

Tapping the Ancient Well

Dig into the hill at the back
of the house, the hill facing the lake,
my father instructs me in a dream.
Willing child. Down onto my knees
with bare hands and spade, I dig
and find a labyrinth of pipes and drains
made soft by moss. Music swells
from their insides, like an urgent tapping
on a night-dark window, like the stunted
toll of a bell held fast.

Everywhere secrets drain down
into earth. Everywhere poison
words and bruises and untold stories
and every last starving dream drip
down the pipe works. Down and down
until they are earth itself: dirt and bone
and rock. And deeper yet they become
the center of things, a raging shining core.

I dig and dig at my father’s behest.
I dig, and the night air clothes my bones
with its damp chill and the hours
pass and the raw smell of earth
rises and I dig on knowing that soon
I will render myself on the heat of this burning.


Poet's note: A poem about human relationships and history, and how the past - all its known and unknown stories - influences the future for better and for worse. A poem about becoming oneself in the midst of all that.

Where We're From

We drove west through silver sunlight
of November coming early. Drove west

toward the train tracks where we sat and waited
singing Oh Susannah, counting cars.

Out to where the city slid away down
into country, like where we’re from:

dirt roads and stands of trees looking out
over swells and lulls; small lakes

ringed in fading reeds, and cattails;

an orchard stitched onto the hills. We rode
a slow farm wagon out from a white barn.

Reached our chilled and tender hands into the gnarled mess
of tree and fruit. Taught the children how to grasp

and twist: Only take the ones that come off easy,
we said.  Pockets full, they ran back down a two track

to the car. We walked behind them hauling baskets,
watching the mixture of limbs and light,

souls and bones; smelling fruit.

Dinner was plain and filling. The children shone
after baths, went to bed gently.

I climbed the stairs to our bedroom early,
tired from fresh air and from memories.

Later when you tucked the quilts in under my chin,
my soul banked and turned high above land. I looked

down, saw the rain falling soft on our roof.
Closed my eyes and heard its message:

baptism, blessing; quiet applause.


Poet's note: This poem came out of an actual day in the life of our family - a happy day after a time of difficulty and illness. It attempts to put words to my belief that we all come from, and return to, a place of happiness and light.

Norwood

for Matt and Elaine

What time is sunset?
An innocent question, full of hope
The baby will be sleeping
Let’s go to Norwood
And they do

It’s chilly here at night
Cool winds slide in off the big lake
Hugging themselves inside fading
sweatshirts found in bottom drawers, they go

A country road
Hills that gain and swell and flatten
in all the right places, like her body
From here the night is golden
at the crests, grey in the troughs

Quietly, too soon
the pavement shifts to gravel, to sand
The grunt of car doors, screams of gulls
Shhhhhh the plodding dance of water

Let’s go this way
They walk the line of beach
under layers of light or time
now gold, now pink, now the red
of her mouth, her cheeks on their wedding day
They walk together Into one another
Choppy Sputtering but destined,
like waves meeting shore

Like every other time,
sunset comes and goes too quickly
The great red ball floats and floats, then slips
It lulls you
You see it one moment,
the next it’s gone

I missed it
Easy to do
Thinking of the baby
sleeping
Thinking of last week or next
Watching for lights to come up on the point,
fires to be lit


Poet's note: A poem about seeking beauty amidst the everyday, and about how easy it is to miss it if we're not careful. This poem is dedicated to my brother, Matt, and his wife, Elaine, who make a point of noticing that which is beautiful in life.

Midrash: Sarah to Abraham

Beneath a twilit sky I understand
there are some things I will never know.
There is someone I will never be. You said,
Say that you are my sister
so it will go well for me.

Not the first time I lost one precious piece
of my story. Not knowing then that you’d require
even more from me years hence: that you’d place
our hard-won son upon a pyre.

Now in fading light I see a hundred dances
never danced; a tent not entered; stories
never told; a feast prepared, left untouched.
And already I am sad and old

for all people, and all time.
Now I say to you: Sing to me the stories
of myself, the ones I never knew
or have forgotten. Look at me

and count the moon the sun each star
spun across the skies
like jewels, each one. Look at me.
Speak the stories brimming in your eyes.


Poet's note:  The Midrashim (plural of midrash) is a body of Jewish sacred literature that, through creative interpretation of a text, attempts to add depth and meaning to it.  I have heard Midrash described as "giving voice to the voiceless, and adding flesh to the bones" of a story.  This poem attempts to give voice to Sarah, the wife of Abraham, from the book of Genesis.

Post edited 2/24/09 to update labels