Double talent

Two poems for almost the end of April.  I love both of these poets.  Enjoy!

I Ask My Mother To Sing

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.

I've never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more,

Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.

                           Li -Young Lee


Let Evening Come

Let the light of the late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn.  Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass.  Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside.  Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid.  God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

                               Jane Kenyon

Dad

Time to talk about Dad.  He's been gone for 23 years (yesterday), which is almost half of my life.  I fear that I will forget certain details, so here goes.

Dad loved salty snacks.  Those included planters salted peanuts (he usually had a jar somewhere in the house), popcorn, extra sharp cheese on saltine crackers, and green olives.  He only had three things he liked that were really sweet.  Cherry chocolates, jelly beans, and anything cinnamon (mostly cinnamon bears and suckers).  He also loved iced tea.  There was always a glass of iced tea.

Though these things appear trivial to some, it comforts me to remember.  To know that this many years later, I still could go shopping for him.  That the imprint of this man is still so strong.  Words never will be adequate to describe how I miss him.  Always my hero.  Love you, Dad!

A beloved poem

In 2006, I submitted some poems to a publication called "Runes, A Review of Poetry."  It was one of my earliest tries at publication, and they didn't choose my work.  However, I received an even greater gift! When I received my copy of "Runes," there was a poem in it that almost stopped my heart.  The author is Lianne Spidel. If I ever need inspiration, and nothing else will work, I turn to this poem.  I do not exaggerate when I say that this poem is up in my top 20 poems of all time. Enjoy!


Daughters of Eve

I have found DNA in skeletons thousands of years old and seen exactly the same genes in my own friends... We are all connected through our mothers to only a handful of women living tens of thousands of years ago.
                                                                     -Bryan Sykes, "The Seven Daughters of Eve"

Mother, even if you questioned the mystery
of dividing cells, I doubt you thought
of them as I do - a line of ragtag recruits
committed to making a new person

You passed to me one constant strain,
tidy as the spices lined on your kitchen shelf -
cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves - those
your mother favored, and hers before.

The clan mothers were hunters who bore
their daughters in caves.  Perhaps the one
the scientists call Tara claims us,
who never saw the green-hilled land

your mother's mother never saw, who played
a flute made from the wing bone of a swan,
who strung a dozen strands of shells
and wore them to her sand dune grave.

Of all who came before, no one can tell
whose laugh you made your own, whose
stubbornness, but one of seven laid down
in you good timber for a necessary fire.

You wondered how you got me anyway, always
my father's child.  Know that you gave me
the flame of myself and that it ends
with me, a mother of sons.

Lianne Spidel

More beloved poems (I warned you)

I have neglected so many days of posting poems on this blog, that now I feel I will need to double up or go through May with poetry too.  I have so many favorites, and want to keep sharing.

Naomi Shihab Nye is such an inspiration to the craft.  To me, she brings compassion and respect to every subject she writes about.  She is an inspiring woman.

San Antonio

Tonight I lingered over your name,
the delicate assembly of vowels
a voice inside my head.
You were sleeping when I arrived.
I stood by your bed
and watched the sheets rise gently.
I knew what slant of light would make you turn over.
It was then I felt
the highways slide out of my hands.
I remembered the old men
in the west side cafe,
dealing dominoes like magical charms.
It was then I knew,
like a woman looking backward,
I could not leave you,
or find anyone I loved more.

             Naomi Shihab Nye

I found this poem,by Mary Oliver, accidentally a few years ago.  Her words struck me, and I held onto them.  They were me.  I believe it was also the first poem that I read aloud to a large audience.  Still today, I love it.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice ---
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
'Mend my life!'
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations---
though their melancholy
was terrible.  It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do---
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Poetry!

It's National Poetry Month!  This is my favorite time to post poems.  Not that I need an excuse, but April is the month.  Here goes...

This is a poem by Ted Kooser, from a book titled "Delights and Shadows" which won a Pulitzer Prize.  I treasure my copy of this book, because the poet signed it for me, when I heard him read in Salt Lake City a few years ago.  What a talented and personable man he is.

After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea.  An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant.  At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood in the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

                Ted Kooser