On Track

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after Tom Wayman

The first thing I remember was under the train:
the sweet whiff of creosote, the gap to the platform,
and wheels in that darkness, bigger than me.
My father lifted me over the gap to a step;
I climbed the others. Next I remember alarm
that the sun had hit the rim of the earth and oozed
its gold like a cracking egg where the train was going.
"You can ride your whole life long," Dad said,
"and never reach the sun." Reassured,
I slept in a compartment overhead.

I liked how rows of crops we passed would bow
like tines on a comb you slide your thumb across.
Between the rows were sweat-soaked people, bent.
I peered through gaps where windows should have been
in shacks squeezed close to the tracks or remote in fields.
In winter, steam from bacon and coffee fogged
dark glass in the dining car. I'd rub a spot
to see snow drifts go by and vapor rise
from trucks and bundled workers at crossing gates,
my seat level with their red-flashing eyes.

Allowed to roam, I found my favorite nooks
to read and listen to music with others my age
who liked what I liked. Sometimes at a station
I'll wander out and think what life might be,
but someone with a sign Please Help is there,
and something should be done, I know, but what?
Unsettled after that, I'll climb back on
and soon that golden sun we're riding toward
will set, forever inspiring awe in me.
I'll return to my compartment, reassured.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Tom Wayman's "Kitchen Poem" from 1977 is a lively immersion in the process of making breakfast that is also an exposition of global inequities. That resonated with a theology book I read this month, Miguel De La Torre's Reading the Bible from the Margins, and I liked the technique -- literal kitchen, metaphorical world. I've written about Wayman's selected poems 1973-1993 here.

I am very pleased that memories from age three in the first stanza are true, both literally and allegorically. - WSS

Limerick for Susan

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From pet care to scripting of mystery,
from pizza to teaching for ministry,
 from paint to pentameter--
 we're outgrowing "amateur."
As partners we'll go down in history.

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The photo-cum-painting (courtesy Android phone) is of Susan Rouse with Brandy the dog and me. Susan's discipline of painting at least one work per week is the inspiration for this blog.

The limerick, written for Susan's birthday, refers to the series of mystery dinner theatre scripts that she helped to plot, our Sunday homemade pizzas, and our co-mentoring of Education for Ministry. - WSS

Live Stream

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Save me, O God...The torrent washes over me. -Psalm 69

At the footbridge,
his dog tugged her leash
and he followed her down the bank to the creek

which she ignored,
nosing the undersides of leaves,
her eyelids closed, a connoisseur.

The canopy opened
to a stream of cloudless blue
above the stream, and to one his phone tapped,

a trickle at first
from the waves, four billion per second --
a smirking official, a pundit's outrage

which he scrolled half aware
of thunder, or the sound of a truck
nearby, some rally at the school behind him,

swelling so
he thought he heard Slay them! and
Wipe them out! and Break their teeth!

splashing his ankles,
and reaching his knees as he turned
too late toward higher ground,

upended and kicking
and gasping for air, and thrashing
the arm not anchored to the dog. The dog!

She shook her tags
and looked back to see, was he ready?
Phone in his pocket, they crossed the bridge.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I'd already drafted this poem when Psalm 69 popped up in the Prayer Book's reading queue with its torrent of curses. I'm reassured that my darkest feelings are expressed, if not sanctioned, by Scripture.

Likewise, I was surprised by an echo in my poem of the horse who "gives his harness bells a shake / to ask if there is some mistake" from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," one of the first grown-up poems I ever knew. - WSS

Relay

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Aluminum baton, sprinted
to a teammate's backstretched hand;

a command in code run barefoot
on an ancient battlefield;

on Field Day, an egg on a spoon in the fist
of a meandering sixth grade dreamer

whose team was in the lead before
he dropped the egg in the grass;

or the passing on of genetic code
and my father's name, and joy,

to a boy, the solitary dreamer
they lured from his room down the stairs

to share with his siblings in popcorn and TV,
and lulled by their soft laughter

after all the kids were in bed:
the relay stops with me.

May their memory, in stories and rhymes,
be enough, passing on, to pass on.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Cliff Hanger

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Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands to fight and my fingers to battle. Psalm 144.1

Hand, that inch of ledge you're clawing
by sweaty fingertips: hold on.

The safety ropes, the straps, the loops
at the groin, the belt, the clip,
were such a fuss to fasten for nothing
if you relax your grip: hold on.

The feet on nubs of stone depend
on you; give your friend a chance
to stretch across the rock to find
a niche to grasp, and we'll advance.
You can't hold on a moment more?
Recall, you've felt that way before.

That fingers past have found a path,
crags worn smooth give testimony:
what feels like discovery is destiny.
Your flailing thumb, distraught, stands by;
your skin drawn taut, veins bulging with blood:
we thank you for what you've withstood.
And whether we succeed or fall,
don't think it's for all time;
we're challenged by an upward call:
hold on for the next climb.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I climbed a rock wall for the first time as chaperone for a seventh grade retreat. In my 60 years, I'd climbed many trees and ladders, so I felt prepared; this effort almost undid me. Even as I struggled, the experience felt like an allegory, one that still comes to mind whenever I get stuck on a crossword puzzle or poem.

Derek Walcott's "Night Fishing" gave me a model to emulate. His poem begins, Line, trawl for each word. Coaxing "Line" along, Walcott writes both about fishing and about writing, without putting himself in the story. I discovered in "Hand" a character for whom I feel great tenderness, along with a supportive community of fingers, feet, and a cloud of witnesses. - WSS

Ghost Story

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 I.
A boy in the back seat, curled over a book
of ghosts when the car arrived in town, looked out
at a row of sagging homes with peeling paint,
a sepia church with graves. His mom saw shades
of the war, the young men who didn't return. The corner
house, she said, was haunted by a hermit
who locked up his Model T and then himself.
The only blacktop street, shaped like an L,
bent past some gravel lanes, and, at the house,
it ended. The aunt, the uncle, the barn and hogpen--
he saw them once and never would again.

  II.
I think I'd like to be a ghost,
to pass through walls and fly,
materialize
at school where guys
couldn't hurt me if they'd try.
I'd disappear;
they'd gasp in fear.
But I wouldn't like to die.

I think I'm not afraid of ghosts
at the village cemetery.
That life goes on
for those who've gone
is comforting, not scary.
But what if there
's just empty air,
with the bones and dust they bury?

  III.
The homes today are straight and white; the church
in early autumn early evening sun
so bright, it hurts. A gravel lot was vacant
where the Model T had been. He parked
and walked to the family farm, no longer a farm,
no longer the family's. No one living now
in that pristine house works in the dirt, although
the house's shadow reached a wall of crops
that starts where the blacktop stops. He remembered the L.
He thought, walking back to the lot where the two lines met,
that's the shape of a man and his shadow facing sunset.

  IV.
I climbed back in my car and adjusted the mirror
and there met two eyes, someone crouched behind me,
a boy about ten who was somehow familiar,
his hair as unruly as mine used to be.

"Young man, how'd you get here? I left the car locked."
He shrugged. I slipped in. It was easy to do.
I was there in your shadow the whole time you walked.
Now, if you don't mind, I've some questions for you.

Are you famous? I said viewers come to my site.
What's that? I thought: country boy, behind the times.
"It's a TV where thousands have read what I write."
Like? Poetry. Cool, just so long as it rhymes.

Was this kid judging me? Are you married? "No." Good.
How old are you? "Sixty." You don't look it. Pause.
Is Grammy alive? His voice was subdued.
I shook my head. That's when I knew who he was.

I wonder, are you still believing in ghosts?
"'Souls,' I would call them." So what is the difference?
"Soul is the tug of the things you love most,
that shapes the way you are through all life's experience."

And ghosts? "--are just metaphors for memory in stories."
He'd looked a bit wistful; his countenance cleared.
You think? I'll show you what a metaphor is!
With a smile and a snap, the boy disappeared.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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My return to a small town 50 years after my first visit seemed like a natural subject for a poem, but nothing came of it. Same with a poem I brainstormed for Halloween. Progress began when I thought I might connect the two.

I hope it's not pretentious to mention the influence of T. S. Eliot. On the 100th anniversary of The Waste Land, I've been reminded how Eliot wrote stanzas from different points of view, in totally different styles. I felt liberated to play again with verse forms I'd loved when I was 10 -- namely, "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert W. Service.- WSS

Doggerel

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When I had a-pedalled to virtual Elko,
I groaned as I hoisted myself from the saddle.
Unsnapping my helmet, unstrapping shoe Velcro
I came face-to-face with some actual cattle.

This suburban fam'ly had put up a stable.
A calf stared at me, her eyes widened and soggy.
I said, "Little dogie, I'd chat, were I able,
but it's late. I'm awaited by my little doggie."

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Elko, Nevada is home of the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an event now called plain "Elko" by cowboy cognoscenti. It's one of the places I've visited virtually on my bike since COVID by racking up miles on trails around Atlanta and applying those to a map of the US. My rule has been to visit only "places I've lived or loved."

I relate to Elko through radio commentator Baxter Black, "cowboy poet and former large animal veterinarian" who provided poems and commentary on NPR for many years. This poem is about an actual experience at the end of my bike ride in a suburb of Atlanta.

See other stops on my tour at my page Cycling the World Virtually. - WSS

Ode to Paul (song parody)

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to the tune of Beethoven's Hymn to Joy

Grateful, grateful, we salute thee
Maestro Kelley known as "Paul."

Though the hours did not suit thee,
still you gave this job your all.

During COVID, you were devoted,
playing for priests online alone.

Now, at last, you've been demoted
to a humble baritone.

 from the words of Hymn 376 by Henry Van Dyke

[Photo: Paul Kelley and son in Spain]
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I wrote this for parishioners to sing at a reception for Paul on his last Sunday as interim organist-choirmaster.

For a private choir party before Paul's long-postponed vacation in France, I wrote another parody, We Sing Because We're the Choir of Paul. - WSS

Alternate Route

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Seventy mph with windows open
as friendly NPR reported hope
in Nick -- on death row over thirty years,
a mediator, nurse to disabled prisoners --
while from my left the deep blue dome of night
was closing over orange sunset to my right,
I topped a ridge and in the instant slammed
my brakes. Six lanes of blinking red were jammed

as far as I could see. No backing out; too late
to ask my phone to find an alternate.
Between "1999" from a neighboring Mustang
and a Silverado's country twang,
I heard from Nick: This is it. My life. This place.
I choose to be an instrument of peace.
The Mustang wanted to cut. I gave him room.
He smiled, thumb up, eased in, and raised the volume.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Midnight Psalm

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Awake in bed while others sleep, I
Bless you others who remain awake:
Clerk, behind glass 'til dawn for my convenience;
DVMs who nursed my dog through his worst night;
EMTs who kept me talking in the dark while
Firefighters sliced my car apart;
Ghanaian on night shift alone among towers of tires, and
Hero who towed my wreck through a chilly drizzle --
I'd had coffee and dessert at the end of my day
Just as, saving me, you both had started yours;
Kid who slept on the tile of an empty diner, who
Leapt up, straightening his apron to make my omelet;
Mom's attendants hoisting her back into bed while the
Nurse with her honeyed accent phoned, "She's all right";
Operator, who sighed before sunrise and dispatched a
Plumber to stanch the gusher in my lawn;
Quellers of cranks like me in the ER at midnight;
Railroad engines' whistles faint through the window,
Sirens' wails,
Trucks' rattles and growls -- sounds of you
Urgent drivers hurtling miles away while I lie idly
Venerating alphabetically you
Who work or watch or weep this night:
Exemplars of service: by my memories
You all bless me with another gift -- of
Z Z Z

Image by Susan Rouse.
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A favorite warm-up for my seventh grade drama students was to improvise lines of dialogue in alphabetical order. My turn. The same idea forms nine of the Psalms and much other Hebrew poetry.

The story behind two of the late-night heroes on this list is told in the essay Those Who Work or Watch This Night (01/2020) on my personal blog The Word Sanctuary.- WSS

Accessible Poem (for Brandy)

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I know my dog some day won't somersault.
For now, she stretches brandy-colored limbs
to the seat of a plush chair and hops to the center.
She kneads the cushion as if she's digging for bones;
her claws rake the linen zip-zip-zip.
She lowers her brandy face between her paws,
her body now a sleek black slope
from feathery tail to velvety upturned bat-ears.
Her eyes, glinting coffee black, find mine.
She yaps, as if to say, "Hey! Watch this!"
She tucks her chin beneath, flips belly up,
then kicks the air, and stops. Again, she kicks.
Breathing hard, she rolls to one side, at rest.
May she, by these lines, always be accessed.

Brandy in her favorite chair.

Brandy photographed by her dog sitters Diane and Renée.
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This poem has taken a long time to shake off its origin as a facetious response to a professor who disparaged "accessible" poets I'd praised on my blog, Billy Collins and Ted Kooser. The closer I got to just describing something particular to Brandy, the more I liked it.

For me, it's a bonus to realize that I've unintentionally written an homage to one of Shakespeare's more accessible sonnets.

By coincidence, Brandy got out of the yard just hours after I finished this poem, and for a day and night, I feared the worst. Read about her adventure in my personal blog The Word Sanctuary, The Team That Helped My Dog Find Home.

I include an image by my friend Susan Rouse, who often walks with my dog and me. Susan's practice of painting something almost every week was the impetus for my creating this blog. - WSS

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At 63

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The neighbors up early might see Fred Astaire
by my kitchen sink tapping the spout to prepare
Mister Coffee. That set, he pirouettes
with plates he deals like cards, jetés
with kibble for the dog, then glides in the dark
to the deck where he stretches bird feed to its hook.

I pour the coffee and open my prayer book.
Later, the rounds of the market, the park,
the church, the Home to sing Mom Sinatra.
First, I read this morning mantra:
In You we move and have our being.
They think it's a lonely old dancer they're seeing.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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On his birthdays, John Updike wrote sonnets to take stock of his inner and outer worlds. I emulated him on my birthday in July. But the form didn't fit the content; it needed something lighter, more like the rhyme-studded songs that Astaire made famous.

Surprise: the more I cut, the more content emerged that hadn't fit in the wordier drafts.

Updike, who died at 77, included the birthday sonnets of his 70s in the posthumous collection of poems Endpoint. Fear of death had powered his fiction and poetry for decades; facing the real thing in his hospital room, he expressed peace and gratitude. See Light at Sunset for my reflection on Endpoint. For a curated list of my essays about Updike and his work, see my Updike page.- WSS

Aphrodite's Song

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Scene: APHRODITE appears where PROMETHEUS lies chained to a mountain. A bossa-nova tune begins.

I'm goddess of lovers:
I'm Aphrodite,
sent by Zeus the Almighty,
so your suffering can end.

Imagine forever
chained to this cliff, dear.
Then imagine what if, dear,
we had eons to spend.

Your Aphrodite always near,
forever free, no gods to fear.
Just speak your secret in my ear;
and we can cut loose!

We'll slip away and stay in Crete,
and every day, just play and eat.
Only obey, and say, my sweet:
Who'll overthrow Zeus...?

 (PROMETHEUS: No!)

Resisting is no use.

 (PROMETHEUS: No! )

Don't be so obtuse!

The song pauses here for dialogue. Then APHRODITE continues her song:

Don't worry what's right, dear;
don't take the long view,
'cuz you know it's the wrong view,
if you want Zeus to bend.

Don't think about justice;
just think of pleasure.
No, this isn't peer pressure:
it's advice from a friend!

Image by Susan Rouse, from several years ago.
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At an Episcopal middle school where I taught drama in the 1980s, I adapted Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound for the fifth grade's annual pageant. The part of Aphrodite went to a tiny diva with a precociously husky voice. For her, I composed a bossa-nova tune with a six-note range and these lyrics. I'm very pleased by the natural-sounding rhymes and the fact that the song is flirtatious, amoral, and yet totally age-appropriate.

I'm still working on a poem for this month. Because the unfinished poem has a musical theatre angle, this vintage piece is an appropriate one to keep the blog going until I finish. -WSS

Angels Never Know

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When low black clouds in the morning open up
to a patch of robin's-egg blue and cumulus piles
pink from rays come a hundred million miles,
you know it's just an atmospheric hiccup.

Still, you can't help imagining angels there,
that hatchway in the clouds their attic door.
Pink fluff insulates our ceiling, their floor,
and the sunbeams slant like a drop-down stair.

The angels climbing up where Jacob dreamed
on a bed of rock -- so many years before he saw
again his cheated, furious brother, Esau --
were occupied in routine work it seemed.

Perhaps they carried relics to be stored --
a jar, a ram's horn, Rachel's wedding dress --
while Jacob sweated in the dark, sleepless,
and up there, supervising, was the Lord.

Then, down here, what moves Jacob to this place
in later years to beg to be forgiven?
The angels never know the real heaven
is Jacob wrapped in Esau's embrace.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I've revised this several times since I posted it. Carried along by the feeling and the rhymes, I had alluded to events that don't occur in Genesis until after Jacob sees that ladder. I'd even included the ark of the covenant from Exodus to rhyme with "dark." I hopefully certify this poem free of anachronisms. (01/11/2023) - WSS

Dear 7th Grade

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Die! I'd spray your desktops, Virus, die!
Eyes rolling, you'd rip a paper towel to dry.

In that year of COVID protocols
distancing deadened our normally boisterous halls.

We knew each other only from the laptop
or, in person, only from the mask up.

M., under a cloud of curls would rise
the gleam of insight dawning in your eyes.

K., straightening up, you'd squint at me
to give some word of mine your scrutiny.

D., on screen, you showed what phrases are for:
hitting the wall and writhing on the floor.

S., your glance outside meant, time to run.
Returned, you'd crouch and write 'til class was done.

N., our on-screen anchor, you'd listen and wait
until discussion flagged, then commentate.

H., brows raised in incredulity,
shamed other readers into empathy.

Lost at the start, I found the grace I'd need
in your determination that we would succeed.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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When the pandemic hit, I felt in my fortieth year of teaching the same dread and inadequacy of my horrific first. All the tricks I'd learned to engage students in a classroom were suddenly obsolete, even dangerous.

One assignment carried over from the before-times: to write someone or something a poem of gratitude in the manner of Kobe Bryant's "Dear Basketball." This is my entry in that category. NOTE: The letters, not initials, sometimes stand for composites of students who filled similar roles in different class sections. - WSS

Wingtips

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my grandmother called them, shoes bestowed
on me with a wave of her white-gloved hand
and the magic words, "He'll wear them. Charge it."

Their toecap shields riveted
with perforations at the seams
and ornamental curlicues

(so upper class), and arched like wings
on Batman's chest, or Dracula's cape,
my wingtips, tapping, sounded grown up.

Matching my steps to her pink high heels,
I shared in her regal dignity.
As we left, the sales clerks bowed.

At the airport, she set me free
to search for comics. My wingtip aura
parted tourists. I owned the terminal.

Back home, while other boys played sports,
I drew up my invisible cape
and poof! on bat wings, flew away.

I got their message: wingtips were prissy.
My shoes next time were plain. No matter.
Her love was my shield ever after.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I've blogged about my grandmother. See Thelma Craig Maier Remembered for All Saints (11/2021). - WSS

Evolution

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is not advancement,
but adaptation to your space.

Just now
from a branch above
to the right of
the lantern-shaped feeder that hangs
from my deck,

a wren descended
a hundred diagonal feet
and dipped three inches below
the hatch and up -- a check
marked in the air -- to perch
and select the perfect seed.

My fingers
from inches away overshot
my pen. Spacially speaking,
I'm a wreck.

But can I,
in the space of a page,
dive like that bird
on a slanted approach
to saying how we connect
with the perfect rhyme I need?

Check.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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This week's poem reminds me of one by an Irish monk from the year 800. His poem, scribbled beside his translation from an ancient text, told how he and his cat Pangur Ban were engaged in similar work: Pangur Ban chased a mouse while the monk chased the right word. Having just rediscovered the same idea, I'm glad to feel fellowship with that monk across the gulf of 1200 years.

I blogged about Seamus Heaney's great translation of the poem "Pangur Ban" (a.k.a. "The Monk and His Cat") in March 2006. See Reading, Writing, and Pet Ownership ca. 800.

I include an image by Susan Rouse from some months ago. Her discipline of making at least one work per week is the inspiration for this blog. This time, I also include a photograph of Susan's beautiful one-eyed cat Nora. - WSS

Behind Prejudice

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The few black men I ever saw
in my childhood were these:

men behind counters, mops, or mowers
in aprons or dungarees;

in darkness behind the gaping windows
where, driving, we locked our doors;

on TV, muscles gleaming behind
white coaches or explorers;

Cosby and Satchmo, behind wide smiles,
their comic drawls and whoops;

behind beleagured Doctor King,
men hurling bricks at cops.

So when a dred-locked thickset man
in shorts behind a stroller

grinned to see, toddling ahead,
his giggling little daughter,

behind what segregation taught me--
like bulls, they're docile or mad--

I confess I felt surprise that he
was just like a regular dad.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Prejudice needn't include animus to be unjust.

One pleasure of writing is to discover things in the process that you didn't have in mind when you started. I thought I might find a poem in a list of all the black men I encountered in childhood, both in person and in media. There were so few. When I noticed that several had stood "behind" things, I made a rule to include "behind" in every clause. Then I got the idea to update my experiences, and, naturally, the young father walked "behind" the stroller. But there was no "behind" in the final clause about the white viewer. I took several drafts to realize that the white viewer himself is behind a screen that distorts his vision. - WSS

Did God Have Your Back?

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With a screech of tires and a crunch,
a Beamer rammed me off the road.

Still the engine hummed, the radio played,
the dashboard dials still glowed green,

but upside-down. My car and I had flipped!
Then, as a key turns in a lock,

the dials realigned. I laughed to learn
the turnaround was in my mind.

Not so the broken bones: I couldn't walk
for weeks. So, no, I don't believe

that God was in the crash, nor in the fact
I kept my spine intact, and my life.

But when I saw the dash turn up from under,
God was in the wonder -- and the laugh.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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A priest with a psychology degree taught me that we -- people and peoples -- retell our stories until we get them right. I've retold this one many times, always wondering what question my subconscious mind was trying to answer. I think at last I've found it.

This final draft is a return to what I wrote first. Several other drafts culminated in seven couplets that rhymed perfectly. But each end rhyme seemed to stop the story. Reading it, even I lost the thread. In a new draft, I avoided end rhyme but inserted rhymes from the earlier draft wherever they fit naturally. As internal rhymes, they add momentum and connection.

I read in Linda Pastan's poetry collection Insomnia this week some advice to poets that helped me to polish each couplet as a pearl in a necklace. - WSS

We Sing a Song of the Choir of Paul (hymn parody)

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original lyric “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” by Lesbia Scott, b. 1898
Episcopal Hymnbook 1982 #293

Following a year finding ways to make music under COVID restrictions, the choir sings to interim director Paul Kelley on the eve of a well-deserved vacation.

1. We sing because we’re the choir of Paul,
patient, and brave, and few.
To take off our masks and to get off line,
we did what you said to do.
We sang in the balcony, sang in the hall,
and we sang in procession though it was small,
and we even came in for a nine o’ clock call
and stayed for the postlude, too.

2. Now hymns are out and the masks are in.
We’re socially distanced, too.
You’ve got your chance to escape to France,
so we come to bid adieu
to a full-time organist, full-time veep,
and a full-time father who needs some sleep,
but while you’re away, all we, li-ike sheep,
will be on Zoom missing you.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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On Easter Sunday, our part-time interim choir director Paul fortified our choir with paid guest singers and a professional trumpet player. For the best-attended service we've had since April of 2019, the music was grand and moving -- tearing up, I had to stop singing the anthem. This makes a good time to post a tribute to Paul while I work on new material.

Sung to Paul at a bon-voyage party last year, my lyric is a parody of a children's song, but it's an accurate account of painful experience. For more than a year of COVID, group singing was impossible, and membership in the choir eroded, though we tried to keep interest up through social gatherings on Zoom. During that time, when clergy live-streamed services from the empty nave of St. James, Paul invited Lanie, Leslie, or me to sing hymn tunes. To comply with COVID directives, we either wore a mask or isolated ourselves in the hall or the balcony.

During the summer of 2021, choir started up again, but Delta and then Omicron hit. For a time, every adult I knew had a case in their immediate family. It was then that Paul took his grown son on a long-postponed trip to France. - WSS

Coming Soon

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In a world
where power is arbitrary -- cut
to head on a platter --

one man stands for love and justice --
"Many who are first shall be last" --
Did I say he's on a donkey? --"and last first."

Cut to old actor you'd know, English,
"They called him king?" "Sir, and worse --
'The son of God.'" A close up, worried eyes.

He wagers all he has on one -- last -- supper.
Snippets of guests: "'The honor of your presence' -- it's for Passover!"
"But, where?" "Just 'follow a man with a jar.'" "Is it a game?"

Everyone is hiding something. "I know
you're with the underground." "He's a collaborator?"
"Scandalous. They should have stoned her."

--and murder is on the table.
"One of you will betray me." Huge outcry.
"Which one?" "Who is it?" "Is it I?"

Exterior, dark, torches, screams.
This tough guy actor pulls a sword, cut
to title card The Last Supper.

I'm thinking, do we really need another remake?
Then the tag line: The greatest mystery is yet to come.
Sunrise, woman, closeup, crying. A shadow falls.

"Mary."
Goosebumps!
Want to see it?

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Since I read Murder on the Orient Express in the early 1970s, I've seen three different film versions. In all three, the excitement builds as those characters board the fatal train. That's true of other whodunnits with star-studded casts who take a cruise or return for a family reunion.

As we approach Holy Week, when the church ritually reenacts the last seven days in the life of Jesus, I've wondered if a shift of genre might reveal something in the story, or, maybe just in me.

"Mary" in the final stanza is not the woman whom Jesus saved from stoning, though they are often treated as one. I chose not to make the distinction clear for my sensationalized gospel. For details, see my blog post for Mary Magdalene Day. - WSS

Etymology of Abundance

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I came that [the sheep] might have life and have it abundantly. John 10.9-10

To live abundantly:

Is it ab-, "away," as in abnormal,
with unda, as in undulation, wave,
a once-in-a-lifetime tsunami,
overflowing shorelines, fences, streets,
obliterating boundaries

creating wilderness
as in, the Shepherd's forty days
a-, "not" bound to family, synagogue, carpentry,
when he refused both wealth and power.
He gathered a flock to heal the world
without a cent, a change of clothes, or plan.

Or can it mean "jump,"
with a- for "at" as in aloud, astir,
my dog sends squirrels abounding to trees,
rounding her backyard boundaries.
She then bounds up the stairs to me,
undulating tongue to tail.

Surely "dance" is in the answer
as in this grateful abundancer.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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When a seventh grader asked why we spent so much time on vocabulary in a class called 'Literature,' I answered that almost every substantial word is a short poem, rooted in an image or a metaphor.

Sometimes, my own theories for words' origins are better than what the dictionary tells me, so this may be the first in a series of etymythologies. - WSS

Atlanta, Sunrise Saturday

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Where the bike path enters the park, two boxers sparred,
bearded and broad, smooth and skinny -- brothers?
Red leather smacked the younger man's palms, not hard,
each one's eyes intent on the other's.

A woman in gym shorts held a violin
and bow, with a dog like a mop on a leash that she'd cinched
to her waist. She tucked the instrument under her chin.
He saw me and barked; she played Bach, eyes clinched.

On the trail through a refugee haven, a young man strode,
dark eyes and fringe of soft beard, in a tunic, on track
to the bus, passing girls in hijabs. A rooster crowed
as they giggled, ogling his receding back.

I find joy looking out of myself into people
whom I glide by, invisible.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Late last summer, just thinking that I might start a poetry blog heightened my awareness during a bike ride on the John Lewis Freedom Trail.

I was halfway to a sonnet, with three images and a connecting thought, but then I had to trust that somewhere in the language I would find two pairs of rhyming words to express the essential elements of each storyette, as do boxers sparred...brothers...not hard...each other's. Finding such rhymes for each quatrain was fun, even the mornings I woke around 3 to jot down a rhyme.

As each image comes from a different neighborhood along the path, I hope that the poem also gives the reader a sense of Atlanta's character. - WSS

Swimming Lapse

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You press upon me behind and before...; if I climb up to heaven, you are there. - Psalm 139

On my hundredth lap I sucked in air
to stay below awhile and drift.
It's like flying to feel this upward lift
to the surface. I wondered, why stop there?

Arms first, then trunk, then trunks, I rose.
My toes brushed the penants strung high across
the lanes, past lights, where dust like moss
hangs down from rafters in the shadows.

A little boy gawked, but with a shout,
went back to his lesson. Kicking hard,
I plunged to the exit propped by the lifeguard,
and grazed the header heading out.

Rising surprisingly fast, I cleared
the upper branches of the pines
and squeezed between the power lines.
With wind like a hand at my back I veered

over midday traffic into town,
startling birds by the courthouse clock.
My shadow spooked a pug on his walk,
but no one else. I drifted down

Church Street to the bell tower.
I wished for the camera on my phone.
I swung on the vane, centrifugally thrown
back to town, to the pool, to my lane and the shower,

glad for how this once I'd tried
to let go intent, to go with that lift
that left this lesson as a gift:
at the surface, don't be satisfied.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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At the pool, age 6, I would safety-pin a towel for a super-hero cape and launch into flight from the floor in the deep end. At 63, I'm amused to rediscover that sensation of lifting off is just as strong; laps are no fun without it.

My notes about that observation didn't "go" anywhere until I thought, why stop with the facts? In a free flow of writing, I imagined an experience as real to me now as anything else I did last week. To happen upon Psalm 139 was serendipity; it tethers my flight to my faith tradition. - WSS

Ukraine, Second Week

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He has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city. Psalm 31.21

How do you feel the love of God in a city
of crumbled shops, apartments, cafés -- awake
as days and nights the enemy fires blindly,
sirens moan, and your foundations shake?

Is God in sharing cups of melted snow,
in lifting sandbags for a barricade,
in giving aid to families you don't know,
and letting go of every plan you made?

Young pilots of planes that Stinger missiles wrecked,
enemy conscripts burned alive in tanks,
the jailing of neighbors whose loyalty you suspect:
for wonders such as these, do you give thanks?

Secure, like you last month, I pray you'll see
some way to beat, yet not be like, your enemy.

I include a collage of stages in the production of a watercolor by Susan Rouse from 2020. Her discipline of making at least one work per week is the inspiration for this blog.
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The Psalmist's phrase about "God's love in a besieged city" seemed an intriguing subject to explore months before Putin's invasion put us all under siege, vicariously. On Orthodox Easter, weeks after I posted this poem, President Zolensky pleaded with his people to fight without hate. If I was naive to express such a hope, I'm in good company.

I wrote couplets from successive days' news reports, using iambic pentameter to give the lines gravitas. Without intending to produce a sonnet, I had one, only the rhyme scheme was off: AA BB CC DD EE FF GG. Reordering the lines to fit Shakespeare's ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, I experienced firsthand how his pattern gives each quatrain its own character and makes the last two lines a kind of benediction. - WSS

I Want My Refund

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If you aim to write meaningful stuff,
then a poem per week can be tough.
  So my standard relaxes
  while I do my taxes;
a limerick will be good enough.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Microclimate

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--where I ride my bike into
a tunnel trains once burrowed through
that sunlight never warms,

where easy hazy summer drops
away and wintry dampness grips
my neck my back my arms,

and though I pedal faster,
still the end seems farther --
that's like the stretch between

the words I didn't think they'd hear,
the message that I didn't mean,
the look in their eyes angry, wary,

and

the way that they respond to
Sorry, I'm so sorry.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Though I've never arranged bouquets, I've seen others do with flowers what I did with a bundle of ideas when I started this poem. After my draft was posted, like the arrangers who step back to look at their work, I saw lines to be trimmed for clarity's sake, which revealed opportunities to relate ideas through rhyme, which led to rearrangements to achieve some pleasing symmetry. The poem looks and sounds very different on Saturday from what I posted Tuesday.
- WSS

Self Checkout

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You like the way
you heft your items
  CABERNET @ 2 for 5
from right to left
and deftly turn
  LB BRN RICE 1.19
to where a scanner reads
reflected laser beams between
  LHT RED KID 1.99
lines thick and thin
irregularly spaced

like, among thick winter days, this
sliver of warmth to ride your bike
where unobstructed sun through pines
makes lines on your road,
each bar you achieve
a part of coded miles
you leave behind:
  AWFL AWSM
opportunities ahead if
  ETRNTY
is similarly lined.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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The first time I noticed a bar code was on the cover of MAD magazine around 1970 when Alfred E. Neuman mowed it like grass. The bar code came to mind recently during a bike ride in late November; I saw possibilities for a poem when I realized that rhymes irregularly spaced might be analogous to bars in the code. Some actual receipts from Publix helped me out.

This is my first try at a technique that I associate with Billy Collins. His poems often begin with a whimsical or ordinary observation that develops to a point where a tangent thought takes the poem off to some very unexpected place. - WSS

Interview with Box Turtle

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Come out of the cold. You'll warm beneath my dome.
For sixty years, this room has been my home.

Want mushrooms? Snails? The rain I corked in spring?
Oh yes, in my field, I've now seen everything

from the stream to the oak on the ridge -- I recall when it fell --
the bike path I've crossed twice -- the traffic was hell.

The yoga mat's for tone. No, no more races.
My books; my sketches of beloved faces

all gone or gone beyond my own square mile.
I hope that they look back, as I do, and smile.

Here I work. Retired and alone,
I still seek ways to say what I have known:

We love, we hurt, we forgive, and we're forgiven.
My faith's not just a creed; it's a story I live in.

My pleasure. I didn't see how long we'd been.
It's good to stick my neck out now and then.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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See a photo of a box turtle on the bike trail with my blogpost Alone on Two Wheels Around Atlanta. I think of the box turtle as my spirit animal. - WSS

The Kingdom of Heaven is like

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a thousand hurtling tons
of iron, rubber, glass,
and biscuits with coffee to-go
stopped

to let a dude on skateboard
thread the stripes
across six lanes,
grinning.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Writing pages of drafts, I lost the fun of the original incident. I'd felt joy at some kind of miracle -- like Elisha crossing the river on dry land -- but in all those pages, I couldn't define it. This morning, I put all the notes aside and wrote this haiku-like sentence on the back of an envelope. - WSS

Why Don't You Just Learn English?

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his voice cut through
the clink of carts, the check-out beeps,
his question an assault:

You're holding up the line.
You want our stuff, you speak our way.
Confused? That's not my fault.

Her reply, too soft to hear:

My language is my super-power,
the magic cloak of my mother
to shield my children,
strengthen their father,
fly them distant places,
times long gone;

English just my secret identity,
mild-mannered, awkward, shy.

Aloud, she may have murmured Pardon.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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In the moment described in the poem, I froze. Head down, I never even saw the ones involved. Ever since, I've wished I'd intervened like Superman or Jesus. The poem took shape only after I took myself out and let the two be heroes of their own encounter.

I draw upon some first-hand knowledge. When I lived some weeks in Francophone countries, I suffered the devaluation of my facility with English -- my super-power. - WSS

Season Premiere

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All of summer at my back
I pedaled into chance of rain
the sky clear blue with fringe of clouds
beyond the canopy, still green.

Crackling trees alerted me
when fall rolled in, a granite gray,
crushed the warmth and snapped thick branches
dropping fractured in my way.

I pushed on toward an overpass
repelled by wind as leaves in swarms
like agitated bats attacked,
and cold drops stung my arms.

"Really, guys," I laughed, "for me?
This cinematic violence?"
I reached the shelter, shivering,
an awed, delighted, audience.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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My weakness for clever rhymes sometimes seduces me into writing nonsense. So I drafted this poem without rhyme. Then, the morning I was going to post it, I read a poem by Richard Wilbur in which he rhymed just the last word, doubling the impact and making me smile -- what a pleasure! I then tinkered with my draft and found some rhymes already there; some rhymes came to mind that sharpened the lines I'd written.

So I've changed my mind. Rhyme drew me to poetry before I could read. I won't deny myself the pleasure of discovering rhyming relationships. I'm writing for pleasure, after all. - WSS

Mountaintop Experience

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He'd scaled three hundred pages of this mesa,
my open prayer book. Hesitant,
he probed the margin with antennae.

Hauling up wings and thorax long as this ---
and abdomen --- he made a dash
across the psalm like a Hebrew scholar

right to left between the lines
  O Lord I am not proud
escaping? searching?
  I have no haughty looks
Reversed, he climbed the ridge amid
  great matters and things that are too hard for me

and aimed his tiny caravan
towards a shadowy valley -- of death, if I chose
to close the book

I carried like a tray out to the deck.
With no more breath than, say, amen,
I sent him to the world in peace.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I've not found another insect like the one I describe in this poem, neither in my home nor online. - WSS

Long Division

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One playful dog and I
divided by

7 hours’ class
plus 3 of practice
plus 2 commutes (rainy, dark, and cold)

equals

me, jogging up the steps
dropping my books at the top

plus Mia
prancing at the open door, ball in her teeth,

over
        joyed.

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I wrote the poem in 2019 to demonstrate for seventh graders that a poem and a math equation have a lot in common. I explain more at my blog here.

For a wonderful Christmas gift, Susan commissioned her art teacher Donna Shiver to draw these memorials to our beloved dogs Luis and Mia (the one with the black and white markings). These are charcoal on wood.

How dogs bless us is a theme I've developed in many posts on my blog The Word Sanctuary. See a curated list of links to many reflections on dogs in general and my dogs in particular with cute pictures on my page Loving Dogs. -WSS

Solar Power

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[T]he sun...rejoices like a champion to run its course. Psalm 19

They worshipped, back then,
a super-heated globe
of hydrogen.

Even late last summer
on a bike trail, cranking under clouds
like grimy semis bumper to bumper,

when that globe cut through
and curbed the shadows,
made drab and listless trees snap to,

bringing out green and yellow flags they'd made,
I saluted my escort and surged,
an elated, abbreviated motorcade.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I regret that 27 people read an earlier version of this that now makes me cringe. Since I posted that one, I've learned that you should lead with the metaphor you believe in the most, and cut out the rest. Also, if you have to explain it in commentary, then you've left out something important. This revision is from May 17. - WSS