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