In Others' Words

Men At Forty by Donald Justice, 1967.


Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father's tie there in secret,

And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

Two Feelings At The Same Time

Clementine sang this song the other day and I had no idea she knew it.

A salesperson asked Josie when her birthday was and she answered, to my astonishment: July.


I thought of this poem, What is Supposed to Happen, by Naomi Shihab Nye:

When you were small,
we watched you sleeping,
waves of breath
filling your chest.
Sometimes we hid behind
the wall of baby, soft cradle
of baby needs.
I loved carrying you between
my own body and the world.

Now you are sharpening pencils,
entering the forest of
lunch boxes, little desks.
People I never saw before
call out your name
and you wave.

This loss I feel,
this shrinking,
as your field of roses
grows and grows….

Now I understand history.

Now I understand my mother’s

ancient eyes.

(Sometimes you feel two feelings at the same time - and that's ok.)

Fifth Anniversary

All The Whiskey in Heaven

Not for all the whiskey in heaven
Not for all the flies in Vermont
Not for all the tears in the basement
Not for a million trips to Mars

Not if you paid me in diamonds
Not if you paid me in pearls
Not if you gave me your pinky ring
Not if you gave me your curls

Not for all the fire in hell
Not for all the blue in the sky
Not for an empire of my own
Not even for peace of mind

No, never, I’ll never stop loving you
Not till my heart beats its last
And even then in my words and my songs
I will love you all over again

Charles Bernstein

Anniversaries 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015

Good Bones

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Make It Beautiful by Lucas Jack

In Others' Words

Taking It Home to Jerome by David Kirby

In Baton Rouge, there was a DJ on the soul station who was
always urging his listeners to “take it on home to Jerome.”

No one knew who Jerome was. And nobody cared. So it
didn’t matter. I was, what, ten, twelve? I didn’t have anything

to take home to anyone. Parents and teachers told us that all
we needed to do in this world were three things: be happy,

do good, and find work that fulfills you. But I also wanted
to learn that trick where you grab your left ankle in your

right hand and then jump through with your other leg.
Everything else was to come, everything about love:

the sadness of it, knowing it can’t last, that all lives must end,
all hearts are broken. Sometimes when I’m writing a poem,

I feel as though I’m operating that crusher that turns
a full-size car into a metal cube the size of a suitcase.

At other times, I’m just a secretary: the world has so much
to say, and I’m writing it down. This great tenderness.


My friend Amy had her baby last week and her husband's name is Jerome. Once again Writer's Almanac delivers in a creepy prescient way. Always enjoyable, sometimes a gut punch.

In Other's Words

I Have a Time Machine by Brenda Shaughnessy

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future  

at a rate of one second per second,

 
which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant 

committees and even to me.
 

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next  

moment and to the next.
 

Thing is, I can’t turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—  

well, not zipping—And if I try 

 
to get out of this time machine, open the latch,  

I’ll fall into space, unconscious,
 

then desiccated! And I’m pretty sure I’m afraid of that.  

So I stay inside.
 

There’s a window, though. It shows the past. 

It’s like a television or fish tank
 

but it’s never live, it’s always over. The fish swim

in backward circles.
 

Sometimes it’s like a rearview mirror, another chance  

to see what I’m leaving behind,
 

and sometimes like blackout, all that time  

wasted sleeping.
 

Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment  

at having lost a library book.
 

Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting 

to be found charming.
 

Me holding a rose though I want to put it down  

so I can smoke.
 

Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me  

because the explosion
 

of some dark star all the way back struck hard  

at mother’s mother’s mother.
 

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.  

I thought I’d find myself

 
an old woman by now, travelling so light in time.  

But I haven’t gotten far at all.
 

Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I’d like;  

the past is so horribly fast.

Listen to the author read the poem here.

In Other's Words

Sometimes the Writer's Almanac is spookily targeted to my current mood or situation or something I've been mulling over.

We've been going through a rough patch with Josie - she often doesn't nap at all at daycare and gets home a complete mess -- exhausted and cranky. She's been waking up at night too, hungry or in agony from constipation. We, in turn, are exhausted. Her eczema is flaring and she's red, scaly, and itchy. She and C pinch, push, and hit each other - even the hugs turn to too-tight squeezes. The minutes rush from frustration and exasperation to big smiles and hilarious commentary ('dis is too bicy for my mouf! [too spicy for my mouth!]) The last lines of this poem resonate because to me they reference not just the tremendous joy and love children bring, but also maddening and occasionally terrifying frustration and anxiety.

You Should Avoid Young Children

by Claire Keys

Because they fill their diapers
with reliable ease, sitting on your lap
or spread out on your best mattress.
Guilt is as foreign to them as vichyssoise.

Because they spread sticky fingers
over the piano keys, looking for you
to hoist them onto your lap. They slam
the ivories for the racket they can make.
Re-think your nap.

Because they are blank slates
on which so much waits to be written,
their eyes opened wide to take everything in,
including the lines around your eyes,
the pouches under your chin.

Because they manipulate the controls
on the TV, finger the holes in the electric socket,
stomp the cat’s switching tail only to smile
and gaze at you as if you held the keys to joy.

Because you can embrace them, but
you can’t bind them. Because they have nothing
to give you—and everything. Because
something loosens when they come around.
Something opens you didn’t know was shut.

p.s. Every gripe and complaint is grounded in gratitude for this good fortune - I am so thankful for this happy, healthy family. And for daycare :)