The Lost Lagoon Emily Pauline Johnson It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon, And we two dreaming the dusk away, Beneath the drift of a twilight grey— Beneath the drowse of an ending day And the curve of a golden moon. It is dark on the Lost Lagoon, And gone are the depths of haunting blue, The grouping gulls, and the old canoe, The singing firs, and the dusk and—you, And gone is the golden moon. O lure of the Lost Lagoon— I dream to-night that my paddle blurs The purple shade where the seaweed stirs— I hear the call of the singing firs In the hush of the golden moon. This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 20, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

 

 

no more grandma poems

Yolanda Wisher

they said  forget your grandma these american letters don’t need no more  grandma poems but i said  the grandmas are  our first poetic forms the first haiku  was a grandma  & so too  the first sonnet the first blues the first praise song  therefore every poem  is a grandmother  a womb that has ended  & is still expanding  a daughter that is  rhetorically aging  & retroactively living every poem  is your grandma & you miss her wouldn’t mind  seeing her again even just  for a moment  in the realm of spirit in the realm  of possibilities  where poems  share blood  & spit & exist  on chromosomal  planes of particularity  where poems  are strangers turned sistren  not easily shook  or forgotten

Copyright © 2021 by Yolanda Wisher. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 29, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets. Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast     “In a workshop I attended many years ago, someone complained eloquently about people writing too many ‘grandma poems.’ For a long time, their testimony had me hiding my grandma poems—like big, comfy underwear—from the public, even from myself. This poem is a proud acceptance of my unabashed adoration for all grandmothers, but especially Christine Johnson, my great-grandmother with whom I spent many days of my first decade. She is the reason I write poems. The world wouldn’t turn without grandmas like her, who are everything.” —Yolanda Wisher

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

To close out this week with its focus on family (the first time I've had a theme in quite a while), I decided to move from memories of lost relatives to a mother's gentle reproach to her son--reproach larded with not a little encouragement. Perhaps something like this is just what we need to hear from a mother (whether our own or Langston Hughes's) sometimes...

Mother to Son

Langston Hughes - 1902-1967

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

 

A Dream at Night - by Mei Yao Ch'en and The New Wife - by Wang Chien

 

Since I've been posting poems about family connections this week, it seemed to make sense to continue the theme with this short text of a man remembering his wife (since yesterday's poem was about a woman remembering her husband). If yesterday's poem was largely about the life the husband had before his second marriage to the poet, this poem is about the persistence in dreams of a couple's life together: the lovers' mutual connection, expressed through her care of his clothes and his desire to be reunited with her in death. The second poem today is also about marriage, but the beginning rather than the end. I found these poems in A Book of Luminous Things, the wonderful anthology of poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, that supplied the two poems from Monday's post. It was published in 1998, so I do not know if it's still in print, but it is a wonderful resource. A Dream at Night In broad daylight I dream I Am with her. At night I dream She is still at my side. She Carries her kit of colored Threads. I see her image bent Over her bag of silks. She Mends and alters my clothes and Worries for fear I might look Worn and ragged. Dead, she watches Over my life. Her constant Memory draws me towards death. -- Mei Yao Ch'en (1002-1060)

           translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth.

The New Wife
On the Third day she went down to the kitchen,
Washed her hands, prepared the broth.
Still unaware of her new mother’s likings.
She asks his sister to taste.
                                                -- Wang Chien (768-830)
        translated from the Chinese by J. P. Seaton

Second Wife - by Eve Triem - Poem for 10/26/21

 Second Wife

by Eve Triem - from New as a Wave: A Retrospective: 1937-1983

Slowly he accepts ice cream...

between the half-teaspoons

I feed him

he talks of Daisy,

grammar school idol;

repeats the story

of his first wife Minna.

He has used up more life

than I can imagine: at sixteen

goldmined in Alaska, killed a thief

trying for his poke.

Ranched in Leavenworth,

befriended Indians

against his neighbors;

sold strawberries

to the railroad women. Lectured

on mind-enchantment to movie starlets,

was paid top prices for mystery stories.

I listen to his tales, a Desdemona

pitying, unbelieving - not really enraged

at the waste of my youth.

I burn in the flame of his cremation.

Sorting my ashes from his I wonder

what will I remember at my end:

not the boys I danced with,

not even the delight of his mind.

Surely a tree in the alley

lighted by a finch singing louder

than the din of ash-cans.

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)

Supplication

The sea took a sailor to its deep. --

His mother, unsuspecting, goes to light

a tall candle before the Virgin Mary

for his speedy return and for fine weather--

and always she cocks her ear to windward.

But while she prays and implores,

the icon listens, solemn and sad, knowing well

that the son she expects will no longer return.

Translated from the Greek by Rae Dalven

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

From “Clearances," In Memoriam M.K.H. (1911-1984)

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Amores Perros - by Angela Narciso Torres - Poem for 10/21/21

I love this description of dog love--both the dog's love for his bone (or, in the case of my dogs, for any food, including bones or living rodents) and his love for his person. To call these forms of love erotic and platonic might be okay, but I think it makes too much of a distinction between them...

To hear a podcast about this poem, click here. 

Amores Perros

by Angela Narciso Torres

Sometimes I love you
the way my dog loves
his all-beef chew bone,
worrying the knuckled

corners from every angle,
mandibles working
like pistons. His eyes glaze
over with a faraway look

that says he won’t quit
till he reaches the soft
marrow. His paws prop
the bone upright,

it slips—he can’t clutch it
tight enough, bite hard
enough. A dog’s paws
weren’t meant for gripping.

And sometimes I love you
the way my dog brushes
his flank nonchalant
against my legs, then flops

on the floor beside me
while I read or watch TV.
His heft warms.
One of us is hungry,

the other needs
to pee. But we sit,
content as wildflowers.
Minutes pass. Hours.