the will of the people
there’s the decision date
and the decision point
the fulcrum the inflection point
beyond which the momentum
seems to go one way
after that the vote becomes a formality
because the community has chosen
it’s much harder to pinpoint on the calendar
it’s why people say
keep an ear to the ground:
listen for the stampede
so you can join in or get out of the way
grandfathering
Superior says it will roll back
the measures agreed to earlier
and I feel a mixture
of rage and despair
nothing will change if we don’t change
if our investment in the future doesn’t change
if our willingness to live differently doesn’t change
if we don’t learn from our mistakes
we’re doomed
(we’re probably doomed anyway
but then we’ll be indefensibly doomed)
unmasking
Thinking of our relatives who died from diphtheria: my grandfather’s mother Rosemary Farley Schaaf (seen in the sidebar photo here), my grandmother’s sisters Frances and Josephine Barber, and Alex’s grandmother’s siblings Ruth and Bert Waldman.
Friday they will unmask us
and what will our faces do?
twitch nervously or beam gratefully?
after two years of suspended anticipation
my hope muscles have atrophied
I’ve lost the knack for moving on, moving forward
we’ve no link with the 1918 survivors –
the year my grandfather was born,
he’d no memory of it
instead, diphtheria is the story my husband and I grew up with:
four of our grandparents’ siblings and one mother claimed
while our grandparents were still children
now we get the Tdap or DTaP shot and
our grandparents’ devastating loss feels like
something from a different world
but those 1918 flu survivors –
how did they shed their masks and re-emerge?
how did masking become unknown to us all again?
I’ve lost my bearings for judging what is safe
I don’t even know what Greek letter comes next
let alone how to recognize it hovering on the horizon
it’s like trying to judge which smoke is from California
and which is from the next block
ready to claim what’s yours
in these days
when threats are everywhere
and we’ve grown unacquainted with joy
I still can’t imagine bringing my naked face
somewhere it could calmly swallow
anything new
Pinched Offerings
I read about the fire victim gift cards
with funds drained before they’re swiped,
victims victimized again
who is spending their money how?
I don’t understand it
but it galls me
now I worry that we gave Jerry
who brings our mail each day
worse than an empty envelope at Christmas –
one full of broken promises instead
but I’m not sure how to politely ask him or them
if our gift let them down
another town’s children comfort us
Inspired by notes sent by Bradford K-8 students in Littleton to Louisville Middle School.
I only read the first forty pages or so
enough to be reminded
of our immense capacity
for compassion
(ocean-sized –
no, sun-sized)
here it is:
in the hearts dotting i’s
and the T-rex making the bed joke
in all the rainbows and hearts
the I know how you feel notes
and the I can’t imagine’s.
the children of another town
have written to us
marshaling all their worldly experience
to say
we’re so sorry
and
it’ll be alright
Grey Silence Descends
it was as if the blaze consumed
all the color in the landscape
where there had been the jolt of flowers
or the questionable taste of bright paint
now there is a nearly uniform grey
the quiet whispered shade of ash and charcoal
the palette of Schindler’s List
what’s left is: concrete slabs and twisted steel
detritus the shade of clouds heavy with rain
or month-old snow
and all this must be lifted from the earth shovel by shovel
or one patient backhoe scoop at a time
before any new brightness
might take hold
Escape
I’m dreaming of a little place
in tall trees
lit by sunshine and snow
and golden aspen light
a place so flush with water
it bubbles out of the ground
and you can float on a pond
when you need to let go
I’m dreaming of a small space
with not too much to burn
that heats up quick
with the strike of a match
I’m dreaming of a break
from ash and scrap
where I can settle my head
deep into down
and dream blue white green dreams
where all breezes are innocent
all sparks kept to the stove
mapping the damage
We don’t know the world
the way the crow flies
or embers blow.
So when my friend says her sister
across from Warembourg
is displaced, I don’t understand why.
But where did the ash come from there?
I ask, puzzled.
From our street! she says (with the obviously! implied).
I think about it,
consult the map,
and of course she’s right –
it’s straight east of Mulberry
in a way the winding suburban streets
and bike paths make you forget.
There are burned chunks
of other people’s houses in her attic
she says,
and I finally grasp
how one sister’s home could have
lit the other’s up.
But, thankfully,
my friend’s house held
and they were both spared that fate.
Now they try on simpler smaller lives
in different parts
of this parched brown valley.
We’re all relearning this landscape
with a new level of intimacy,
a gift we wouldn’t have asked for
that changes us anyway.
Lost Bounce
Inspired by a prompt from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s Loving the Self: A Poetry Playshop.
the sight of all the burned-out trampolines
flipped over, blown far from their families
silver u’s sticking into the air
like uncomfortable metal bridgework
puts a little hollowness in me these days –
you know there are not-laughing children
to go with each one
trampoline, you raise us up and encircle us
make a safe-ish place to be wild
test limits and bump up against our edges
you launch us into that part of childhood
that’s more about risk than safety
and make a quiet screened place
to whisper with friends
black and blue and endlessly round
you teach us how to lighten up
and we feel the pleasure of becoming buoyant
internalize that we are capable
of reaching much greater heights
than we ever thought
we love you for your whiff of danger
the broken clips and snagged nets
blue borders always shredding away to nothingness
your tenuous connection to earth
and warm embrace of sky
our muscles absorb how to bounce back
we integrate the feel of resilience
how to float and sink and go
with what the moment demands
rather than stiffly thudding through each jolt and jar
so each abandoned naked metal circle
makes my mouth go sour
makes my heart sink a touch lower
it gets worse / better
Inspired by a prompt from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s Loving the Self: A Poetry Playshop.
gazing into the fire
asking what do you have to teach me today?
all I hear is
the old toddler parenting mantra
it gets worse
before it gets better
friends
it could always get worse
but what if we willed ourselves to believe
today we’re one day closer to better?
