Poetry & Parenting: Courage

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Courage by Marie Howe

Sorry for the lapse in having a Monday poem.  I’ll extend one little day into May if no one minds.

Here’s a piece by Marie Howe. I don’t remember if I thought it or wrote it here on the site, but lately I’ve been poring over her book, What the Living Do. Those poems recount her brother’s death and touch on family history, other friends, marriage. None of them was exactly right for this project, but it is a fabulous book. This poem, Courage, comes from her next book, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. It takes me back to the days when the girls were little and we spent time at the park. Also the way little kids discover and use language.  Enjoy!

Courage
by Marie Howe

I’m helping my little girl slide down the pole next to the slide-and-bridge
construction
when a little boy walks up and says, Why are you helping that young person
do something that’s too dangerous for her?

Why do you say it’s too dangerous? I say
And he says, She’s too young.
And I say, How old are you? And he says, four and a half.
And I say, Well, she’s three and a half

When he comes back a little later he says, I’ll show you how it’s done, and
climbs up the ladder and slides down the pole.
Then he says, She’s too young. What happens is that when you get older you
get braver.
Then he pauses and looks at me, Are you brave?

Brave? I say, looking at him.
Are you afraid of Parasite 2? he says.
And I say, What’s Parasite 2?
And he walks away slowly, shaking his head.

photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives via photopin cc

Twitt

Poetry & Parenting: Grace

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Grace by Deborah StamblerThis Friday I’m featuring one of my poems again.  It’s called Grace and I don’t really know what to say about it…but I hope you enjoy it.

Grace
by Deborah Stambler

i.

The cat has come in squeaking and calling.
It’s his signal that he has something
he wants us to see.  A bird or a moth.
Something he has hunted, caught.  Usually,
these prizes are still flapping or crawling
and we set them free.  The cat forced
to relinquish his prowess.

It may be that I confuse grace with mercy, but it seems
that you can’t have one without the other.

Once I nursed a boyfriend through
a horrible flu.  His fever high. He sat
in a lukewarm bath.  He came out shivering.
Then wrapped in a blanket and crying, he told me
that his mother loved God more than she loved him.

There are times when grace is our only mercy.
The flicker of dignity in the sick and dying.
My grandmother reliving  a mumbled collage
of stories before she passed away.
My friend Wade asking that I close my eyes
while helping him into a fresh hospital gown
after his fourth surgery  for brain cancer.

ii.

Grace.  The white kouros in the museum.
Luminous from solidity to fingertip.
Mercy. The tree bending in the wind.
But neither is static.  Both have known longing.

Slow, and slow to let grace form the page.
Let mercy read these words and nod in quiet assent.

iii.

My daughter asks if writing poems ever
makes me feel sad.  Yes darling, I feel sad right now.

I do too, she said.  Listening to you read that new poem.
It’s sad except for the part about the cat.

Then she asks if people who are dying, the ones who can
no longer talk, use sign language.  She starts signing
the letters to spell ‘I love you.’

She wants to know how to sign the letter ‘Y’
and asks if I am crying.  Almost,

but not because we were talking about death.
It was gratitude for the grace she gives the poem
that I couldn’t manage on my own.

photo credit: John&Fish via photopin cc

Twitt

Poetry & Parenting: My Father’s Coat

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My Father's Coat by Susie Mee

Here’s another father poem.  Do I have more father than mother poems?  I think I do.  I’ll have to try to fix that in these last couple of days.  It is almost the end of April, National Poetry Month and this project.  It’s been great finding new poems and sharing some well-worn favorites.

Today’s piece is by Susie Mee.  I don’t know her work, but found this poem in an anthology called What Have You Lost?  It’s edited by Naomi Shihab Nye.  Mee’s poem has wonderfully strange images. See what you think of the end lines.  At first I found the lines reflecting the comfort children take in their parents’ presence, but something pulls at me.  I’m thinking it’s not quite that simple. This is one of the things I love about poetry.  There isn’t always a right or wrong and what seems straightforward, rarely is. Chime in.  I’d love to hear how you read those end lines.

 

My Father’s Coat
by Susie Mee

My father’s coat was made
of finest muscle.  Fish-scales
were its lining;
from them, waterfalls
glistened.  Rainbow trout
swam in the depths of its pockets
among twigs and polished stones.
Inside this coat, my father
was invisible.  He became
the smell of wet leaves,
the smoke of campfires,
and when he wrapped me in his
sleeves, I stepped inside
the dark forest.

 

Twitt