The Poetry Marathon

dearly beloved

we are gathered here,

our marriages intact

for the most part,

to see what these

ridiculous SCOTUS

pranksters will make

of us next. oh, we’ve done

the marches at the Justice Department,

the White House, the Reflecting Pool,

the Vietnam Wall, P Street Beach, you name it.

Nary a rock was thrown, not even an

insult, really. We just said our piece,

pretty please, give us the Equal Rights

for our granddaughters and nieces.

Never mind about our measly seventy

cents on the dollar or all our people

dead from AIDS. We just don’t want to

be afraid for the girls who won’t have a say.

When we put NO MORE WIRE HANGERS

on the signs that we carry, we mean the babies

barely grown, the lovely ones just now going to prom.

For goddess sake, don’t make them go through

this again. It’s not the abortions we want, anyway,

per se, but the right to be free of the ill-begotten.

We know what comes of babies who are hated, spawn

of rapists and fathers who had no right to take what they took.

Please read the book, The Power of Women, written

by a man, and you’ll know where to look. Spare us,

by hook or by crook. Spare them.

SPAM

I laugh uproariously at the amusing song

by Cheryl Wheeler, about the cruise ship

that got stranded out at sea, and

all they had to eat for a couple of weeks

was pop tarts and spam, airlifted from the mainland.

No one, from the most accomplished chef in a French cafe,

to the short-order cook in the greasy spoon, could make

a fine meal out of those ingredients. Not enough bechemel

sauce in all of France to dress up that awful can-shaped

substance. Yet when we were young, starving on a

cold-water farm in the Ozarks, spam was the great luxury.

We all waited, stair steps from four to twenty, eager for our slice,

browned around the edges from the skillet, and delicious.

Out on the street,

a steady flow of feet

leads to the National Zoo.

One of our Smithsonian treasures,

bison graze there once again,

and a snowy leopard paces nervously

as you pass by. The birds in the aviary

fly, but they can’t really go anywhere,

not that they care.  They like it here,

but not the elephants. The tigers, too,

would like to be somewhere else.

They would have left with the panda,

who recently went back to China,

or should I say, was summoned back

to China. Some of us wept to see it go.

YOU WILL BE WHAT I AM

You were formidable,

my first crush.

You surely knew the hold you had on me.

I picked up the chalk pieces, put up

the new bulletin board,

and followed you after class

when i noticed you were crying.

i had no idea what had happened

but you did, your surely knew. Your

husband was in Vietnam.  Maybe he was

never coming back. i followed you

to your car, my heart breaking on

your behalf. I gave you my most

precious treasure, a 45 of “Hey Jude.”

You smiled, and gave it back.

So many missing people in Virginia,

you can tell a certain serial killer’s

out of jail, although last I heard

he had moved on to Utah, then

to Colorado. Very upset citizenry

in Provo and Durango, but not to worry.

He was on his way to Yellowstone,

and no one’s seen him since.

There is a man who fishes all morning

and feeds the birds all afternoon.

He is always surrounded by pelicans,

gulls, even great blue heron, and the

occasional wood stork flock to him for food.

Up at Mirror Lake, the egrets and ibis compete

with the ducks and moorhens for morsels from

office workers on their lunch hours and teenagers

playing hooky from school. Homeless people, too,

are generous with the shore birds and the geese.

One man who admits he gets only one meal a day

still shares what he has with a roseate spoonbill

who has somehow flown in from Fort DeSoto or

Lassing Park. “See,” he says. “This is God’s own

beauty, right here. An Audubon painting, eating

out of my hand.”

Omega Institute, 1987

So many souls in transition

Ram Dass tried to keep us grounded

by leading guided meditations each evening

reminding us that we were there to be of

service to others, sore and needing.

Some were living in tents, others had dorm

rooms, all had troubling events we were

trying to leave behind. One woman in

particular, muttering to herself all the time,

when we were doing self-introductions, said

“I’m Janet from another planet,” and we all

knew it was true. We were there, too, whatever

spaceship she was on, we had come along

for the ride, just for the summer. Like Ram

Dass said, we were all just walking each other home.

We sit across from each other

your eyes never leave my face

looking for the mystery to be unlocked

why are we here, what is this place?

I cannot help your confusion

though I understand it better than most

we have been here before, you know

for birthdays, for eggs and toast.

We will keep returning, time after time

even though you no longer know my name

the familiar tablecloth, the glassware is the same.