The Poetry Marathon

So, you don’t lay eggs,
those golden things,
food of the gods;

you don’t bow at my feet,
cackling joyfully,
like my speckled brown beauties;

but you sing the new day,
and keep singing until dusk,
my farmyard musician;
you flaunt your golden tail feathers,
barnyard couture;
and flap your wings and rise
in an avian ballet.

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.” -George Sand

It’s easy to be generous
when you have enough.
It’s easy to love
when you were raised with unconditional love.

The real kindness comes from the widow
who gives her last mite.
But what of the mountebank, that con man
selling snake oil so many are buying?

How can he be so greedy
when he always had everything—
private schools, private jets,
gold plated urinals?

What makes the person who was given the world
so unkind? What makes him so afraid?
What makes him need to steal
the widow’s mite?

Maybe he was given gold instead of kindness.
Maybe loss was a punishable offense.
We can’t judge. Something made him. But for the sake of the Constitution,
we don’t have to vote for him.

How did I end up here on a farm
when I’ve always felt at home in the city?
How did I become so domestic,
so unsophisticated, so middle class?

I’ve always felt at home in the city,
but now I look at city lawns in wonder.
So unsophisticated, so middle class.
Wouldn’t chickens and garden make your life better?

I look at those small city lawns. No wonder
I ended up here on a farm.
Chickens and garden make anyone’s life better.
Dirt is sophistication. Chicken shit is real class.

Writing marathon–
halfway home, take break to watch
spider spin a web

Was it three or four years ago that the drought first dried up the creek? It was the summer that the okra blossoms burned up and dropped off, when my harvest was nothing but peppers and eggplant. I don’t like eggplant. Last summer, it was cool here, but blistering in Seattle. This year, I let the garden go. I planted and watered, but I didn’t weed. Volunteers took up whole patches. The bees, the birds, and the butterflies loved the lemon balm, the four-feet-tall marigolds, chickweed and Malabar spinach. I got a few potatoes, some early tomatoes, but then the petunias and the tomatoes burned up. I made note of what survived–vincas, cannas, those peppers again. There was still color, still food for the frogs and rabbits that moved into the garden. In the face of uncertainty, I’ll call that success.

My senator knows
Earth is not getting warmer.
His proof? A snowball.

How Grandma loved that attic fan,
and the breezeway between her house and the cellar,
and the big chest-type deep freeze that meant
she didn’t have to can every blessed thing
she put by for the lean months,

and the television
that got two channels, one out of Ada
and the other out of Ardmore, enough
as long as she got Lawrence Welk
and his lovely Irish tenor
on Saturday night.

Iowa

Drove out of the parking lot,
opened the door of my yellow Camaro, threw up,
and drove on. Not sure I was the one
who should have been driving. Three women

out for a boozy lunch. This must have been before Mom said,
I’m not watching the kids if you’re going out drinking.

Someone brought up Iowa, that Freddie and Valjean,
were visiting her parent’s farm there.
On a whim, we picked up babies, packed extra diapers,
and took off.

At night, left your brother and Valjean’s little girl
with Freddie. Four women and a baby in a stroller.
We took you to town, to places you didn’t belong.
Valjean’s mom told me what a good mother I was.

In daylight, you sat in a box under a tree, giggled
and grabbed leaves by the handful. Your brother ran.
You guys loved that farm, the farm Valjean escaped.
Poor Valjean. Her mother doted on tiny, graceful you,

not the big-boned grandbaby all the way from New Jersey.
I didn’t understand then about family politics,
about Freddie, the nurturer, who just happened to be
a dope dealer, about disappointment,

or about the changes I had to make in myself
to be a proper mother.

Imagine you’ve never met your grandmother.
You’re four years old,
in a strange house.
There’s an old woman propped up in a bed,
your father standing by.
You walk in. Did he beckon you?
You feel the weight of his hand on your shoulder.
Almost seventy years later, recall the old woman’s words:
Is this your boy, Jack?

Your grandmother.
This stranger.
Just imagine.

the world doesn’t stop for me.
The kids call.
My husband gets hungry.
The chickens need clean water and hay.
I come home from work worn thin.

All day and into the night
I write lines in my head,
leave notebooks lying around everywhere.

Distracted, they say.
Yes, by the world.
Not by the words
and ideas.

Mary Oliver said,
and I believe her,
that for a writer,
it is the writing that matters.
So I’ll keep thinking,
composing poems,
creating characters and plots,
scribbling ideas and snippets in those notebooks,

even as the world comes streaming
through my door.

I teach kids to read
I want them to love words
and stories
and books
like I do.

That means I mostly read
kids’ books, appreciate
the subtle sophistication
of children’s lit,
of children.

But…I just slogged through
365 pages
of adult action adventure.

Kids won’t put up with rambling,
with details that don’t matter.

But…I read it.
I liked it enough to finish.
And the last two pages
were fabulous, the best two pages
in the book.
It was about hope.
It was about goodness.
It was worth it.

But…it’s back to kids’ books for me,
at least for a while.