The Gossips

The vulturine necks stretch out; the mean eyes bunch, 

Float over hedges, witch-like, branch after branch,
Droop down from grim windows; lust to Lynch;

Or narrow to a dark reptilian stare,
Glide, poison-fanged, from bridge tea to the store.
The victim walks, his curdled spine aware.

Whatever could this bumbling man have done
That these cold venomous eyes should merge as one,
Freeze and transfix him like an evil sun?


--Theodore Roethke (1908-1963),  American poet and teacher

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,

She looked so limp and bedraggled, 

So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle, 

Or a wizened aster in late September, 

I brought her back in again 

For a new routine-- 

Vitamins, water, and whatever 

Sustenance seemed sensible 

At the time: she'd lived 

So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer, 

Her shriveled petals falling 

On the faded carpet, the stale 

Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves. 

(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.) 

 The things she endured!-- 

The dumb dames shrieking half the night 

Or the two of us, alone, both seedy, 

Me breathing booze at her, 

She leaning out of her pot toward the window. 

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-- 

And that was scary-- 

So when that snuffling cretin of a maid 

Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can, 

I said nothing. 

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week, 

I was that lonely.

-- Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) American poet and teacher,  winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1954, for The Waking, two-time National Book Award winner

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

--Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), American, from Collected Poems, 1942