Granny

Granny’s come to our house,
And ho! my lawzy-daisy!
All the childern round the place
Is ist a-runnin’ crazy!
Fetched a cake fer little Jake,
And fetched a pie fer Nanny,
And fetched a pear fer all the pack
That runs to kiss their Granny!

Lucy Ellen’s in her lap,
And Wade and Silas Walker
Both’s a-ridin’ on her foot,
And ’Pollos on the rocker;
And Marthy’s twins, from Aunt Marinn’s,
And little Orphant Annie,
All’s a-eatin’ gingerbread
And giggle-un at Granny!

Tells us all the fairy tales
Ever thought er wundered—
And ’bundance o’ other stories—
Bet she knows a hunderd!—
Bob’s the one fer “Whittington,”
And "Golden Locks" fer Fanny!
Hear ’em laugh and clap their hands,
Listenin’ at Granny!

“Jack the Giant-Killer” ’s good;
And “Bean-Stalk” ’s another!—
So’s the one of “Cinderell’”
And her old godmother;—
That-un’s best of all the rest—
Bestest one of any,—
Where the mices scampers home
Like we runs to Granny!

Granny’s come to our house,
Ho! my lawzy-daisy!
All the childern round the place
Is ist a-runnin’ crazy!
Fetched a cake fer little Jake,
And fetched a pie fer Nanny,
And fetched a pear fer all the pack
That runs to kiss their Granny!


— James Whitcomb Riley

A Walk With Your Father

Before you do anything else, check your lungs.
Are they the right size for you, are you the right size for them?
Are they nice and snug against your ribs and spine?
Don’t worry if they’re a bit big for you, you’ll grow into them.
They must be full, however; you don’t want them empty.
You have a long way to go.

Put your hand inside your mouth and make sure
everything’s in it’s place, check that all the pipes and hoses
leading from your lungs into your mouth are in position and in good nick.
You don’t want any leaks or sudden explosions
this is your air we’re talking about.
Close your mouth securely around this apparatus.

Next check your weight. If you are too heavy
or too light you won’t get anywhere. By the way
there’s no need to take a whole lot of extras with you.
Some people strap expensive knives to their legs and wear protective gloves.
There’s no real need for any of this – an ordinary old sharp knife
from the kitchen drawer will do. And just your bare hands.
You may need to signal to each other.

Now pay some attention to your skin.
It should feel secure and warm
but also allow plenty of room to move freely.
There are any number of colours available nowadays –
they all do pretty much the same job.

Your feet, are they the right size?
If they’re too large you will tire quickly,
too small and you’ll be left behind.
You’re probably looking at feet
about the same size as his.

Your eyes – spit in them.
It keeps everything clear.

That step you’re about to take
will have to be wider than you’re used to.
Don’t forget to move forwards, not backwards.
Keep your hand on your mouth so everything stays in place
when you break the surface.

Mihi to Tangaroa. Mihi to Hinemoana.
Now get yourself in under there,
immerse yourself.

Do it now, go.
He’ll be right behind you.

--Hinemoana Baker (1968- ), New Zealand (Maori) poet, teacher, and musician born in Christchurch 

Adoption

I stitched us together by night 

in the rocking chair, marveled 

at your fingers, the foreign navel, 

memorized the sweep of your eyebrows,
unraveled your language. 

Having accepted the unfamiliar,

I kept watch
for proof of our union. 

Tonight I inhale as I kiss 

your perfect face, moist 

from busy dreaming. Your fragrance 

marks me-that fingerprint
only a parent can read. 

I crawl in beside you, grateful 

and patient, to dip us 

with even breath
in this night's ink.

-- Alison Kolodinsky, American/Canadian poet and translator, from Poetry magazine, June 1992

Image: Katie Page of Colorado, who discovered that the baby girl she was getting ready to adopt was also the biological sister of her newly adopted son,

Poems

I am hardly ever able
to sort through my memories
and come away whole
or untroubled.
It is difficult
to sift through the stones,
the weighty moments and know
which is rare gem,
which raw coal,
which worthless shale or slate.
So, one by one,
I drag them across the page
and when one cuts into the white,
leaves a trail of blood,
no matter how narrow the stream,
then I know
I’ve found the real thing,
the diamond,
one of the priceless gems
my pain produced.
“There! There,” I say,
“is a memory worth keeping.”

--Nikki Grimes (1950- ), poet, author, and writer for children, from Poetry magazine.

Miscarriage

                   1

Down of no comfort, 

pillows for loss, 

white feathers floated
over the hospital road.

One caught the windshield 

and held a moment, 

small flag of hope, then vanished

in the clearer logic of air. 

On the long last grade 

we overtook the flatbed
stacked with shivering geese. 

                   2

In the garden

the com silk browned.

The ears spiraled
plump from the stalks. 

Beneath the husks 

a green worm worked 

its way down,
gorging itself. 

In its wake the offal
of its life hung. 

                   3

I drew stems of daisies 

and zinnias from buckets
in the florist's shop,
pinched one in my numbed hand.

The woman smiled, said 

they'd cheer a room and not 

to worry, the hurt
stem would mend. 

                   4

The evening storm, first 

only sensed, hit so hard 

it was all there was
to see, to hear.

Gradually it slowed, disappeared.
Silhouettes of trees emerged.

Streetlamps glittered
on the housetops. 

We ate what we salvaged
of the corn, and it was sweet. 

Deep in the night the air 

flinched like a fitful sleeper, 

and the rain stored in the trees
fell again.

--Eric Nelson (1952- ), American poet and professor emeritus at Georgia Southern University, from Poetry magazine, October 1988.

if mama/ could see

if mama
could see
she would see
lucy sprawling
limbs of lucy
decorating the
backs of chairs
lucy hair
holding the mirrors up
that reflect odd
aspects of lucy.

if mama
could hear
she would hear
lucysong rolled in the
corners like lint
exotic webs of lucysighs
long lucy spiders explaining
to obscure gods.

if mama
could talk
she would talk
good girl
good girl
good girl

clean up your room.


-- Lucille Clifton, 1936-2010, African American poet, children's book author, Maryland's Poet Laureate 1974-1985, and professor, from Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980.

Perhaps the World Ends Here

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat 
   to live. 

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it 
   has been since creation, and it will go on. 

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the 
   corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to 
   be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around 
   our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down 
   selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the 
   table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun. 

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in 
   the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents 
   for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering 
   and remorse. We give thanks. 

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are
   laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

--Joy Harjo (1951- ), poet laureate of the United States 2019- , member of the Muscogee Nation, from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, 1994.

Leaving Tulsa

for Cosetta 

Once there were coyotes, cardinals 
in the cedar. You could cure amnesia 
with the trees of our back-forty. Once 
I drowned in a monsoon of frogs— 
Grandma said it was a good thing, a promise 
for a good crop. Grandma’s perfect tomatoes. 
Squash. She taught us to shuck corn, laughing, 
never spoke about her childhood 
or the faces in gingerbread tins 
stacked in the closet. 

She was covered in a quilt, the Creek way. 
But I don’t know this kind of burial: 
vanishing toads, thinning pecan groves, 
peach trees choked by palms. 
New neighbors tossing clipped grass 
over our fence line, griping to the city 
of our overgrown fields. 

Grandma fell in love with a truck driver, 
grew watermelons by the pond 
on our Indian allotment, 
took us fishing for dragonflies. 
When the bulldozers came 
with their documents from the city
and a truckload of pipelines, 
her shotgun was already loaded. 

Under the bent chestnut, the well 
where Cosetta’s husband 
hid his whiskey—buried beneath roots 
her bundle of beads. They tell 
the story of our family. Cosetta’s land 
flattened to a parking lot. 

Grandma potted a cedar sapling 
I could take on the road for luck. 
She used the bark for heart lesions 
doctors couldn’t explain. 
To her they were maps, traces of home, 
the Milky Way, where she’s going, she said. 

After the funeral
I stowed her jewelry in the ground, 
promised to return when the rivers rose. 

On the grassy plain behind the house 
one buffalo remains. 

Along the highway’s gravel pits 
sunflowers stand in dense rows. 
Telephone poles crook into the layered sky. 
A crow’s beak broken by a windmill’s blade. 
It is then I understand my grandmother: 
When they see open land 
they only know to take it.

I understand how to walk among hay bales 
looking for turtle shells. 
How to sing over the groan of the county road 
widening to four lanes. 
I understand how to keep from looking up: 
small planes trail overhead 
as I kneel in the Johnson grass 
combing away footprints. 

Up here, parallel to the median 
with a vista of mesas’ weavings, 
the sky a belt of blue and white beadwork, 
I see our hundred and sixty acres 
stamped on God’s forsaken country, 
a roof blown off a shed, 
beams bent like matchsticks, 
a drove of white cows 
making their home 
in a derailed train car.

--Jennifer Elise Foerster, poet, member of the Muskogee (Creek Nation) from Leaving Tulsa, 2013


Photo: With my grandma "One Granny" approximately 1970

For D----, Dead By Her Own Hand

My dear, I wonder if before the end
You ever thought about a children's game--
I'm sure you must have played it too-- in which
You ran along a narrow garden wall
Pretending it to be a mountain ledge
So steep a snowy darkness fell away
On either side to deeps invisible;
And when you felt your balance being lost
You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought
For only an instant: That was when I died.

That was a life ago. And now you've gone,
Who would no longer play the grown-ups' game
Where, balanced on a ledge above the dark,
You go on running and you don't look down,
Not ever jump because you fear to fall.

-- Howard Nemerov (1920-1999), US poet laureate 1963-1964, 1988-1990


Image: Diane Arbus (1923-1971), American photographer and artist, the poet's sister and the subject of this poem, who took her life on this day in 1971.

A Prayer for my Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there’s no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

--William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet and nationalist

my father moved through the dooms of love

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine, passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind
a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull we all we taste as bright
bitter all things utterly sweet,
maggotty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite to least as truth
-- i say though hater were why men breathe--
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

--e. e cummings (1894-1962) from The Complete Poems: 1904-1962

Photo: My father (4th fro left on the back row), his twin, and his cousin and the rest of their classmates in school on southwestern Oklahoma in the 1930s. Today would have been his 95th birthday.