Gossip

She always asks you, How is so-and-so?
--Her wary eyes as self-contained as beads.
She takes each anecdote and makes it grow,
or keeps it like a farmer hoarding seeds.
Conscious of being one who never fell,
Who never laid a single brick on sand,
She sees her neighbor stumbling to hell
And points a little plump triumphant hand.
When one is middle-aged and well-to-do
And free of care, existence might be flat
If fascinating troubles did not brew
In other lives, to taste in private chat
Before the cozy fire-- a cup of tea
Precarious on a well-toasted knee.


---Elizabeth Bohm, from Poetry magazine, February 1941

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

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

--Jane Hirshfield (1953- ), American poet, translator, and essayist, from Of Gravity & Angels, 1988

Scriptural reference: Romans 18:12-25

The Beauty of the Rain

And you know the light is fading all too soon
You're just two umbrellas one late afternoon
You don't know the next thing you will say
This is your favorite kind of day
It has no walls, the beauty of the rain
Is how it falls, how it falls, how it falls

And there's nothing wrong, but there is something more
And sometimes you wonder what you love her for
She says you've known her deepest fears
Cause she's shown you a box of stained-glass tears
It can't be all-- the truth about the rain
Is how it falls, how it falls, how it falls

But when she gave you more to find
You let her think she'd lost her mind
And that's all on you
Feeling helpless if she asked for help
Or scared you'd have to change yourself

And you can't deny this room will keep you warm
You can look out of your window at the storm
But you watch the phone and hope it rings
You'll take her any way she sings,
Or how she calls, the beauty of the rain
Is how it falls, how it falls, how it falls
How it falls, how it falls, how it falls

--Dar Williams (1968- )