Aunt Sally took this picture of dear Elspeth at school. I'd write more but I'm post-weekly-column weary. I will treat myself to a shower, however.

Another Poem (It came to me and Prose didn't): Request

Robin in the black walnut, turning beak to wet feathers,
you who know nor care about deaths of evil men
who were also grandfathers and fathers, who were glad
for things--

An hour in morning, steam rising from tea,
even a bird in a tree, shining with rain.
Men who kill, when they choose death, do they also conclude
tiny joys, goodness flashing like the sudden spread of robin's
wing? Or do they sometimes catch movement, wonder at the grace
of a beautiful thing?

And robin, who cares for nor knows my heart,
this thing I hold like a curled shell in my hands,
following tunnels, pearling and shining as it mazes
to shaded, dark places--

Robin, in your graced
birdness, your preoccupation with turned, furrowed soil
and nests spun from plastic scraps and cast off threads,
you who love the rain, know how to open wings
who have never known falling--

teach me, bird, how to step into this suspended
sadness, how to stand in this late spring rain
in a morning of green you never doubted,
even on the coldest January night, would come again.

I just found out--my story, "If You Stopped," published in the Fall 2010 issue of Apple Valley Review (you can find it by clicking on the link under "My Scribblings. . ." has been included by judges in storySouth's Notable Stories of 2010. Find the complete list HERE.

Hello, Prose

I'm not sure how I feel about you, Prose. At your worst, you're dull, you sprawl, you're ungainly. After such a happy journey with poetry (the pinpoint, pencil tip, pollen of language), I'm not sure you and I can be such good friends anymore.

Oh, all right, I like you well enough. Truthfully, I'd much rather sit around a campfire with you than with poetry. You're a more laid back and mellow. Poetry gets a bit intense and can make your eyeballs hurt.

A few of Martin's students still sit around the glowing campfire down our hill. As the night tipped into 9:30 and after, I thought the children really should head up to bed. Martin had finished playing snatches of Blackbird, singing in the dead of night. . .and really, when the Beatles are finished, you should be, too. I'm glad they've stayed, though--they're a bright group of people and I enjoyed them, especially Megan and Janelle, who played badminton with the girls AND went down our formidable hill with them in the red wagon. Impressive. There was only one tip-over and shortly afterward, Megan stopped fanning our dying fire and said in a sensible, calm way, "Do you have a bandaid? My foot seems to be bleeding." Merry insisted on accompanying her up the hill into the house as her personal nurse.

So now after a day that plastered me with grass (from mowing and mowing and mowing some more), sweat (from weeding the garden, shopping, and keeping up with extra children), and finally smoke and marshmallow goo, I am freshly showered, hair wrapped up in a towel, and in my pyjamas. I don't think I ever ate dinner. No, I did not. Maybe I'll have a cup of tea and call it a day.

It's not been an exciting reentry into Prose, but I'm too tired to care. I have no profound images or moving words for you. Just a cup of tea, a yawn, and a sleepy smile.

I wrote more than a poem about our trip to Enlow Fork. Please click HERE to read my column in the O-R. And stay tuned for photos of that wonderful day. . .

For Ebrahim

removed for submission purposes

me (and some others) and Robert Bly

My poem, "Love Feast," was just released online at Grey Sparrow Press. . .if you'd like to see it, find Robert Bly (I'm a fan of his poetry, can you tell? I've dropped his name twice now) by clicking HERE, click on the woman in the hat, and scroll down until you find me. Thanks for reading!

Poem for the Day: Happy Hour

What I want most is a table outdoors,
two glasses sweating. No--one, just one,
and a tree I can ease my hands over, feeling
white, knobby bark. That, and a blue sky
with wisps of clouds high up, a contrail
to remind me that others are busy, headed
somewhere, shut inside, smelling each other.
I want to smell hot pavement, dirt, the lime
in my drink, and hear no traffic, only the
birds calling in their dipping ways,
and if I kneel down and rest
my ear on the patio, I'll hear grass pushing
its way through cracks in concrete, not anxiously
but easily, like waking, falling asleep,
like sitting at a table in late afternoon,
with one drink and just enough ice cubes
to make it all last until evening.

Poem for the Day: Spring Outing

One bright April morning
after torrential rains the boy
and I sat in the car, and as I turned the key,
the raspberry bushes in the garden trembled,
but I did not tell the boy
about the turtle I watched lumbering
into a bush, the way its shell glistened
in the wet grass, nor did I exclaim out loud
though I was tempted; the engine was running
and I pulled into the road.

Almost to the swings and slides,
the boy said suddenly: This is a boring park!
And I stopped the car midroad--a grand gesture--
turned and fixed him with a stare:
Boring is for nincompoops, the mindless
bereft of imagination!

But later after an eternity
of pushing the boy on the swing,
I strode ahead, turned, saw him
prostrate on the mud, his face buried
in a clutch of purple violets
he dared not pick,
only he murmured:
Sweet, sweet.

Then I recognized myself.
And before I forgot
I stopped,
smelled lilacs blooming, felt a wind
pregnant with sunlight and spring:
the unlikely birth of turtles,
flowers tiny as a boy's fingertip.

Five Ways of Looking at a Lilac, with surprised nods to the Song of Solomon!

1. The girl in sixth grade who budded early.
Boys wrote her name on the insides of their eyelids;
I never took a chair by her at lunch.

2. The woman who lopped off Sampson's hair.
No decent way to say this:
even her armpits smelled like heaven.
Who could blame the man?

3. Feather boaed woman singing on a piano
at a bar
at three in the morning.
I have never known a woman like this.

4. Delilah, overscented,
at sixteen. She's got a neck
like the tower of Lebanon, legs
like gleaming marble. Her tum is a pile
of wheat; young men swear they'll climb her,
squeeze her through their flour grinders,
bake them some mighty fine bread.
Her mouth, when she opens to yawn,
is full of lilacs; they curl and burble
all over her tongue.
The boys have never known a woman like this.

5. Before rain, I cut two stems,
slip them into blue vase.
Every time I walk through the kitchen
to toss a wadded paper napkin
or open the refrigerator,
they catch me. It's indecent.
As they age, they will become
ever more potent, browning and bruising
but never losing their heavy,
full scent. Even now, at my window,
they rise from the ground,
pushing stale air. Big-bosomed flowers,
bloom forever.

Poem of the Day: Walk at Enlow Fork

This is my third poem this evening, so I've got just enough left for Enlow Fork. Just enough, maybe, for one more. We'll see. Back to schedules tomorrow after such a nice break. . .

Walk at Enlow Fork

It was more like jazz,
those frogs bumming like basses
in the pond
down at Enlow Fork.

The precise pointed
blossoms in their nun's white
couldn't hush the heady
promiscuity of the lilac

mouthing the creek
nor did the blue bells
ring primly--no, they
hung like breasts, and spring

only hid the fisherman,
cloaked toe to head,
who slipped down by the riverbank,
his line a glimmer of sunlight
in Dunkard Creek. When we turned
from skimming and plocking
our stones into the shallows,
he was gone, and the noise,
the staccato beat of dandelion heads--
it was all ours again,
and all the sunshine, too.

Beatrix and Bouquet: Lilacs

Beatrix, First Lilacs of Spring

Easter Girls: An unusually long display of photos without any poem at all

Easter afternoon, PA Cockroft style. I tried for a photo of the three of them, really and truly, but it was disastrous--so silly I couldn't post any of them.





I know it's just a glut of photos of the girls, but our family lives far, far away. Here's compensating! The lilacs, by the way, are simply intoxicating right now. . .
Currently, Beatrix is yelling from her crib: "Shake your body! Shake your BODAY!" She's apparently having a bit of trouble falling asleep.

Easter

Holiest of days,
what smooth thing do you have for me?
Drop it in my hand
and make it heavy as stone,
something I can hold and show to others:
Look, here it is, as clear
as the nose on your face!
The rock, which you thought
inanimate, lives! It has sprung
legs and arms like a prehistoric
bug, it is crawling up my arm--
see? No, I don't want

some cheap trick. What I want
is real resurrection, more real
than the bulb, flaking with skin,
that I plunge into cold soil.
I want more than the sky
every morning, dark with gloom
or bright with sun--
I want more than my sister's face
greying with illness, more even
than her faith which fills me
with weak glow,
like a lamp switched
on at twilight. I want

hands on my shoulders
while dew wets my feet,
a gardener who sets
his trowel into the soil, digs,
and pulls forth singing children!

Mud falls from their knees
as they pound the dirt with their feet--
Didn't you always know
it was real? they cry,
and their breath is warm, hotter
than the sun that fills flowering redbuds,
lilacs and forsythia.
Their laughter pools in tulips,
spills over us all,
even inside of us
where there is no more winter
or shadows, only
the weight of loved things.