Ada Limon: What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use

If you like poetry and are not subscribed to Ted Kooser's column you are missing a weekly treat. Reprinted with permission.

American Life in Poetry: Column 445

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE 

Sit for an hour in any national airport and you’ll see how each of us differs from others in a million ways, and of course that includes not only our physical appearances but our perceptions and opinions. Here’s a poem by Ada Limón, who lives in Kentucky, about difference and the difficulty of resolution. 

What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use 

All these great barns out here in the outskirts,

black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass.

They look so beautifully abandoned, even in use.

You say they look like arks after the sea’s

dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,

and I think of that walk in the valley where

J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,

No. I believe in this connection we all have

to nature, to each other, to the universe.

And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,

low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,

and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,

woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.

So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,

its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name

though we knew they were really just clouds—

disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

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American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Ada Limón, whose most recent book of poems is Sharks in the Rivers, Milkweed Editions, 2010. Poem reprinted from Poecology, Issue 1, 2011, by permission of Ada Limón and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

when my time comes

when my time comes

these days I rarely

have a prayer to say

but one in my

stumbling way

to whatever

listening gods

when my time comes

let me be as the trees

releasing browning leaves

letting them tumble

gently down

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Goodness. It's been a while. Tonight for dVerse Meeting the Bar, Victoria Slotto has tempted us to write a spicy, erotic, or touchy-subject poem (death, religion, politics, hot-button issues) using metaphor and image to elaborate the point. Of course I chose to write about death, a touchy subject for some people, with a little religion thrown in for good measure.

Balloons

Balloons

They gave balloons to all the kids,

in hopes (my guess) of keeping

them occupied as parents shopped.

Helium-filled, squeaky red spheres

of shimmering joy, tied on each slender

wrist, and the scheme did work,

for a while at least, until we

tried to take it off to strap him

in his seat and he screamed

holy hell; and we fingered

the string to feed him supper,

and he fought us off; and it was

time for bath and there was No Way

he was going to wear it in the tub,

but he gave our ears such a

buffeting that we gave in, washing

around the knotted white twine.

Then time for bed, and now

for sure he would obey or else,

and the hollering resumed; finally

I had enough, took the balloon

in my furious hands and wrenched—

Pop! My sudden act of benevolence.

And later, sleepless, I wondered if God

felt guilty for ending our fun

over one shiny red obsession.

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--Submitted to dVerse OpenLinkNight. Come join in!

It Is Enough

Anna got me thinking about willing, wishing, answering the call in her great post on dVerse Meeting the Bar. I put a few lines together, but nothing seemed to fit the prompt as well as this older poem, slightly reworked. My apologies to the few who may have already read this one. 

It Is Enough

I heard my share

of sermons, serving

time on straight-backed

pews, begrudging each

moment lost

                     to eternity.

My elders sat willingly           

in expectation

of heavenly reward, glad

to leave all worldly affairs,

glad to rest weary bones

if only for a moment.

They meant well.

I see that now, now

that my own bones

need rest, now that

I hope beyond all hope

to be free in the divine.

But we will never

decipher the mystery, try

as we might. Will we?

All we have from him

we already know,

written bold:

do not kill,

do not steal,

do unto others.

We stumble over what

we do not have: the

in-between-the-lines,

shrouded, incomprehensible,

written in sand, faint

markings that lead us

to belief or despair. I believe

it is enough to want

to believe. It is enough.

Maureen Ash: Church Basement

Ted Kooser is not only a great poet, he is also a great judge of poetry. This is one of the finest poems I've read in a while. Copied with permission from ALiP.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 424

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

It’s a difficult task to accurately imagine one’s self back into childhood. Maybe we can get the physical details right, but it’s very hard to recapture the innocence and wonder. Maureen Ash, who lives in Wisconsin, gets it right in this poem.




Church Basement

The church knelt heavy

above us as we attended Sunday School,

circled by age group and hunkered

on little wood folding chairs

where we gave our nickels, said

our verses, heard the stories, sang

the solid, swinging songs.

It could have been God above

in the pews, His restless love sifting

with dust from the joists. We little

seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting

to grow toward the light.

Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside,

an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp-

edged shadows back to their buildings, or

how the winter air knifed

after the dreamy basement.

Maybe the day we learned whatever

would have kept me believing

I was just watching light

poke from the high, small window

and tilt to the floor where I could make it

a gold strap on my shoe, wrap

my ankle, embrace

any part of me.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Maureen Ash. Reprinted by permission of Maureen Ash. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.

Handfuls

This is pretty late for a Three Word Wednesday post, but I've been sick this week (really, I've been off-and-on sick since Thanksgiving), so I'm thinking through a haze of generic Nyquil. Anyway, here you go, such as it is. I think I can tighten it up later. Three words were abrasive, loss, handful.

Handfuls

Abrasive days have ground
me into the dust, yet somehow
sharp edges remain.

If God would explain
this toiling path, supposed divine
plan to make heaven mine—

I’ve no ready answers. I can
only guess, or stiffly stand
and shake defiant fists, or make

peace with my lot, take
whatever comes, gain or loss,
as handfuls of grace.

And now a few words from T. S. Eliot

These words have been rattling around in my head for the past week:

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

T. S. Eliot, from Ash-Wednesday (lines 1.26-33)

We live by mercy

I'm far behind in my schoolwork, but I decided to take a little break for some Wendell Berry. I like this stanza from his "Amish Economy"--

We live by mercy if we live.
To that we have no fit reply
But working well and giving thanks,
Loving God, loving one another,
To keep Creation's neighborhood.

In A Timbered Choir. Wendell is the man. Can I get an Amen?