Second Sunday of Easter

Childish hands, curly hair,

Disney princess dress,

Knobby knees bisecting skinny legs,

Dirty feet with painted toes.

Tired eyes, silly laughter,

Little arms embrace as sleep draws near;

Snoring sweet from mouth petite,

Foster parents adoring by her bed.

Wooden benches, legal laptops,

Suited lawyers, judicial decrees;

Family services, juvenile offices,

Birth mother’s rights restored.

Childish hands, curly hair

Gentle voice with loud, juicy lisp,

Knobby knees and gleaming eyes,

Taken away to another home.

Empty hallways, echoing bedrooms,

Backyard filled with abandoned toys;

Car seat vacant, souls are barren,

Foster parents bereft of joy.

Easter

A skeptic was I, upon a time,

Not so long ago,

Yet long enough that it became my tradition,

Entered my long-term memory and self-awareness.

No transcendence or immanence knew I,

But only that which was rational and sound.

A skepticism borne of grief –

The loss of career, and with it belief,

And later the horror of pleading silence

Where a beating heart had been.

A year ago I was in hell:

One life lost, two others closely following.

Three deaths in such short span

Defeated hope and dismantled cheer.

Easter day dinner was taken in shifts,

So one could always be with the dying one –

Life was swallowed up in dying and death.

I could not believe in joy beyond this mortal life.

Reason overcomes emotion, I firmly believe,

And I immersed myself in soothing logic,

Rejecting that which had no rational purpose.

I cast aside hate and love,

Spirituality and justice,

In favor of study and increased time at work.

Rationality became my god.

Now one year later I have emerged from hell,

Like Beowulf from the deep,

Or Lazarus from the tomb.

No monster have I fought,

And no savior called me forth:

Two young girls have restored my life,

And given me reason to love.

Furniture

Pigtails frame the television screen;

Strands of curly brown hair escape their ties

And brush and tickle the tip of my nose.

Squirmy legs sprawl across my lap –

Little feet kick me in the face.

No longer a person of dignity,

My academic credentials mean nothing,

Nor does success or failure in my career.

Now I have only one purpose in my life:

I am furniture.

I am a resting place for small legs and arms;

I am a chair on which sparkling brown eyes watch TV.

All furniture – beds, bookcases, chairs, sofas –

Has limited life.

Cushions flatten and upholstery fades.

Backs and bottoms need new, ergonomic seats;

The old ones are cast off,

In dumps and in consignment auctions.

So will my term as a sitting piece end.

You will vacate my lap someday, whether soon or late.

Your foster placement with us will end,

Or you will grow older,

Not needing a lap to protect you

From whatever coldness the couch contains.

Until that time, I watch your pigtails bounce;

I protect my face as I can from your kicks.

I love you while you are with me,

And I gladly sacrifice my dignity,

My professional esteem, my degrees and accomplishments

For that highest and most valued calling:

Furniture for a four-year-old girl.

Ratchet

“…Ratchet.”

My foster daughter’s teenage voice carries

From dining room to living room, where I

Am grading papers written and composed

By our nation’s future: a bleak future

Bereft of active verbs, and ignorant

Of simple subject-verb agreement forms.

“I’m sorry, my dear, I could not hear.

You need a ratchet for what?”

                                               

                                                 “No, ratchet

Was what I called my lunch at school today.

Salibury steak.  I hate it; it was ratchet.”

Ratchet: a potent denunciation

Pronounced as if by imperial decree –

A condemnation weakened not one bit

By its selection yesterday to say

That she does not like Number 2 pencils:

“Those wood pencils are so ratchet!  I like

The mechanical ones.”

I once attempted to argue the point.

I have, of course, logic and lexicon

On my side.

                     “Ratchet is a simple tool

That you might use to turn a socket screw.

The word you want is wretched, dear – a word

That really applies not here.  Your pencil

May be impractical or cumbersome,

Inconvenient or even redundant,

But wretched it is not, much less ratchet.

Everything you hate or mildly dislike

You curse with the same epithet: Ratchet.

Whether Salisbury steak, or wooden pencils,

Or homework from your dreaded math lesson,

The girl you do not like, the mangy dog

That followed you home from your walk today,

Your sister, whose sharp, incessant singing

Interrupted the movie you were streaming,

All these things you convicted as ratchet.

It’s not the word so much I hate; I accept

That new descriptors enter our language

All the time – words that gift our speech and life

With color.  What I hate is that this word

Is your catch-all adjective that keeps you

From using or needing to use the wealth

Of words that might be summoned only by

A little thought.  What if, instead of ratchet,

Your lunch was tasteless, the dog pitiful,

Your sister’s voice cacophonous, horrid

That girl at school pestiferous or foul?

What language could you employ to brighten

Otherwise monotonous and mundane

Exchanges in the course of human life!”

She did not hear my words, of course, my plea

To her was as the loud, noisome rambling

Of a neurotic lunatic from some

Cheap and mediocre melodrama.

To her, I am old.  My ways are old too.

They are useless, pointless, forgotten.

Or, in other words, they are

Ratchet.

Snow

First rain, then sleet, then lightly sweeping snow,

Swift falling wintry mix that chills the air

And frosts the muddy autumn ground below,

Call to our minds a girl, whose locks of hair,

Both black and beautiful against her face,

Frame sweet eyes closed in some eternal prayer.

A blizzard marked her birth; the holy space

Of hospital room, windows etched with frost,

Was where we held our love and felt her grace.

The snow still brings to us the girl we lost,

Somehow connects us to her once again –

Our spirits meet when earth with snow is glossed.

    When winter sun sets shimmering ice aglow

    We smile, and say that Harper says hello.

Caravaggio's St. John the Baptist

Brooding prophet wrapped in robes of red,

Strong reed scepter, autumnal tree your throne;

Not bound by desert wilderness as in the Gospel,

But bound by pervasive, haunting images

In your mind.  Your lean, locust-fed body

Curved in outward anguish, your eyes

Searching for meaning outside the canvas.

Your hair, the color of the tree,

Is soft and fluffy – full of youthful life,

But somehow old, lost in the hue

Of falling leaves behind you.

Your hand twirls your reed,

Ruminating over mysteries and miseries

Of your yet young life. 

What thoughts invade your calm, country idyll –

What haunts and pains?

Are thou he that should come,

Or look we for another?

Is it your doubt about the Christ:

Wearily wondering whether faith and spirit are real,

Or simply shadows created by the mind

To hide us from the traumas of human life?

Or is it the grief endemic in a prophet’s brain:

Pains that come from knowing

That the earth is not as God would have –

That love, justice, knowledge and truth

Fall when faced with the stronger forces

Of capital greed,

Contented ignorance,

Closed-minded arrogance, and

Cruel apathy?

Why I Dread Going to Sleep

My grandmother sits in her recliner

In her den, drinking coffee, looking out

At birds that fight over the bird-feeder

As autumn shadows march from woods to house –

The sun now angling downward in the sky,

And chilly air signals winter’s approach.

Sometimes we talk about my work at school.

I teach in the school district where she taught

For forty years, and so she likes to hear

How things have changed, and how they’ve stayed the same.

“Your grandfather is at the store,” she says.

“He will be sorry that he missed you here.

You’ll have to come back by again sometime

And say hello to him.” 

                                      The mood is sweet.

It almost seems that she is not aware

That she is gone.  For me, it’s like the scene

From Wilder: Emily comes back from death

To live one day, only to learn that she

Has lost the chance to value every day

And even every minute of each day.

But in our case, it is she that comes back,

And I who lose the chance to value her.

When I wake up I know the truth again:

My grandfather died almost three years back,

My grandmother followed him this past spring.

My mother’s mother, on the other side

Passed away exactly four weeks later.

I see them all, I speak with them in dreams.

They are with me, but not with me, because

I know what they do not know: that they are

Shadows, born in my imagination.

I see my grandfather and hear his walk,

His good leg steps, followed by the bad one,

Paralyzed by polio, made rigid

By a metal brace.  The metallic clink

Of the brace was my signal as a child

That he was home.  The sound echoes and rings

Through the now-empty house, and I can see

His labored steps moving through the hallway,

And I can hear his voice, not heard at all

These last three years.  He calls my name and talks

About the latest Mizzou football game.

Then sadly, I am awake.  The shadows

Were simply shadows, and nothing better.

I lost them once, and I lose them again

Each time I wake up.