52 Poems: Weeks 33 and 34 Lucille Clifton

God, I love Lucille Clifton. Her lines are short and her poems are brief, but the references she makes to the strength of women raise me up. She makes me want to live, remember, and write better.  I needed a lift this week and Ms. Clifton provided that. Hopefully she will lift you up as well...

harriet
By Lucille Clifton

if i be you
let me not forget
to be the pistol
pointed
to be the madwoman
at the rivers edge
warning
be free or die
and isabell
if i be you
let me in my
sojourning
not forget
to ask my brothers
ain't i a woman too
and
grandmother
if i be you
let me not forget to
work hard
trust the Gods
love my children and
wait.

Memory 

By Lucille Clifton

ask me to tell how it feels
remembering your mother's face
turned to water under the white words
of the man at the shoe store. ask me,
though she tells it better than i do,
not because of her charm
but because it never happened
she says,
no bully salesman swaggering,
no rage, no shame, none of it
ever happened.
i only remember buying you
your first grown up shoes
she smiles. ask me
how it feels.

Thank you, Patriots: Our Public School Parents

The first day of school has passed, is today, or is quickly approaching. This morning when I checked in on the internet, I read headline after headline about first days, teaching, and the state of education. As a public school teacher for over 15 years, I've given the topic pretty fair consideration and despite the bleak picture painted by many, things don't look all that different today than they have for many years. Public school families recognize this.

I want to thank them. I want to thank public school parents for doing what I think may be the most patriotic thing you can do today: sending your kid to a public school.

It shows you trust your skills as a parent and the judgement of your child to navigate a multitude of different situations. It shows that you value the good of the whole over the good of a few. It demonstrates that you trust your most valuable resource, your kids, to a system the elites claim to be failing on every level, because you understand that with a public education your children have much to gain.

You don't believe the hype that public education is for other people's children. You don't believe your child will suffer from being around other people's children. You don't believe in segregating your children away from our country's socio-economic and cultural diversity.

Thank you for not fleeing our public schools because you've heard a couple of unsubstantiated rumors. Thank you for being involved, for showing up to school events and seeing first hand that your child is learning and thriving, or has a few missing assignments.

Thank you for believing in the value of a free and fair education for all.

You are public education and so am I.

Here's to a great school year.

52 Poems: Weeks 30, 31, and 32 William Carlos Williams

It's the first day of school and I need to start the year right: caught up on my poems and back at writing on the daily. I'm thinking a lot about public education and it's perceived success or failure, but I'm going to write about that later. Today I want to post a few poems by William Carlos Williams, short and sweet like a small, cold, ripe plum which you might recall from your school days...

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.


This Is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


To a Poor Old Woman

munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand

Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her

52 Poems: Weeks 27, 28, and 29

Ah, I was doing so well, but vacation does strange things so I didn't post or read any poems for the past few weeks. Here are a few haiku I've penned along with some photos from vacation to get us caught up.

Lincoln

A sweltering day
wading in a cool green pool
cousins sweet laughter

 Portland

Family and friends

on perfect, long summer days

finish with ice cream

 Bend

No longer the town

where I grew up but the

river, the mountains 

A Visit with Jason at Teachers Fountain

My friend Jason and I met in middle school, those formative years when we are all trying to land on who we are going to be as adults. Over the years we’ve stayed in touch and we manage to get together every so often to catch up. The last time we visited was a couple of years ago while I was in Portland for the holidays. Jason, his wife and two kids welcomed us into their home and we caught up the way you catch up with childhood friends. We talked about jobs, and schools, parenthood, and city living. We sorted through our adult lives and reminisced over fond memories as Connor and Lyla danced around our adult conversation without a single care.

Much has changed since that visit. David and I had Kiara, a huge life-changer, but things have shifted even more dramatically for Jason and his family. The summer after that visit, Connor, Jason's oldest, was diagnosed with brain cancer. I followed Connor's treatment through Jason's emails and Facebook updates. I ached for my friend when I heard the news and celebrated when Connor responded well to treatment. But I didn't get by to visit Jason and his family the last few times I was in Portland. I hoped it was because I was busy, but I know it was, in part, because now, as a mother, I could begin to fathom how hard it must be and have been for Jason and Emily to see their little one fight through surgeries, MRIs, and chemotherapy. I remembered our last carefree afternoon together and knew our next get-together would be very different.

This week we were able to make a visit happen. On a clear, summer Portland afternoon Jason and I sat together as our kids splashed around in Portland's Teachers Fountain. We caught up on our increasingly complicated adult lives and at the end of our visit I hugged my old friend, wished him well and as we parted, I hoped he could feel just how touched I have been by the strength and courage he has shown over the past two years. I am so inspired by who Jason has become: a papa, a teacher, a husband, and a friend. Although I've only caught glimpses into his family's journey, I can see through his kids how well they're weathering this storm. Although so much has changed, Conner and Lyla danced in the sunlight without a single care.

Jason will be running the Portland Marathon this fall to help raise funds for the Children's Cancer Association and Connor continues to raise funds for the Cure Search Walk. Here is a link to their site which provides more information about this courageous family and links to their fundraising pages.

52 Poems: Week 26: Lucille Clifton

June 27 was Lucille Clifton's birthday so here is a poem to remind us of her and the strength of women we know and don't know.

the lost women
by lucille clifton 

i need to know their names

those women i would have walked with

jauntily the way men go in groups

swinging their arms, and the ones

those sweating women whom i would have joined

after a hard game to chew the fat

what would we have called each other laughing

joking into our beer? where are my gangs,

my teams, my mislaid sisters?

all the women who could have known me,

where in the world are their names?

i need to know their names those women i would have walked with jauntily the way men go in groups swinging their arms, and the ones those sweating women whom i would have joined after a hard game to chew the fat what would we have called each other laughing joking into our beer? where are my gangs, my teams, my mislaid sisters? all the women who could have known me, where in the world are their names? - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21309#sthash.ILSfLv9p.dpuf

i need to know their names those women i would have walked with jauntily the way men go in groups swinging their arms, and the ones those sweating women whom i would have joined after a hard game to chew the fat what would we have called each other laughing joking into our beer? where are my gangs, my teams, my mislaid sisters? all the women who could have known me, where in the world are their names? - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21309#sthash.ILSfLv9p.dpuf

52 Poems: Week 25 Michael Ondaatje

Many of Ondaatje's lines haunt me. There are those graphs from The English Patient about the smell of dog paws and the lines about truth from Running in the Family... but here is a poem which I think might inspire a call of words tonight.

(If you want to read the quotes, here is a link to them on my Goodreads page).

Speaking To You (From Rock Bottom)

Michael Ondaatje

Speaking to you
this hour
these days when
I have lost the feather of poetry
and the rains
of separation
surround us tock
tock like Go tablets

Everyone has learned
to move carefully

'Dancing' 'laughing' 'bad taste'
is a memory
a tableau behind trees of law

In the midst of love for you
my wife's suffering
anger in every direction
and the children wise
as tough shrubs
but they are not tough
--so I fear
how anything can grow from this

all the wise blood
poured from little cuts
down into the sink

this hour it is not
your body I want
but your quiet company

52 Poems: Week 24 Dick Lourie on Forgiving our Fathers

It's Father's Day and for me it's a fairly uncomplicated day. I don't live close enough to spend the day with my dad, and my husband is easy-going when it comes to holidays like this. But the relationships we have with our fathers, whether our fathers are still with us or not, are complicated.

I love how this poem captures that.

You might recognize it from the last scene in the movie Smoke Signals based on Sherman Alexie's short story "This is What It Means to Say Pheonix, Arizona" from his collection Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?
By Dick Lourie

How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.

Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?

Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?

If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

52 Poems: Week 23 Achilles

On Tuesday, September 25, 2012, I tore my Achilles' tendon. I was coaching our girls' flag football team and we were a couple of players short, so I jumped in to rush the quarterback. I stood there assessing the severity of the injury, then hobbled across the hot asphalt of the South Field, eventually making my way to my classroom on crutches. A visit to the ER diagnosed a ruptured Achilles' tendon and a week later I had surgery. Several splints, a cast, months of physical therapy, and 37 weeks later, I am clear to return to work at full capacity with no follow-up appointment. It took forever and I'm still not 100% but I'm getting there. You can read about it on my sports blog. 

At the time, it was hard to see any positives about my Achilles' injury, but looking back there are several things I'm grateful for about the timing. It happened in the fall but far enough before winter break that I was out of my boot for the holidays. Kiara wasn't crawling yet so I could still keep an eye on baby-girl while immobile. And now summer is here and I'm in the clear! The body's ability to heal is amazing. So here is "Achilles" from my poetry collection: A Life in Revision: Reflections of Motherhood about that day...

Achilles

On a day when I was not thinking of you
when I was a handful of miles away
playing games in the heat of the day
the tendon that cripples gods
tore and splintered leaving me lame.

I hadn’t been thankful that morning
of walking and holding you in my arms
but it would be several months
before I could ever do that again.

52 Poems: Week 22 Conception

At Beckie and Gearin's nuptials,
you were there with Gray and Lucas.

If you have been on this ride with us for a while, you know the journey to Kiara started way back in 2009. I wrote a post, Fertile Soil, about the miscarriage which had me worried about getting pregnant again. And if you do the math, Kiara, born in 2012, took quiet some time. I wrote an update in 2010 and then finally announced good news in 2011. And once Kiara arrived, that journey to get pregnant faded away, until we started trying again. Yep, we're trying again. Wish us luck. Here's a poem from my collection about a piece of that journey. A Life in Revision: Reflections on Motherhood.

Conception  

I wish it was more magical,

more an experience of the earth,

a spontaneous moment of passion

between your mother and father

on a tropical vacation during summer break.

Instead, your conception, the beautiful moment

when the egg and sperm collided

and cells divided forming the beginnings of you,

was a sterile miracle

in a doctor’s office on Sunset in Hollywood.

I suppose it was magical

the shots in my belly

the long freeway drive

the hollow straw

and Dr. Jabara on a holiday weekend.

Then there were the weddings we attended

with the secret of you growing in my womb

and the holiday season that passed,

all of us so anxious for your arrival.

It is magic—and miracle.

You are here.