On being left out

Today I was left out of lunch plans by the teachers.  It still hurts just as much as it always has to be left out.

National Poetry Month: Mary Oliver

There's something about gardens outside of hospitals that brings a sense of peace to the sterile environment you find inside.  This poem captures that feeling.

University Hospital, Boston                                                                                                                       By Mary Oliver

Image from here


The trees on the hospital lawn

are lush and thriving. They too

are getting the best of care,

like you, and the anonymous many,

in the clean rooms high above this city,

where day and night the doctors keep

arriving, where intricate machines

chart with cool devotion

the murmur of the blood,

the slow patching-up of bone,

the despair of the mind.



When I come to visit and we walk out

into the light of a summer day,

we sit under the trees —

buckeyes, a sycamore, and one

black walnut brooding

high over a hedge of lilacs

as old as the red-brick building

behind them, the original

hospital built before the Civil War.


We sit on the lawn together, holding hands

while you tell me: you are better.


How many young men, I wonder,

came here, wheeled on cots off the slow trains

from the red and hideous battlefields

to lie all summer in the small and stuffy chambers

while doctors did what they could, longing

for tools still unimagined, medicines still unfound,

wisdoms still unguessed at, and how many died

staring at the leaves of the trees, blind

to the terrible effort around them to keep them alive?

I look into your eyes



which are sometimes green and sometimes gray,

and sometimes full of humor, but often not,

and tell myself, you are better,

because my life without you would be

a place of parched and broken trees.

Later walking the corridors down to the street,

I turn and step inside an empty room.

Yesterday someone was here with a gasping face.

Now the bed is made all new,

the machines have been rolled away. The silence

continues, deep and neutral,

as I stand there, loving you.

National Poetry Month: Elizabeth Bishop (again)

When I was in college, I took a poetry class with an amazing professor who challenged me to write in different styles.  One of those was to write a sestina which is incredibly hard because you have to keep repeating the same words but in different orders.  This poem puts such great images in my mind, especially that of the Little Marvel Stove.  When I was little, my grandmother had a little toy stove that we used to play with all of the time and this poem always makes me think of that stove.

SestinaBy Elizabeth Bishop

Image from here

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

National Poetry Month: Marge Piercy

My favorite line in this poem is "The work of the world is as common as mud."  This poem makes it clear that even though work is common, it's something that must be done and something that people long for because they are proud of the end results.

Image from here

To Be of Use
By Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

National Poetry Month: Rabindranath Tagore

This poem brings a simplicity that is sometimes overlooked to my relationship with God.  By repeating the image of being face to face with God, it takes away everything else and lets me focus on the importance of my relationship with him.

Face To FaceBy Rabindranath Tagore

Day after day, O lord of my life,
shall I stand before thee face to face.
With folded hands, O lord of all worlds,
shall I stand before thee face to face.

Under thy great sky in solitude and silence,
with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face.

In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil
and with struggle, among hurrying crowds
shall I stand before thee face to face.

And when my work shall be done in this world,
O King of kings, alone and speechless
shall I stand before thee face to face. 

National Poetry Month: Elizabeth Bishop

I really like the way this poem talks about the conversations that are almost always in my head.  I especially like her use of the word "uninnocent" because it captures the way I seem to think about things I know that I shouldn't dwell on but am unable to stop myself from thinking about.

ConversationBy Elizabeth Bishop

The tumult in the heart
keeps asking questions.
And then it stops and undertakes to answer
in the same tone of voice.
No one could tell the difference.

Uninnocent, these conversations start,
and then engage the senses,
only half-meaning to.
And then there is no choice,
and then there is no sense;

until a name
and all its connotation are the same.

National Poetry Month: WIlliam Butler Yeats

I like the emphasis that this poem gives to reflecting on all of the experiences we've had in life, even if they didn't turn out how we would have liked them to.  I definitely need the reminder to take the time to look back and reflect instead of constantly looking to the future.

When You Are OldBy William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.