Poem 30 - Christmas party at the South Danbury Church

This week, we’ll do a Christmas poem—a little early. In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a poem about children at Christmastime seems a good remedy for broken hearts.

I remember those church programs. We’d work for weeks on the rehearsal. The program was the same every year, and you’d move up from misc. angel (or. misc. shepherd or wise man) to Mary (or Joseph) to narrator as you moved through the grades. After hearing the gospel story of Jesus’s birth read so many times, I now have it memorized: In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled….

But only after reading this poem do I remember, too, the years that Alvin Quarne dressed up in a Santa suit to hand out brown paper lunch sacks filled with peanuts in the shell, hard candy, and oranges. I remember, now, thinking as a kid, Santa really shouldn’t be in church. Not yet knowing the word “secular,” I certainly understood the idea.

Christmas party at the South Danbury Church

Donald Hall

December twenty-first

we gather at the white Church festooned

  red and green, the tree flashing

green-red lights beside the altar.

 After the children of Sunday School

recite Scripture, sing songs,

  and scrape out solos,

they retire to dress for the finale,

 to perform the pageant

again: Mary and Joseph kneeling

   cradleside, Three Kings,

shepherds and shepherdesses.  Their garments

   are bathrobes with mothholes,

cut down from the Church’s ancestors.

   Standing short and long,

they stare in all directions for mothers,

   sisters and brothers,

giggling and waving in recognition,

   and at the South Danbury

Church, a moment before Santa

   arrives with her ho-hos

and bags of popcorn, in the half-dark

   of whole silence, God

enters the world as a newborn again.

from The New Criterion (Jan. 1995)

Poem 29 - A. M. Report & Mutual

We had our first big snowfall here in Wisconsin. We received at least a foot of the stuff, so I went in search of a nice snow poem. Here are two very similar poems about snow and birds.

A. M. Report

Bob Arnold

Snow overnight—

Every bird at the feeder

Looks a hobo

from Blink

Volume 3, Number 3, November-December 2003

Mutual

Jean L. Connor

After the snow, in plunging

cold, goldfinches flock

to my feeder and I,

at the window, feed

and feast on the sight—

the world up-righted again

by so slight a thing

as thistle seed and favor.

from Passager

Issue 34, 2001

Poem 28 - Lending Out Books

Here’s a charming little poem about a better way to meet people—with an obvious metaphor/lesson: take from those who are ready to give.

Lending Out Books

Hal Sirowitz

You’re always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she’ll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn’t have the time
to read them, & she’s afraid if she sees you again
you’ll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.

from My Therapist Said, 1998

Poem 27 - Wrist-wrestling father

I’ve been digging up some fabulous poems lately. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

We host Thanksgiving every year, and this was our second in our new house. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s about the food, not the house. And if there’s one room to clean, it’s my study. Sure, we clean the bathroom, wipe down the kitchen, mop the floors, vacuum, but the room that gets the best treatment is my study. Why? Because that’s where my mother wants to go after the dishes are done and before the desserts come out.

I grew up on a big old farmhouse. There were plenty of rooms—even a room or two we never used—but Mom (like most moms) never felt that she had her own space. When my parents left the farm for their new house in town, she had the luxuries we’d only dreamed of on the farm—a laundry room! a fireplace! a garage! a spare room! But alas, my brother moved back in and between him and his boys who visited every other weekend, the “spare” space was eaten up again.

When I ran upon this poem again last night, it made me think of my mother asking if we could go to “your room.” I still can’t believe I have something my mother doesn’t and that she’s envious of it. It’s like the son in this poem. No matter how grown and accomplished a child is, the moment that means the most to them is the moment they “win” over their parents.  

Wrist-wrestling father

Orval Lund

for my father

On the maple wood we placed our elbows
and gripped hands, the object to bend
the other’s arm to the kitchen table.
We flexed our arms and waited for the sign.

I once shot a wild goose.
I once stood not twenty feet from a buck deer unnoticed.
I’ve seen a woods full of pink lady slippers.
I once caught a 19-inch trout on a tiny fly.
I’ve seen the Pacific, I’ve seen the Atlantic,
I’ve watched whales in each.

I once heard Lenny Bruce tell jokes.
I’ve seen Sandy Koufax pitch a baseball.
I’ve heard Paul Desmond play the saxophone.
I’ve been to London to see the Queen.
I’ve had dinner with a Nobel Prize poet.

I wrote a poem once with every word but one just right.
I’ve fathered two fine sons
and loved the same woman for twenty-five years.

But I’ve never been more amazed
than when I snapped my father’s arm down to the table.

from Casting Lines

Poem 26 - Thanksgiving

I’m off to check the turkey, peel the potatoes, boil the eggs for my son’s deviled eggs, bring up the card table, set out the serving pieces, and do some last-minute cleaning before my second-favorite day of the year (my favorite is the day after then the Christmas tree goes up!). Here’s a sweet old Thanksgiving poem. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving
Edgar Albert Guest, 1881-1959

Gettin’ together to smile an’ rejoice,
An’ eatin’ an’ laughin’ with folks of your choice;
An’ kissin’ the girls an’ declarin’ that they
Are growin more beautiful day after day;
Chattin’ an’ braggin’ a bit with the men,
Buildin’ the old family circle again;
Livin’ the wholesome an’ old-fashioned cheer,
Just for awhile at the end of the year.

Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door
And under the old roof we gather once more
Just as we did when the youngsters were small;
Mother’s a little bit grayer, that’s all.
Father’s a little bit older, but still
Ready to romp an’ to laugh with a will.
Here we are back at the table again
Tellin’ our stories as women an men.

Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer;
Oh, but we’re grateful an’ glad to be there.
Home from the east land an’ home from the west,
Home with the folks that are dearest an’ best.
Out of the sham of the cities afar
We’ve come for a time to be just what we are.
Here we can talk of ourselves an’ be frank,
Forgettin’ position an’ station an’ rank.

Give me the end of the year an’ its fun
When most of the plannin’ an’ toilin’ is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin’ with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An I’ll put soul in my Thanksgivin’ prayers.

Poem 25 - And This Just In

For those, like me, who enjoy looking into the seemingly insignificant, who ask why and how come, who pause more often on the tiny spaces between small things, this poem is for you.

And This Just In

David Tucker

Those footfalls on the stairs when the night shift went home,

the sunlight fanning through the dinosaur’s rib cage,

the janitor’s sneeze—we’re asking questions,

we’d like to know more.

The moth in the clock tower at City Hall,

the 200th generation to sleep there, we may banner the story

across page one. And in Metro, we’re leading

with the yawn that traveled city council chambers

this morning then slipped into the streets

and wound through the city. The editorial page

will decry the unaccountable boredom

that overtook everyone around three in the afternoon.

In Features we catch up with the young priest

as he climbs the long steps to his church,

his arms full of groceries.

A watchman humming in the parking lot

at Broad and Market—we have that story—

with a sidebar on the bronze glass

of a whiskey bottle cracking into cheap jewels

under his boots. A boy walking across the ball field

an hour after the game—we’re covering that silence.

We have reporters working hard, we’re getting

to the bottom of all of it.

from The Missouri Review

Volume XXIV, Number 1, 2001

Poem 24 - Afternoons

Here is a somber little poem about the disillusionment of young married women. I believe it was written in the late 1950s, before the sexual revolution, women’s lib, and personal fulfillment through outside employment. In this regard, it’s quite an insightful poem—ahead of its time.

Afternoons

Philip Larkin

Summer is fading:

The leaves fall in ones and twos

From trees bordering

The new recreation ground.

In the hollows of afternoons

Young mothers assemble

At swing and sandpit

Setting free their children.

Behind them, at intervals,

Stand husbands in skilled trades,

An estateful of washing,

And the albums, lettered

Our Wedding, lying

Near the television:

Before them, the wind

Is ruining their courting-places

That are still courting-places

(But the lovers are all in school),

And their children, so intent on

Finding more unripe acorns,

Expect to be taken home.

Their beauty has thickened.

Something is pushing them

To the side of their own lives.