My Father's Shirts

 

 

 

My father was a math and science teacher. That meant five clean, ironed, and starched shirts per week, plus one for Sunday. Some of my sisters and I took turns with the dusting and the dish-washing. But ironing my father's shirts fell to me. No steam irons either, in those days. When the no-iron shirt material came out, it was a godsend!

 

My Father’s Shirts

 

 

I’ve dusted, vacuumed, mopped the kitchen floor,

hung out the wash, swatted every fly—

it’s Saturday, and yet there’s one more chore.

 

The eldest child of seven, it is I

who’s been entrusted with his shirts. Last night

I sprinkle-dampened them, then rolled them tight.

Today, from collar, yoke, and cuffs, to sleeves,

to pocket, placket, front and back, the dry,

hot iron makes the cotton steam. Nearby,

my mother checks for creases. As she leaves,

a side-glance at the gussets and the pleat.

 

I bristle, being too young to know that she

just hopes and prays I’ll learn to take the heat.

And maybe live a good life, wrinkle-free.

 

 

Of change and time . . .

 

 

"The Loiterers" is a poem written in terza rima, the story being told from the point of view of one of the"grizzle-headed men".

PAS DE FLÂNAGE is French for "NO LOITERING". 

The photo is from an article by Michael Hatfield, McDonald's Coffee and God's Grace.

 

The Loiterers

 

Each morning at exactly nine o’clock,

our fellowship of grizzle-headed men

meets at McDonald’s, métro Frontenac.

 

We take our customary seats, and then,

despite the posted warning, PAS DE FLÂNAGE,

drink discount coffee for an hour or two.

 

Surrounded by a motley entourage

of East-End Montrealers, we outdo

each other with our lively poppycock.

 

Long since returned from distant Neverlands,

we turn a deaf ear to the ticking clock.

The manager is kind. He understands

 

our joie de vivre, our order of the day;

refills our cups, and grants that it’s no crime

to hold our own, and though we overstay,

 

to squander what we’ve left of change and time.

 

"Give me your tired, your poor "

 

 

In this sonnet, I tell the story from the point of view of a taxi driver.

Due to the expansion of the Canada - U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, the Roxham Road crossing facilities have been demolished.

 

 

Roxham Road

For the families crossing through the woods into Canada

 

A New York Trailways bus has pulled into

its final U.S. stop: the Mountain Mart

Mobil Station, Plattsburgh, passing through

to Montreal, scheduled to depart

at 1 a.m. A family alights.

Retrieving their baggage from the cargo hold,

they huddle with their backs against the night’s

brutal wind and Adirondack cold.

 

I drive them in my cab up to Champlain,

to Roxham Road’s dead-end, a perilous trench

to navigate, a trek through rough terrain,

formalities in English and in French.

 

I light their way and wait until they’ve crossed.

At last it clicks. That dire word. Tempest-tost.

 

 

— Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Québec, February 2017

 

"In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

 

Trödelladen (junk shop) by Ernst Thoms, 1926

My poem about inspiration (or lack thereof) in writing poetry, "Where All the Ladders Start" (from my book Lines of Flight) was inspired by "The Circus Animals' Desertion" by W.B. Yeats.

 

Where All the Ladders Start

 

I visited her shop this afternoon

to rummage through the clutter and the schlock.

As usual, old tins and jars were strewn

pell-mell across the floor. I’m out of stock

in dancing bears, she yammered, but I’ve got

a thousand smithereens up on the shelf.

I’ll take a shiny penny for the lot.

 

I knew I’d have to fetch them for myself;

and yet, the price was right. I filled my bags

with broken glass, with beads and brittle bones;

then for good measure, reams of tattered rags,

a rusty can, a box of sticks and stones:

the rudiments of memory and art –

            the poems howling from my shopping cart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming to Terms

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This the poem that was awarded the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award in 2010. 

It took me 33 years to write.

 

Coming to Terms

 

I set aside my one-size-fits-all shirt,

my pants with the elastic tummy-panel,

as music to a silent world of hurt

strains from a distant country-western channel.

 

Still, there’s compassion. I’ve been granted leave —

a week in which to heal and convalesce,

to peel away the glow-stars, to unweave

the year I’d stitched onto your christening dress.

 

I rearrange my premises — perverse

assumptions! — gather unripe figs. Throw out

the bloodied bedclothes. Scour the universe

in search of you. And God. And go about

my business as my crooked smile displays

the artful look of ordinary days.

 

War Is Hell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Earthgall" is the fourth in a series of seven poems, "Days of Grass" in my book, The Frangible Hour.

For context:

Historically, earthgall (a type of aster), when placed upon the graves of soldiers, was meant to represent a reversal of the outcome of their battles. 

A CNO is a United States military Casualty Notification Officer. 

Thomas Smith Sr. was a POW in Bulgaria during World War II. Thomas Smith Jr. was killed in action in Vietnam. It was common practice to stamp both the soldier’s name and the name of his next of kin on dog tags during the Vietnam War.

Rest In Peace, my heroes.

 

Earthgall

Nabalus serpentarius

 —in memory of my Uncle Tommy and his son, my cousin Tommy Jr.

 

Two Thomases, a father and his son,

lie in a cemetery on a hill

that overlooks the Susquehanna. One,

a gunner with a young man’s iron will

to live, bailed from his doomed B-24,

endured Camp Shumen’s beatings, moldy bread,

survivor guilt, the aftershocks of war,

a rough divorce; yet worse times lay ahead.

 

The Army CNO. The folded flag.

The Valium. The oceans of Jim Beam.

The names imprinted on a metal tag.

The little boy in the recurrent dream.

I used to fear him. Now I realize

the sense behind his reek and glassy eyes.

 

 

"My little chickadee"?

 

 

 

Wing-stroke

For the women in the shelters and those who didn't make it

 

His pockets stuffed with Nyger seed,

          he wonders if it’s true

that black-capped chickadees will feed

          from outstretched hands. They do.

 

He stands in fascination while

          it pecks, relaxed and cool

yet circumspect. He has to smile;

          this bird is no one’s fool.

 

It senses something in his touch,

          flits from the palm just kissed,

as if it feels the coming clutch

          of steady hand to fist.

 

Smart chickadee, to notice in

          the blinking of an eye,

the monster in this next of kin

          who wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Plain Beauty

 

A rag rug, similar to the ones my grandmother, Estelle Burrier Smith, used to make.

"Plain Beauty" is a relatively rare sonnet form, the Hopkins curtal sonnet, perhaps the most well-known one being "Pied Beauty".

Although I am an inveterate, unapologetic "formalista" as far as poetry goes, I am known for my plainspoken poetic discourse. Thus, my little antiphon to "plain" beauty.

This poem appears in my fifth book, "Pointing Home" (Kelsay Books, 2019)

Line 9 refers to a line from "Misgiving" by another plainspoken poet, Robert Frost.

My audio recording of a first draft of "Plain Beauty" is  HERE.

 

Plain Beauty

 

Glory be to God for homely things—

     For muddy boots and oil-stained dungarees;

            For calloused hands that knead and scrub and hem;

 

Threadbare baby blankets; apron strings;

    A copybook of blotted ABCs;

            And drowsy lullabies at 3 a.m.

 

All things modest, unassuming, rough;

     Rag rugs, first drafts, eucalyptus trees;

            Plain-spoken poems (foliage . . . leaf and stem);

 

They whelm the world in love. It’s not enough.

                        Love them.

 

Automat

 

"Automat" by Edward Hopper, 1927, oil on canvas

I love the works of American artist, Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967), and I have written ekphrastic poems on his paintings Automat, Sun in an Empty Room, High Noon, Early Sunday Morning, Pennsylvania Coal Town, and Rooms by the Sea.

[HERE is an article on automats, for readers not familiar with the term.]

When I look at this painting, I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I sat in a Greyhound Bus terminal at a stop in upstate New York, halfway between my birthplace and the country I would eventually call home.

Edward Hopper’s Automat

 

One does not see the gleaming wall of glass,

its nickel slots and plates of apple pie,

the scores of harried customers who pass.

Reflected in the window’s blackened eye,

two rows of matching ceiling fixtures light

a way to nowhere through the city night.

 

Inscrutable as an unsculpted stone,

between the brass-railed stairway and the door,

we see a woman sitting all alone,

a quiet presence in a stark décor.

Her posture mimics, spiritless and still,

the fresh fruit posing on the window sill.

 

A little radiator crouches near

the wall, and yet the woman wears a glove,

a knee-length, fur-trimmed coat, a hat.It's clear

her thoughts lie elsewhere. Maybe she’s in love . . .

She’s staring far beyond the coffee cup.

I wonder if some man has stood her up.

 

The empty wooden chair, the empty plate,

the downcast eyes beneath the cloche’s brim,

suggest he was expected. Now it’s late.

Too late, perhaps. So, with her prospects grim,

she weighs her options, as she slowly sips

and seems to pout with daubed vermilion lips.

 

Perhaps she can’t find work, and soon must pack

her dreams and bags and board a Greyhound bound

for where she swore she never would go back.

Perhaps it’s just her favorite stomping ground

where no one blinks at tables set for one;

where one can wallow in oblivion.

 

I want to tell her that I know. I know

she can survive whatever brought her here;

that glad and sorry seasons come and go;

that there is nothing and no one to fear —

I’ve owned the loss, I’ve worn the coat and hat.

I am the woman in the automat.

 

Resonance

 

"Girl on Swing" (oil on canvas, 1996) by Ruth Addinall

A childhood memory, memorialized in this Shakespearean sonnet, its title reflects several definitions of the word resonance, for example, the ability to evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions, as well as resonance in physics, which refers to a wide class of phenomena that arise as a result of matching temporal or spatial periods of oscillatory objects. 

Perhaps the most familiar example of resonance in everyday life is swinging on a playground swing. The first push or pump sets the swing in motion. Each subsequent push or pump is delivered at just the right time to increase the amplitude of swing. If you continue pushing or pumping over a period of time, the swing will gradually go higher and higher.

Each pump of my swing was a fervent wish for my father's return from out-of-state hospitalization for his paralytic polio.

You can hear me read it HERE.

Resonance

Swinging is self-limiting: you can’t go past the horizontal in front or in back.

— Dr. Stephen A. Lawrence, Insights into Physics

 

The government delivered processed cheese.

The Philadelphia cousins sent old clothes.

I sucked my thumb, inventing destinies.

Still years away, Mom’s Tropicana rose.

I found some comfort on our backyard swing,

pumping and chanting into the arc’s peaked crest

where angular momentum let me fling

toward light-spangled leaves.

                                                It was the best

of amplitudes—this go-for-broke reprieve

from gravity—because I knew she’d fret

me down from all I knew of bliss. Naïve

to think I’d charmed my father home, I let

go, flying from the damping pendulum,

which soon regained its equilibrium.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dream Navigator

 

 

"Oneironaut" by Johannah O'Donnell

 

 

"Oneironaut" is the first poem in my first published full-length collection Lines of Flight, shortlisted for the Poets' Prize.

I have been an oneironaut my entire life. It is the bane of my existence.

Oneironaut

 

It’s said that ‘lucid dreaming’ tames

recurring nightmares. What the bleep –

it’s worth a try, like counting sheep.

And as I gave my monsters names,

the unknown landscape backed off, blurred.

I soared across the Seven Seas,

flew past the rising Pleiades,

pulled into port and slept.

                                            A word,

however, of advice: beware.

Though humdrum dreams may come to lull

the simmering inside your skull,

it’s merely a device. The bear,

the bug, bamboozled, may revive.

Sniff out the ruse. Eat you alive.

 

A Spoken Verse video of "Oneironaut" recited by Tom O'Bedlam is HERE.

 

Seven reviews of Lines of Flight  are available in the navigation bar to the left.

 

Definition of an oneironaut.

Relaunching The Wonderful Boat!

 

 

Dear Readers,

The Wonderful Boat has weighed anchor!

After a rather lengthy hiatus, I'll be publishing a poem from one of my six poetry collections on a daily basis.

Those collections are:

Lines of Flight (shortlisted for the Poets' Prize)

This Sweet Order

Glad and Sorry Seasons (my sole Canadian collection)

The Frangible Hour (winner of the Richard Wilbur Award)

Pointing Home

Annals of the Dear Unknown

 

Reviews of these books are available on the home page of this blog.

 

Stay tuned, friends!

 

Cathy