Poetry Corner Sunday

Yard Work

Tod Marshall

No apples on the Braeburn tree. Some years, they
do that, you say. Your father, the expert gardener,
told you so. I'm gloomy. I see portents, doom,
disaster. Our neighbor mows his lawn every third day.
His name is Gideon, and he claims that someone
named a lamp after him. Click goes the switch.

Start the mower: upside-down helicopter
chopping grass instead of sky. Meanwhile,
the pinwheel across the street, among daisies,
daffodils, and a towering sunflower, spins
like a turbine just before takeoff, passengers
fastening belts, actually listening to advice, learning
how to float on something that's supposed to be a seat.

Dear Bean

The lilacs are stirring to life, their squeezed-shut pink buds beginning to loosen in the spring light. I think of you sitting like Ferdinand under those bushes, breathing in their sweetness. I still wish we'd buried you there.

The kids at school are working on their spring production of Seussical the Musical. I wake up every morning singing "Here on Who," and by the time I leave work, having listened to the entire soundtrack at least twice throughout the course of the afternoon, I can't remember if the book I'm reading is How to Build a Girl (by Caitlin Moran) or "How to Raise a Child" (sung by the mayor of Who and his wife).

We redid the bathroom. Raised the ceiling, retiled the shower and floor, put in an exhaust fan that I can never remember to turn on. It looks like someone else's bathroom. The door is loud when it closes.

There's a note on my desk that simply says, "Chia seeds!" I have no idea why.

I have more books than places to put them.

When I'm stressed on the weekends, I find a corner of the Children's section at the library and read until some mother comes by with her kid and looks at me like I've just set my hair on fire.

There are houses next door. Four of them. The ones that were going up noisily as you lay on my bed in your blanket, taking your last week's worth of shallow, ragged breaths. The houses are big and ugly and exactly the same. Little boxes made of ticky-tacky. I fantasize about them collapsing in a wind storm.

A couple months ago I was told by a ten-year-old at work that I "could use a face upgrade." He was building a Lego plastic surgery center and was desperate for patients.

I sliced pineapple and strawberries yesterday and you weren't there to stand below the cutting board and swat my ankles, waiting for your cut. I left you a few tiny pieces on a plate, which you didn't eat, because you're dead.

It's been warm lately, too warm for your blanket on top of my comforter, but I can't bear to take it off so I've folded it up and draped it across the foot of my bed. I need you with me, especially at night.

I made some eggs last night that looked like scrambled brain matter and them scarfed them down, barely looking, even though I wasn't hungry.

I've been going for runs after work, trying to get myself so tired that I can sleep through the night.

I feel like my body is made of lead. Every day.

I need something to write about.

I miss you.

Poetry Corner Whenever-I-Feel-Like-It

Antietam

Sandra Beasley

We all went in a yellow school bus

on a Tuesday. We sang the whole way up.

We tried to picture the bodies stacked three deep

on either side of that zigzag fence.

We tried to picture 23,000 of anything.

It wasn’t that pretty. The dirt smelled like cats.

Nobody knew who the statues were. Where was

Stonewall Jackson? We wanted Stonewall on his horse.

The old cannons were puny. We asked about fireworks.

Our guide said that sometimes, the land still let go

of fragments from the war—a gold button, a bullet,

a tooth migrating to the surface. We searched around.

On the way back to the bus a boy tripped me and I fell—

Skidding hard along the ground, gravel lodging

in the skin of my palms. I cried the whole way home.

After a week, the rocks were gone.

My mother said our bodies can digest anything,

but that’s a lie. Sometimes, at nights, I feel

the battlefield moving inside of me.

4 Years

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

-Emily Dickinson

Poetry Corner Sunday Night

Selecting a Reader

Ted Kooser


First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moments of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having enough money for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses and there
in the bookstore she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

Bye Bye, Baby

Taffy Margoshes

July 14, 1999 - August 26, 2015

Treemail

The other day, my friend Howard sent me a link to an article about how the city of Melbourne, Australia has assigned ID numbers and email addresses to every tree within city limits. Though residents are meant to use these to report broken branches and other arboreal hazards, instead they are writing love letters to their favorite trees.

When You Give a Tree an Email Address from The Atlantic
Trees Returning Emails from Broadsheet Melbourne

My tree

This makes me happier than I can even begin to express. If you ever needed proof (and who doesn't, these days?) that the world is a miraculous place and that people are caring and genuine and creative and curious, this is it. Not only are Melburnians professing their love for and posing questions to their most beloved trees, but the trees (via some very patient, good-humored employees of the city) are actually writing back. How could you not want to run outside and throw your arms around the first spindly sapling or ancient, knotted oak that you see?

Aglow in the warmth of my sudden and unexpected pride for humanity, it occurred to me that I might be able to find my tree--a lone, stalwart spotted gum inside the looped walking path in Royal Park. I spent hours under the sweet-smelling canopy of this tree, reading and writing and playing guitar, missing home, never wanting to go home again. What if I could find it--pick it out of a map of more than 70,000 trees--and let it know what it meant to me? I think that would make it very happy.

So I found it. First with Google Maps...

...then with the Melbourne Urban Forest Visual.

(And if your heart doesn't just spill all over the floor at the words "Email this tree," you should have some tests done to make sure you have a heart.)

Naturally, after locating my favorite tree in the world, I felt a bit of anxiety as to how I would go about initiating contact with it. You see, I've never emailed a tree before and I wanted to make a good impression. At some point during the excitement, I realized that I would probably spend the rest of my day--which I had specifically set aside to tackle the more pressing issues in my life--writing and rewriting a letter to a tree. As soon as I unearth my list of reasons why I will die alone, I'll be sure to add this to it.

It took me a few days, but I wrote it. Tomorrow morning I'll read it again--after all, one's first email to a tree is nothing to take lightly--and when I'm satisfied that my spotted gum will appreciate the sentiments I will  click "Email this tree."

I hope my words will mean something.