Another reply poem

I had that feeling again, today, when I read a poem and I wanted to answer. Today's poem on the Verse Daily website is "Saint Anthony Falls" by William Waltz.

Here is my response:


Paterson Falls

You bring me here to show me
that you have nature even in North Jersey,
where water thunders pale over the falls.
A rickety iron catwalk's closed.
Warnings tinge the air,
the river where garbage bobbles
by the edges, and cream-colored scum
that could have looked like lace
heaves up along the dark rocks.
On the far side, summer trees rise,
leaves an old green, lush summer stained
by living. The Passaic runs as though
she could still be wild, instead
of dressed in clothes the mills made.
This was a factory town, famous for its silk.
She was a working girl.
We watch the water, listen,
drift away across the road
drawn by the diner's lights.

(Laurie, does this sound right? Did the diner have some famous specialty? Probably hot dogs, back in those days when I didn't eat meat.)

Quickly

Do you ever read a poem and then, while you're appreciating its resonance, realize that it's not quite hitting the spot—for you? Do you ever want to reply?

A couple of years I had this reaction and wrote a poem. Yesterday, I read a beautiful poem on the Poetry Daily website, "The Continuous Life" by Mark Strand, and I had the same experience.

Here, for what it's worth, is the draft I came up with.

After the Blackberry Season


In the purple light of dusk, where children hide
under lilacs long gone to seed
and watch the grown men and women
on the porch, or in the yellow kitchen, slowly
surrender themselves to the end of the day,
the sound of ice in a glass of tea or gin
and maybe guitars on someone's radio.
Teach your children that lives
wind long, and as much as you don't want to leave
the house, the yard, as much as you've grown to love home,
some days are too short for chores, that the sun will set
a little later each evening and then a little earlier,
that this darkness is only
one of many small leaps and leanings
until night comes finally. Let the mop and the broom
rest in their corner. The cooking and cleaning can wait
at least for this just now, when a rustle of leaves
means it might be time to come in, when conversation
hums with the pleasure of settling still
and watching the shadows deepen
until they can't be seen anymore
and the stars, and the stars

The news this week

It's time for more of those random thoughts on life in general.

The news this week haunts me. Now, news on the web includes the pictures and profiles of people who were killed on Monday in Virginia. I haven't been able to read much of their stories. It is so tragic, such an unnecessary loss of life, of living—all those potential moments gone.

I'm also haunted by the shooter—how his writing seems like it wasn't a path out for him but another weapon for him to use. All of the stuff around writing—the classes and evaluations and rejections—can be hard. But the actual act of writing is for me a chance to transcend, or escape, that other stuff. It is, on my best days, a gift I give myself.

But that didn't work out for him.

I hope that the families and friends of the people who were slain can find some way to give themselves eventually a way to heal—whether it's writing or painting or running or cooking. Whatever will work.

And today in the mail, my younger son received his first recruitment brochure—not for some fancy schmancy East Coast college, but for the Marines. This initiated a conversation about the D word: DRAFT.

Some people say there will not be a draft, that the United States public wants to pull out of the war. Some say that everyone should share the burden of the war. The idea of another draft scares me.

Today in Baghdad, four large bombs exploded, and more than 170 people were killed. That's just in one city. That doesn't count the people who were injured.

Sometimes, maimed is a better word.

Having grown up during the Vietnam War, I could find no positive percentage in invading Iraq. I wasn't convinced about Afghanistan—but at least there was a connection that looked logical. Now, Afghanistan is still not a stable place and Osama bin Laden, our original culprit, has slipped mostly out of the U.S. headlines.

I realize that I'm telling you what you already know. Forgive me, today. Please be my choir.

I had an errand to do, and as I walked up the hill, I thought about all the people who have died during the Iraq war—all the military people, all the Iraqi people—and all the people who have lost their loved ones and their homes. I thought about the librarian in Baghdad.

I know that some people in Iraq are working on creative solutions. But in a broader, big-picture way, the "deciders" still seem to be relying on shock and awe instead of investigating creative solutions to the violent situation that we created. And the more violence, the more diluted and narrow the world conversation becomes.

Thank you for listening.

I wondered whether writing poetry could help the families and friends of those wounded or killed to process their loss and their grief. I found some poems and stories on the Voices in Wartime website. I imagine there is more. I hope so. Or whatever will work.