Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Friday, November 15

“ . . . people . . .
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward
who do what has to be done, again and again”

Wednesday’s Jamaal May poem, “Shift” inspired one of our English faculty to post & call “Shift” “another wonderful post”  (Thank you, Heather) and introduce me to Marge Piercy’s “To be of Use.”   Flint hard language in tightly woven poems . . .   Yes, they make the world go round, no matter how deep the mud and the muck.

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses and, maybe tip one’s hat to our English Department.

Have a blest weekend,

john sj

Today’s Post:   Marge Piercy  “To be of Use”

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.

“to be of use”
https://owlcation.com/humanities/An-Analysis-of-To-Be-of-Use-by-Marge-Piercy

Marge Piercy, March 31, 1936
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_Piercy

Wednesday November 13
“I don’t know
if it’s better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job”

What’s sweet about Thanksgiving, at least one of the sweet things, is a 3 day work week followed by a 4 day weekend.  It’s a reminder that an ordinary 5 day week teaches people to be strong, develop staying power, especially when one 5 day adds onto another, something to be proud of, our work rhythms.  Interrupting them now and then, like this week, puts a light on their ordinary strength and beauty.  This year this most domestic of U.S. holidays falls in the final days of the month. Perhaps the intuition to point today’s post toward this deliciously long weekend two weeks out stems from longing.

I hadn’t posted a poem from Detroit poet Jamaal May in a while.  He writes “Shift” with the same subtle density of language that characterizes his poetry.   “Shift” asks a reader to read two or three times to find a way into a world of growing up into an adult’s awareness while learning the honor of showing up and doing a job.   It’s worth the 2nd and 3rd read, better out loud with pauses.

Have a blest week.

john sj

Today’s Post   “Shift”

Acting on an anonymous tip, a shift supervisor
at a runaway shelter strip-searched six teenagers.
Mrs. Haver was taping shut the mouths
of talkative students by the time she neared retirement,
and Mr. Vickers, a skilled electrician in his day,
didn’t adapt when fuses became circuit breakers,
a fact that didn’t stop him from tinkering
in our basement until the house was consumed by flame.

I used to want to be this bad at a job.
I wanted to show up pissy drunk to staff meetings
when the power point slides were already dissolving
one into another, but I had this bad habit
of showing up on time
and more sober than any man should be
when working audio/visual hospitality
in a three star hotel that was a four star hotel
before he started working there.

When the entire North Atlantic blacked out,
every soul in the Hyatt Regency Dearborn flooded
the parking lot panicked about terrorists and rapture,
while I plugged in microphones and taped down cables
by flashlight—you know, in case whatever cataclysm
unfolded didn’t preempt the meetings. Meetings,
before which I’d convince a children’s hospital
to pay fifteen dollars to rent a nine dollar laser pointer.
Thirty-five bucks for a flip chart,
extra paper on the house. Is it good to be good at a job
if that job involves pretending to be a secret service agent
for Phizer’s George Bush impersonator? I don’t know

if it’s better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job,
but there must be some kind of satisfaction
in doing a job so poorly, you’re never asked to do it again.
I’m not saying he’s a hero, but there’s a guy out there
who overloaded a transformer and made a difference,
because in a moment, sweating through my suit,
groping in the dark when my boss was already home,

I learned that I’d work any job this hard, ache
like this to know that I could always ache for something.
There’s a hell for people like me where we shovel
the coal we have mined ourselves into furnaces
that burn the flesh from our bones nightly,
and we never miss a shift.

BY JAMAAL MAY

http://www.jamaalmay.com

Monday November 11
“ . . . keeps her fifty years of marriage wrapped, flawless,
in something we sense and almost see —
diaphanous as those saris one can pass through a wedding ring.”

Gail cooked a lovely dinner, we sat and told stories about the loves of our lives in her home where we have often gathered before, usually with Beth Ann Finster, ssj and David, Gail’s husband of many years. David died last June, Beth is now on the Leadership team of her congregation in Buffalo. Last night when I had driven back to campus, I looked at the blue and black afghan Connie di Biase had created for me years back. Connie died on February 10, 2017, another soul friend. I looked up this post, originally from January 23, 2017, c. two weeks before she died.

I am re-posting as a tip of my soul’s hat to Gail and Beth, to David and Connie, and to the c. 2600 readers of this list who know deep grief and the deep beauty that comes with it.

john sj

p.s. Thank you Gail, for a lovely dinner last evening.

Connie de Biase, csj, soul friend of 40 years, died on Feb 10, 2017 in Brentwood Long Island, c. 6:15 pm

– “a mutual commitment to noticing”
Over 4 decades of kinship, Connie de Biase and I partnered in a mutual commitment to noticing. Now that she’s left us, I miss her most on Saturday mornings when driving into center city to buy new baked bread. While I drove home, we would talk about the condition of our inner lives. Through Connie’s last year, our talk was more brave and sad as she recognized her growing diminishment, her grief at losing the life in Madison, CT that she loved and lived so gracefully. Ignatius calls such talk paying attention to “inner disturbances,” both consolations and desolations. Noticing.

originally posted January 23, 2017 (c. 2 weeks before she died)
Perhaps this Denise Levertov poem came to mind because I flew into JFK Saturday, braved Long Island’s expressways with their too tight turns matched by slightly-too-narrow lanes, to spend time with my dying soul friend, Sr. Consuela de Biase, csj. Connie has become frail, like the ancient poet in today’s poem. She misses nothing, I realized, but you have to lean in close to hear; worn with fatigue, she whispers, and pauses to breathe. We visited three times (c. 90 minutes; c. 25 minutes; and 4 or 5 at the end when we said goodbye before I headed back to JFK early Sunday). I love it that the 40 mile drive on the parkway was wearing; it reminds me that those miles and our 3 conversations are of a piece with decades of mutual listening, the fabric of life with Connie.

Have a blest week.
john sj

Today’s Post “In Love”

Denise Levertov writes of an ancient poet whose frail strengths remind me of Connie and David. Perhaps this wintry but hardly arctic morning might tempt you to open your window or step outside so you can read “In Love” while breathing a little.

Over gin and tonic (an unusual treat) the ancient poet
haltingly —not because mind and memory
falter, but because language, now,
weary from so many years
of intense partnership,
comes stiffly to her summons,
with unsure footing —
recounts, for the first time in my hearing, each step
of that graceful sarabande, her husband’s
last days, last minutes, fifteen years ago.
She files her belongings freestyle, jumbled
in plastic bags — poems, old letters, ribbons,
old socks, an empty picture frame;
but keeps her fifty years of marriage wrapped, flawless,
in something we sense and almost see —
diaphanous as those saris one can pass through a wedding ring.

Denise Levertov 1923 – 1997

Consuela (Connie)
August 2006

Laughing

Smiling

Contemplative

Friday, November 8,   “Our dreams drink coffee with us”

Sometimes I get so busy that being behind on tasks distracts me from beauty.  That’s a shame.   Like great poets anywhere, Joy Harjo often lets strong language find her . . . in turn, she helps that language find readers, often readers in improbable places.  That’s what the institution of naming Poet Laureates is; the women and men who labor to sift a season’s great voices to engage human listeners, to bring listeners to a stop, stirs the heart and restores the worn imagination.

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.    Perhaps, too, to lift your head high and breathe more deeply for a while.  Our university celebrates Faculty Excellence tonight, in the Ballroom.   Faculty who reach to stretch the souls of students and fellow faculty can make my spirit sing.   Yours too,  I’d bet.

Have a blest weekend.

john sj

Today’s Post  —  “Perhaps the World Ends Here”  

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children.

They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo.
Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.

“something
you already had
And set it down in
A new place.”

This week, when I am 4 days back home for a few weeks at Six Mile & Livernois and looking ahead for 3 weeks off the road, these weeks feel like some settling in after 3 weeks of hammer-slammer multi-tasking on the sabbatical road.   These November weeks remind me of a short-form prayer I have shared for many years with a soul friend.   Every so often, when the intuition catches my attention, I text my friend this short message:  “have you breathed yet today?”   “Breathing” in this context works like this:  you stop where you are (i.e., stop walking to a next task;  you straighten your shoulders and stand tall;  you draw in a slow deep breath, filling your lungs;  you release the deep breath).  You imagine that this ritual has created a place of stillness where you can hear the sound that a tree creates {or the grass around you} as they grow. Within that stillness, you make a commitment: “I love my life, exactly as it is now, with nothing changed.”   Then you go on your way again.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem feels just like that prayer.   Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s Post   “Fresh”  Naomi Shihab Nye

“Fresh”

To move
Cleanly.
Needing to be
Nowhere else.
Wanting nothing
From any store.
To lift something
You already had
And set it down in
A new place.
Awakened eye
Seeing freshly.
What does that do to
The old blood moving through
Its channels?

Naomi Shihab Nye
b. March 12, 1952 (age 67)

Mary Oliver: “there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own”

“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice”

Late during the Lenten season of 1965, the small group of “Province Consultors” met with Pedro Arrupe, (newly named the Superior General of the world wide Jesuit Order) in an O’Hare hotel meeting space to address a crisis.   The current mid-west Provincial’s ham-handed manner threatened to drive much of the younger half of the Province out, enough that a startling number of influential Jesuits wrote to Rome warning that decisive action was needed immediately.   It happened that Arrupe was making his first visit to the U.S. as Superior General.  The small group met all day.   Arrupe asked the consultors whether the situation was as dire as the 50 + letters said.  The consulters said “yes.”   Then, Arrupe asked who in the province might the younger men trust.  A consensus told him “Joe Sheehan, the current Novice Director.”  That same day Arrupe fired the provincial and named Joe, to be announced two weeks later, on Easter.

On Pine Ridge we young Jesuits were 5;  when we read the letter Easter morning, we began dancing around the dining room, laughing with wonder and joy (e.g., one of us wandered around the room in a daze saying “There is a God;  I believe it now, there is a GOD!”)

Hindsight says that Joe paid a high price to meet the crisis;  he began to call Jesuits young and old to face the province’s pervasive but little-recognized racism that had created a cultural assumption that the Rez was a penal colony for outcast Jesuits who had gotten themselves in trouble or who were perceived to be third string minds.   After his tumultuous 6 year term and many battles, Joe took a sabbatical and then asked to return to the Rez, for the rest of his life it turned out.   His hospitality to Lakota men and women and children became legendary.  When he died (cancer, I think), he was buried in the cemetery of Manderson village.   During my sabbatical month there in September, my soul friend Mary Tobacco and I drove the c. 40 miles to visit not only Joe’s grave, but also Mary’s legendary ancestor Standing Bear and Black Elk, life-long close friends.   Black Elk became world famous as a wicasa wakan who John Neihardt interviewed over a long time and published the still-contemporary book Black Elk Speaks.   In recent decades, anthropologist Michael Steltenkamp, sj published a second account, this time by Lucy Black Elk, about her grandfather, Black Elk, who also served as Catholic pastor in Manderson District for c. 40 years.  While Mary and I stood still there for a while, a meadowlark began to sing, somewhere close to Joe’s grave:  “Maybe that’s Fr. Sheehan welcoming us,” said Mary.

I love the accident of this early November calendar reminding me of how much I and very many other people owe to Joe’s understated courage and his revolutionary recognition that the racist wounds on Pine Ridge called for a conversion into deep cross-cultural mutual hospitality – standing in that cemetery, near a caucasian priest, a Lakota holy man, and a war leader listening to the meadowlark as a sacred voice telling us that we were all welcome there that morning.

John G. Neihardt (from left), Nicholas Black Elk and Standing Bear of the Oglala Sioux
meet during an interview session for “Black Elk Speaks” in Manderson, S.D., in May 1933.
(Photo by Enid Neihardt; Courtesy of The Neihardt Trust)

Joe Sheehan, sj
Died November 4, 1997

Best to read Mary Oliver out loud, with pauses.  She makes good company for troubled times like the present and would not be surprised by this remembrance of Joe Sheehan, sj, Black Elk, and Standing Bear and the prairie Manderson cemetery where their bodies have come to rest near one another.

Monday afternoon, alive with crisp autumn air.  Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s Post “The Journey”

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

Mary Oliver

September 10, 1935

Wednesday, October 30

Pre-note:

These two poets have long been alive in my reading life, William Carlos Williams and Denise Levertov.  A friend from U Penn’s grad program where we met in 1993, surprised me with the news that these two poets, a generation apart, lived a close connection. (It’s all in this post first published on Feb 8, 2019.)

john st sj

Here’s the original post:

William Carlos Williams & Denise Levertov — a generation apart, but very close

George Danko to jstsj, May 22, 2018

“Dear John,

I recently read a children’s book, A River of Words, about William Carlos Williams, the pediatrician and poet who wrote and administered to families in my hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey. His son also followed his father in a medical career and was my pediatrician. It turns out that Williams, despite fragile health in his later years, mentored younger poets at his home. One of them was Denise Levertov, a favorite of yours.

George”

George and I met in early September 1973 as we both began finding our way around U Penn’s PhD program in American Civilization. These 45 years later we remain good friends who sometimes trade stories of insight or grief or beauty.  Last May, George surprised me.  One day, reading the Work Day/Hard Times poetry list, he recognized that the poets William Carlos Williams and Denise Levertov often appeared there.  Until last May, I had no notion that they shared a living room where Williams listened to Levertov’s young voice and told her what he heard – – a magical inter-generational mentoring kinship.

Two poets, two poems.  I hope you can find time to read each one out loud, with pauses.  They will be worth the time.  Have a blest day.

john sj

p.s. Just now, c. 6:30 am here on the foothill slope of the Rocky Mountains, lovely snow has been falling since the middle of the night, large flakes helped along by gusts of wind.  I woke to 3 degrees Fahrenheit and notable snow.

Post #1:  William Carlos Williams,  “The Manoeuvre”

I saw the two starlings
coming in toward the wires
But at the last,
just before alighting, they

turned in the air together
and landed backwards!
that’s what got me —
to face into the wind’s teeth.

William Carlos Williams
September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams

Post #2:   Denise Levertov,  “The Poem Rising By Its Own Weight”

‘The poet is at the disposal of his own night.’
Jean Cocteau

The singing robes fly onto your body and cling there silkily,
You step out on the rope and move unfalteringly across it,

And seize the fiery knives unscathed and
Keep them spinning above you, a fountain
Of rhythmic rising, falling, rising
Flames,

And proudly let the chains
Be wound about you, ready
To shed them, link by steel link,
padlock by padlock–

but when your graceful
confident shrug and twist drives the metal
into your flesh and the python grip of it tightens
and you see rust on the chains and blood in your pores
and you roll
over and down a steepness into a dark hole
and there is not even the sound of mockery in the distant air
somewhere above you where the sky was,
no sound but your own breath panting:
then it is that the miracle
walks in, on his swift feet,
down the precipice straight into the cave,
opens the locks,
knots of chain fall open,
twists of chain unwind themselves,
links fall asunder,
in seconds there is a heap of scrap-
metal at your ankles, you step free and at once
he turns to go —
but as you catch at him with a cry,
clasping his knees, sobbing your gratitude,
with what radiant joy he turns to you,
and raises you to your feet,
and strokes your disheveled hair,
and holds you,
holds you,
holds you
close and tenderly before he vanishes.

Denise Levertov
October 24, 1923 – December 20, 1997
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Levertov

Friday, October 25
“Summer ends now, now

barbarous in beauty the stooks arise around”

Getting ready for a rainy day — sun rises at 7:55 and sets at 6:37 — each day a little shorter and the sun a little lower in the sky, sunrise a little farther to the south. This is a season when how far north or south one lives can get our attention. I love it that we have a large open space in the north east corner of the McNichols Campus and that McNichols Road (aka 6 Mile) makes our northern boundary a true east-west survey line, keyed to 8 Mile road (which dates to the 1789 Northwest Territory survey mapping project). All that makes it easier to locate this campus against the majestic march of sunrise all through the year, and can remind us, too, that Detroit has been around a while. Do I go a little nuts in autumn? Sure do. You?

19th century Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, loved autumn also (see today’s poem just below). Even more than most great poets, GMH rewards investment in the sounds of his language. Best to read out loud, with pauses, several times and, maybe, enjoy the sky?

p.s. for a working definition of  “stooks”  see the caption below the harvest field after Hopkins’ poem.

Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s post — “ Hurrahing in The Harvest”

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—

These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

“ .  .  . now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around . . .”

“stooks”  = “a group of sheaves of grain stood on end in a field.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins
28 July 1844 – 8 June, 1889

Wednesday, October 23  –  “Greyhaired, I have not grown wiser,
unless to perceive absurdity
is wisdom. A powerless wisdom.”

Why do all these autumn travel days remind me of Denise Levertov’s poem about falling in love as an elderly woman?   The poem is as improbably playful as the leaves riding the wind gusts.  Yesterday morning, I said goodbye to 3 weeks in mid-New England — mostly Worcester and Dudley, plus to visits to the heart of Boston, along Route 9.  One Route 9 adventure took me for lunch at the Jamaica Plain home of one of my decades-long friends, Leo Marx, who will turn 100 next month.  We were five:  Leo, his daughter Lucy, and two other MIT soul friends of as many years.  Roe Smith and I met in 1975 when he came to U Penn as visiting faculty;  he and Bronwyn have been close ever since.  Roz Williams welcomed me during my early years as visiting faculty at MIT’s Science, Technology, and Society beginning 1982.  The five of us told stories about our academic lives and other adventures, over a platter of scrumptious sandwiches.

I drove back to Dudley after lunch, inordinately proud of my ability to GPS the tangle of streets and hills that make Jamaica Plain daunting and lovely.  Two days later Worcester’s College of the Holy Cross hosted a gathering of former Jesuit Volunteers.  Most days, though, I spent these retreat days in the home of Mary and George Burke, their daughter Caelin, and Ruby their still adolescent Black Lab.   Mary, George, and Caelin hustle off early each work day leaving a quiet house and yard.    These weeks have visited with me: alive with stillness and memories from my life and years of its graces.

This morning in Buffalo, I am staying with Beth Ann Finster and her fellow Sisters of St. Joseph.   When I drove in last evening through driving rain and 405 miles on the Massachusetts and New York Turnpikes, these savvy women took one look at my bedraggled state and observed, “you aren’t thinking of driving to Detroit tomorrow?”  I took their point.  Now after some delicious sleep and good company, I am letting these women of Buffalo slow my pace and expand my travel time expectations.   How often does that happen in our lives?   Our plans welcomed into a context of the pace of life with its kindred spirits, soften and surprise.

Why do these two autumn travel days remind me of Denise Levertov’s poem about falling in love as an elderly woman?   The poem is as improbably playful as the upstate New York leaves riding the wind gusts.  So too the welcome from Beth Ann Finster and her sisters.  So too, these October sabbatical surprises.

I love the poem and the poet;  by the way, her birthdate is tomorrow.

Have a good day.

john sj

today’s post

“Ancient Airs and Dances”

I

I knew too well
what had befallen me
when, one night, I put my lips to his wineglass
after he left–an impulse I thought was locked away with a smile
into memory’s museum.

When he took me to visit friends and the sea, he lay
asleep in the next room’s dark where the fire
rustled all night; and I, from a warm bed, sleepless,
watched through the open door
that glowing hearth, and heard,
drumming the roof, the rain’s
insistent heartbeat.

Greyhaired, I have not grown wiser,
unless to perceive absurdity
is wisdom. A powerless wisdom.

II

Shameless heart! Did you not vow to learn
stillness from the heron
quiet from the mists of fall,
and from the mountain–what was it?
Pride? Remoteness?
You have forgotten already!
And now you clamor again
like an obstinate child demanding attention,
interrupting study and contemplation.
You try my patience. Bound as we are
together for life, must you now,
so late in the day, go bounding sideways,
trying to drag me with you?

Denise Levertov – Evening Train

October 24, 1923 – December 20, 1997

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Levertov

Friday, October 18 – –  Our Nor’easter shook the earth but spared the autumn leaves

The early days of this week, a wind storm hammered New England with 60 mile per hour winds;  many people have lost power, and many trees have lost their vertical grace and lie strewn across  yards and roads.   One friend, while the winds shrieked and we shivered, prepared for yet another storm loss. “The colors have just lately turned their beauty our way and now these winds will probably strip the trees prematurely bare.”   Autumn is like that,  memories of delicate, breath-taking beauty from Octobers past, whet our appetites.   Some years we are too busy with commitments to pause and take in fleeting and winsome beauty.

It would be a shame, I thought during morning prayer today, if all our generous work allowed autumn to slip by us.  Wherever you live, in Motown where the colors are breaking open these days, or Colorado, or Sweden, or Dudley, Massachusetts – pause and listen 3 times today.  Want to?

john sj

p.s. The weekend might make a great time to bump those listening pauses up to 4 or 5.  Have a great weekend.

Today’s Post – “Autumn’s russet colors age . . .”
                        In honor of the dogwood in our West Philly yard.
{This poem emerged one fall day during my U Penn grad school year c. 1974}

Autumn’s russet colors
Age without solemnity
Earthy and simple, they linger
Linger,

Not for grandeur
Nor from fear of the dust they will become

Their affection for this place
These ripening moments
Even me the beholder
Slows the pace of changing.

Let me be won by this warmth
To slow my chosen pace
To ripen affectionately.

jstsj