standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

like bread in our children’s mouths

so their dreams will not reflect

the death of ours

***

For those of us

who were imprinted with fear

like a faint line in the center of our foreheads

learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk

for by this weapon

this illusion of some safety to be found

the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

For all of us

this instant and this triumph

We were never meant to survive.

***

And when the sun rises we are afraid

it might not remain

when the sun sets we are afraid

it might not rise in the morning

when our stomachs are full we are afraid

of indigestion

when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

we may never eat again

when we are loved we are afraid

love with vanish

when we are alone we are afraid

love will never return

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid.

***

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.

*In honor of Denver PrideFest, which I write about on Tuesday. This is one of my favorite poems. I suppose it sounds a bit depressing, but I read it as a call to action.

Frost died in January 1963, several months after I was born. He is one of my youngest sister’s favorite poets.

It may be charitably guessed

Comparison is not her quest.

from “Two Leading Lights”

I had never read that particular poem before, and I found it somewhat sexist, which reminded me of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804–1864) complaint about “scribbling women” taking away book sales from more deserving writers. Searching for that phrase on Google led me to this site. Of the 15 stories turned into radio plays there, I’ve read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” While writing this post, I listened to “The Stones of the Village” by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875–1935).

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) called Hawthorne’s 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables “the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made.” Of himself, Lowell said, “I am the first poet who has endeavored to express the American Idea, and I shall be popular by and by.” (Those of us who are writers certainly know that feeling.) Whether Lowell’s first sentiment is accurate, I don’t know, but quintessentially American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892), who has no building on Poet’s Row, called Lowell “not a grower—he was a builder. He built poems: he didn’t put in the seed, and water the seed, and send down his sun—letting the rest take care of itself: he measured his poems—kept them within formula.” Is it inappropriate that the doorway of a “builder” is dappled with the shadows of leaves?

Russell is known as the author of the 1848 book-length poem A Fable for Critics, which I have not read, but I can imagine he would have a few things to say about my silly juxtapositions here. Amy Lowell, his descendant (1874–1925), made him a character in her 1922 poem “A Critical Fable.”

“Hero-Worship” by Amy Lowell

A face seen passing in a crowded street,
A voice heard singing music, large and free;
And from that moment life is changed, and we
Become of more heroic temper, meet
To freely ask and give, a man complete
Radiant because of faith, we dare to be
What Nature meant us.  Brave idolatry
Which can conceive a hero!  No deceit,
No knowledge taught by unrelenting years,
Can quench this fierce, untamable desire.
We know that what we long for once achieved
Will cease to satisfy.  Be still our fears;
If what we worship fail us, still the fire
Burns on, and it is much to have believed.

Of all the writers on Poet’s Row, I would prefer this blog post be judged by Mark Twain (1835–1910), because at least that would make me laugh: “Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.”

Does anyone else think it appropriate that the doorway for Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) has no number?

When I was a child in Queens with Grandfather’s

tulips and Grandmother’s peach trees, my attic

room sloped to windows above the grape arbor

and August nights were thick with humid heat,

long before wreckers splintered everything

for the red-bricked stories of apartments.

The Florida home from which I finished

high school still stands, but my family moved,

left the house occupied by strangers, made

foreign by their unfamiliar furnishings,

and the hickory woods I walked at sunset

beyond the yard were bulldozed for tract housing.

Even here in Denver, home of my recent

history, I show you a new parking lot

where I wrote that romantic poem you like

living in a house which no longer exists,

its rooms as finally lost as the moments

of putting pen to paper in their silence.

Those houses lost, I must, like a Druid

remember without corporal assistance:

the house in Queens had a glassed-in front porch;

in the morning light slanting through its panes

I traced the bright outlines of autumn leaves,

taking the look of oak and maple to heart.

No brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the Jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity

Pursuing winds that censure us
A February day,
The brother of the universe
Was never blown away.

The snow and he are intimate:
I’ve often seen them play
When heaven looked upon us all
With such severity,

I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky,
Whose pompous frown was nutriment
To their temerity.

The pillow of this daring head
Is pungent evergreens;
His larder—terse and militant—
Unknown, refreshing things;

His character a tonic,
His future a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.

Thanks to Emily Dickinson for writing the poem and Free Stock Photos for providing the picture.

I returned today from spending Christmas in Redstone and could not think of a subject for a haibun. So I’m giving you this poem, one of my favorites. I love it because I have known people like the [man] the narrator is addressing, but I also admire the fact that it’s a sonnet but doesn’t advertise that fact, nor does it dwell much on rhyme. In fact, it take 10 lines instead of 8 to describe the problem the poet hopes to solve, and 4 lines instead of 6 to resolve it. I hope you like it.