POETRY MONDAY: September 7, 2015
Barbara Crooker
Welcome back from vacation, everyone, if you were lucky enough to have one – and here’s wishing you a happy Labor Day weekend, with perhaps some thought of the history behind the day.
Our first poet of the season is one whose work I’ve long admired but whom I met in person only recently, when I had the pleasure of reading with her and another fine poet, January Gill O’Neill, on Cape Cod in June.
Barbara Crooker has published six poetry collections, including, most recently, Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). Her work has won well-deserved awards: the Word Press First Book Award (2005) for Radiance and the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for Line Dance (Word Press, 2008), and her poems
have appeared in many fine literary magazines and anthologies, e.g., Worlds in Our Words: Contemporary American Women Writers (Prentice Hall); The Bedford Introduction to Literature; and even in two of the popular Garrison Keillor’s, who has read her work twenty-four times on his Writer’s Almanac.
My favorite book of hers is one of her newest, Gold (Cascade Books, 2013), which shows her to be a mature and wise writer, dealing with one of the most difficult portions of anyone’s life, the loss of a parent.
Here are two poems from that book, “Peeps” and “Ashes” and a new, as-yet unpublished ekphrastic one, “Peonies,” that she has been kind enough to share with us.
–Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
PEEPS
In those last few months my mother didn’t want to eat, this woman
who made everything from scratch, and who said of her appetite,
I eat like a bricklayer. Now she listlessly stirred the food
around her plate, sometimes picking up a piece of chicken,
then looking at it as if to say, What is this? Wouldn’t put
it in her mouth. But Peeps! Marshmallow Peeps! Spun sugar
and air, molded in clever forms: a row of ghosts, a line
of pumpkins, a bevy of bunnies, a flock of tiny chicks,
sometimes in improbable colors like purple and blue. . . .
One day, she turned over her tray, closed her mouth, looked up
at me like a defiant child, and said, I’m not eating this stuff.
Where’s my Peeps?
When it was over, the hospice chaplain said some words
in my back yard, under the wisteria arch. The air was full
of twinkling white butterflies, in love with the wild oregano.
Blue-green fronds of Russian sage waved in front of the Star
Gazer lilies, and a single finch lit on a pink coneflower, and stayed.
When there were no more words or tears, I ripped open
the last packet of Peeps, tore their little marshmallow bodies,
their sugary blood on my hands, and gave a piece to each
of us. It melted, grainy fluff on our tongues, and it was good.
from Gold (Cascade Books, 2013)
ASHES
to my mother
When we brought your ashes to the beach
at the end of Pilgrim Road, I poured them out
as fast as I could, standing knee-deep
in the seaweedy shallows, because it had started
to rain, and I didn’t want you to get wet.
What was I thinking? You were returning
to our first mother, the sea. But all I wanted
to do was gather up every gritty particle,
every chip of bone, then mix them with my bare
hands, using sand and mud, saliva and tears,
and bring you back, my own personal golem.
How could I have let you sift out of my fingers,
grain by grain? The heavier bits sank, mixed
with the broken shells; the lighter ones blew
in the wind, stuck to the patches of foam.
How can you be gone?
from Gold (Cascade Books, 2013)
PEONIES
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1920
watercolor, gouache and graphite on paper
The peony on the left speaks:
So what if my leaves are starting
to droop, and my stems have turned
the yellow of old newsprint? True,
I’m stuck in a vase, but I’m saved
from the vagaries of wind and weather.
Hail’s sharp comments can no longer
cut, and sun’s hot stare can’t wilt
my blooms. No sudden storm
will drench my petticoats,
drag them in the dirt, and ants can’t
have their way with me, caressing
where they will. Now
I’m in full array; my perfume
colors the air, trailing ribbons
and silk scarves. I’m an implosion
of ruffles, a can-can dancer
at the Folies Bergère.
Tomorrow, my petals will litter
the table. But today, it’s May,
and the cafés are open. Let’s sit
in the sun and drink kir royales.
You know you want to touch me.
I know I want to dance.