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| POETRY ABOUT SPECIAL EVENTS |
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| Birthday Song Dates A Valentine For My Wife Marriage Morning Jury Duty When You Are Old |
"Birthday Song" The canary yellow envelope at mail call aroused the other seminarians, “What’s the occasion?” “Ya got me,” I lied and peeked in at two Mallards landing on a Blessed Virgin blue pond with a largemouth bass leaping to greet them under the swirling script in the sky— Happy Birthday To A Wonderful Son— the only reminder that tomorrow, just another day in the sem, was my birthday, the seventh since any celebration with Mom and Sarah, my sister, the seventh away from Winthrop Street in Detroit, half a continent west, my third birthday with my new family the Congregation of the Holy Ghost whom I adopted with vows of poverty, chastity, obedience a family but no gifts, not even a handkerchief, no three-layer cake lathered with angel-white icing, lipstick-red roses, first slice for the birthday boy, no candles, family, friends to sing Happy Birthday to You © Leon Markowicz Grace Cavalieri (1937– ) "Dates" The silver from my mother’s mirror gleams its stories toward a light which drops and never breaks. It says to tell the truth and permanently shining, brings forth an original day bright as this one where children and other small creatures played without threat but the child’s story is never without fear—is it— and seems to be made of remainders which either want for love or some relief from it. In the third grade the pyramids were presented to us by Miss O’Malley so kind that she would— in honor of learning— give us the key to Egypt if she could. Who would like to bring dates for all to taste? Who can do this on the lunch hour? she asked. Naturally I —who could not imagine how— said I would— and, like a child with enough money to spend, ran home with only one hour, one hour to ease my dear mother who probably had little money in the house, yet who bravely asked “Shouldn’t you buy two packages for the class” I said No. Love and fear divided in my mind between an ocean of children and my mother’s troubled face, “One package is all I need” I lied, “Someone else will bring the rest” (Children spend so much time persuading— no wonder no one believes them). Eight dates for twenty children which would taste so sweet— Miss O’Malley, always kind, cut the tiny squares and I kept interrupting, hoping they wouldn’t notice. After all there wasn’t water in the land of pyramids . . . was there . . . and not too many trees, probably hungry people and small rations there as well. That day every one of us was a reflection of the other— the children who ate their portions, the mother at home worrying about her daughter’s gift, the child thinking about her mother’s face, and Miss O’Malley who, kind and earnest, taught us all about a hardy people in an arid land who gave what they had and could give nothing more. © 1990, Grace Cavalieri, Trenton grateful acknowlegement to Belle Mead Press Eugene Field "A Valentine to My Wife" Accept, dear girl, this little token, And if between the lines you seek, You'll find the love I've often spoken— The love my dying lips shall speak. Our little ones are making merry O'er am'rous ditties rhymed in jest, But in these words (though awkward—very) The genuine article's expressed. You are as fair and sweet and tender, Dear brown-eyed little sweetheart mine, As when, a callow youth and slender, I asked to be your Valentine. What though these years of ours be fleeting? What though the years of youth be flown? I'll mock old Tempus with repeating, "I love my love and her alone!" And when I fall before his reaping, And when my stuttering speech is dumb, Think not my love is dead or sleeping, But that it waits for you to come. So take, dear love, this little token, And if there speaks in any line The sentiment I'd fain have spoken, Say, will you kiss your Valentine? Alfred, Lord Tennyson "Marriage Morning" Light, so low upon earth, You send a flash to the sun. Here is the golden close of love, All my wooing is done. Oh, the woods and the meadows, Woods where we hid from the wet, Stiles where we stay'd to be kind, Meadows in which we met! Light, so low in the vale You flash and lighten afar, For this is the golden morning of love, And you are his morning star. Flash, I am coming, I come, By meadow and stile and wood, Oh, lighten into my eyes and heart, Into my heart and my blood! Heart, are you great enough For a love that never tires? O' heart, are you great enough for love? I have heard of thorns and briers, Over the meadow and stiles, Over the world to the end of it Flash for a million miles. Deena Linett "Jury Duty" i. Your number’s up. Cliff edge is a window-ledge, twelfth floor New Courts Building, Essex County. Below, the snow’s been four feet deep for weeks. Cops patrol and we’re locked in as if by serving time we would develop empathy. Clouds sweet as cream drift across the skies where they are free. Twelve-eighteen’s my new I.D., hotel room, flight number, war lottery. ii. After the change of government begin with the maps, newly revised. Ignore the stars. They will not be there when you need them. You’re in altered relation to the spray of light on dark. Now you see the galaxy edge-on, spinning all the way toward the beginning. Your compass says south is a range of mountains with a glacier whose flow’s shape is music you know but can’t sing; you are west of fields of purple flowers and east of a salt sea. Where are you? Why have they left you here? What is your task? What will you devote yourself to? © Deena Linett William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) "When You Are Old" When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. |
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