I’m really not a creative writer. Assignments and deadlines are what make me tick, which is why I typically cover newsy things. But for one semester in college, I gave it a try. Michael McFee, a great poet in his own right, teaches poetry writing at Carolina, so I decided to take it. It was challenging, but enjoyable. I pretty much discovered that I don’t have the patience…or maybe even the artistic mind…to write poetry all that often. But for 16 weeks, I did, and I came up with some stuff that I like even now.
So these two poems seem appropriate to share today. The first was inspired by Thanksgiving travel during my college era, and the second by the woman who took me in for Thanksgiving all four of those years…and then some. Her 89th birthday would have been on Tuesday, and this is my first Thanksgiving without her.
(Oh, and a note: The first poem is a form known as a pantoum, in which the repetition is part of the design.)
Stand-By
I know my turn is yet to come –
Waiting for the almighty loudspeaker
As I’m held here in limbo
Gagging on this stale coffee smell.
Waiting for the almighty loudspeaker,
We all squirm in these fake leather chairs;
Gagging on this stale coffee smell,
Sneaking sideways glances at each other.
We all squirm in these fake leather chairs
As a couple argue over their son’s head,
Sneaking sideways glances at each other,
Still bickering over what “family vacation” means.
As a couple argue over their son’s head,
An older woman thumbs a magazine –
Still bickering over what “family vacation” means!
Overachievers concentrate on their calculators
And an older woman thumbs a magazine.
In front of a Thanksgiving reunion,
Overachievers concentrate on their calculators
As weary travelers are welcomed home.
In front of a Thanksgiving reunion,
I yearn to hear my own name called
As weary travelers are welcomed home
With hugs and tears freely flowing.
I yearn to hear my own name called
As I’m held here in limbo –
With hugs and tears freely flowing,
I know my turn is yet to come.
***
Grandmother, 1941
Your crackling knees and papery skin belie
this youthful figure carelessly jitterbugging
the afternoon away as attack planes sit idling
across an ocean. Your hips, slim before they bore
five children, shimmy and shake as I flip
through these black pages. Your bright eyes
adore the photographer, your future husband,
who had to go perform his patriotic duty before
you could actually marry. Your curly brown hair
and toothy smile reflect me like a mirror,
our faces echoing across the decades as we sit
laughing together, reliving the life that led to me.
