The prompts from Joseph Fasano are great! At some point I'm going to use them for myself, not just my kids!
I wrote a poem for each of my children, writing about a specific moment with them. I can't tell how I feel about either of these poems at this point. I need a little space from them to come back and evaluate later!
"Dystychiphobia at the Bouncey House"
You asked why I had to go to work,
so I told you about helping worried
people. You recognized in my small speech
fear--two days past, your two hands clutched
a ladder’s top step ten feet in the sky.
You remembered terror, that even if a celebratory
slide is all that's left, the world might collapse
beneath you. Your tall cousin, not tall enough,
ran to retrieve me, and I retrieved you, your wet
eyes panicked but your body inert. Taut.
“They might be scared of being splatted
by volcanoes,” you commiserated
this morning. You know about how the earth
could betray someone, even when they'd done
nothing wrong but to love and seek it out,
glad heartedly.
"The Bird Feeder"
Your dad gone into the deli, we waited
in the car. He'd bring hot rolls with butter
to tide us over on the short drive home
while I held dinner on my thighs. But for now,
the car was still half parked on the low sidewalk,
I always need to let the ink dry on my poems before I know how I feel about them. Thank you for sharing these in a fresher state!
In the first poem, I loved your imagery with "your wet/eyes panicked but your body inert. Taut.' but you really knocked me off my feet with the last lines. "You know about how the earth
could betray someone, even when they'd done nothing wrong but to love and seek it out, glad heartedly." Jess! My heart! Excited to see that one evolve.
The birdfeeder moment was begging to be a poem, what a tender-hearted kid! The tension between that and your description of those New Englander birds - "Northeastern birds are small, taupe-/feathered things, difficult to distinguish/from each other. Reticent and thankless,/as is their right. " -is sitting with me still hours after first reading. Also, your choice to say she "craned" her neck in a poem about birds. Brilliant!
The prompts from Joseph Fasano are great! At some point I'm going to use them for myself, not just my kids!
I wrote a poem for each of my children, writing about a specific moment with them. I can't tell how I feel about either of these poems at this point. I need a little space from them to come back and evaluate later!
"Dystychiphobia at the Bouncey House"
You asked why I had to go to work,
so I told you about helping worried
people. You recognized in my small speech
fear--two days past, your two hands clutched
a ladder’s top step ten feet in the sky.
You remembered terror, that even if a celebratory
slide is all that's left, the world might collapse
beneath you. Your tall cousin, not tall enough,
ran to retrieve me, and I retrieved you, your wet
eyes panicked but your body inert. Taut.
“They might be scared of being splatted
by volcanoes,” you commiserated
this morning. You know about how the earth
could betray someone, even when they'd done
nothing wrong but to love and seek it out,
glad heartedly.
"The Bird Feeder"
Your dad gone into the deli, we waited
in the car. He'd bring hot rolls with butter
to tide us over on the short drive home
while I held dinner on my thighs. But for now,
the car was still half parked on the low sidewalk,
tilting towards the road, so you must have craned
your neck to ask, “What's that?” of the clear
plastic mounted to a stranger’s second story
window. “A bird feeder,” I told you. Illuminated,
tears fell down your small cheeks, so moved
you were at witnessing the care and feeding
of birds. Northeastern birds are small, taupe-
feathered things, difficult to distinguish
from each other. Reticent and thankless,
as is their right. You caught a stranger
buying seed for birds they mostly wouldn't see.
A testament to goodness in the white colonial
next to the deli and in the backseat of a Kia.
I always need to let the ink dry on my poems before I know how I feel about them. Thank you for sharing these in a fresher state!
In the first poem, I loved your imagery with "your wet/eyes panicked but your body inert. Taut.' but you really knocked me off my feet with the last lines. "You know about how the earth
could betray someone, even when they'd done nothing wrong but to love and seek it out, glad heartedly." Jess! My heart! Excited to see that one evolve.
The birdfeeder moment was begging to be a poem, what a tender-hearted kid! The tension between that and your description of those New Englander birds - "Northeastern birds are small, taupe-/feathered things, difficult to distinguish/from each other. Reticent and thankless,/as is their right. " -is sitting with me still hours after first reading. Also, your choice to say she "craned" her neck in a poem about birds. Brilliant!