Clouds / You Seem to be You, by Zee Zahava

I read these two poems on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.

Clouds

you say
it's a cumulus zoo up there

look!
you point
and the car swerves a bit

steady
(I whisper to myself)

do you see that?
you urge
eager to share your discovery

so I swivel my head
follow your pointing finger
all the way to . . .

what is it?
I ask

(I see a cloud
one of many
I am not yet pulled in)

don't you see it?

you want me to find it on my own

you are my guide
but still you want
to leave room for my imagination

alas, my imagination falters

I see amorphous fluffs of white moving along
I'm not good at this game
I give up so quickly

it's a pig's head
you exclaim
a pig's head
on an elephant's body
and the elephant's tail
looks exactly like an alligator

and there's a bear
you continue
up on its hind legs
getting ready to swallow the
alligator/elephant/pig

don't you see it?
— you’re excited now —

oh, oh here comes a lion!
surely you see the lion!

right
I say
sure, the lion
I see that

we both pretend I'm telling the truth
that I can see with your eyes

I do see the lake
I assure you
resting the back of my right hand
on the passenger-side window

that's good
you say
the lake
yes
that is the lake



You Seem to be You

you seem to be you and I seem to be me —
but who knows?
is it possible we are apple seeds in the same sweet apple?
or hats perched atop mannequins in a shop window
in oooh-lala-Paris?
and if we are hats
then I want to have a wide brim with a floppy purple flower
(a peony?) 
hanging down the right side
and you can be whatever kind of hat you want to be
I am not feeling especially bossy today

but I will say this
if it turns out you are not you
and I am not me
and we are neither apple seeds
nor bird feathers
nor pine trees . . .
if you are not you and I am not me
and we are two different people
who don't yet know each other

then my biggest wish
is for us to meet one day
and recognize some unmistakable spark
to be drawn together by a bright light
or a pleasant smell
or a strong vibration
or a single musical note
it could be anything
as long as we connect again
(or would it be considered the first time?)

because
what other reason would there be
to get up in the morning



Note: I offer profound thanks to Terrence Keenan for his poem "A Sweetness Appears and Prevails." His opening lines ("The reason we bother/ to get up in the morning") and the phrase toward the end ("You seem to be you/ and I seem to be me") led me into my poem

The Elephant Vanishes / The Declutter Meditation, by Stacey Murphy

Stacey Murphy read these two poems on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


The Elephant Vanishes

I meditate on the removal of obstacles
and the Universe appears —
a great golden elephant
in a green, wooded glade
carefully picking logs off the path before me
moving them aside gently:
hesitation, gangly and thorny;
lack, hollow and brittle;
distraction, thick and heavy.
With one look over her shoulder and a playful flip
of her tail the elephant
winks and she vanishes.
It is up to me to move forward.



The Declutter Meditation
 
On the inhale, I breathe in an open shoe rack
On the exhale, I remove an unhelpful thought

On the inhale, I make space on a shelf
On the exhale, I place an old habit in the trash bag

On the inhale, I smell gentle lemony cleaners
On the exhale, the old tattered blanket goes to the animal shelter

On the inhale is space and potential
On the exhale comes limitless creation

the contortionist and the poet / go to unexpected places, by Ian M. Shapiro

Ian M. Shapiro read these two poems on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.

the contortionist and the poet

a contortionist
and a poet met
in the early evening
on an overnight train
from dallas to el paso

they shared a
non-sleeping cabin
initially not speaking
the contortionist reading and
the poet looking out the window

but time passed and
one thing led to another and
they introduced themselves
and seemed intrigued
by each other's work

what must it be like
to go out before crowds
and twist your body
into so many shapes?
asked the poet

the contortionist said
well, i keep looking for
new shapes and sometimes
i get weary of
the old ones

but what i found, in time,
is that it's not the
extreme contortions
that interest people
it's the subtle ones

it's the small deviations
from what typically is
and not only does it
interest people more
it's of more interest to me

i seek less to impress people
than to connect with them
less to show the impossible
than to show what might
well be possible

and then the contortionist
straightened up and asked
what is it like to write?
what excites you as a poet?
what makes it worthwhile?

the poet looked out the window
and said maybe it's similar
i less frequently seek to
try and twist new sentences
and new combinations of words

and i rather seek to describe
the world as it is and
also to describe the
world as it could be
in small excursions from what is

and then the two women
became reflective and
thought of their exchange
and as time went by
they both took out food

and they shared sandwiches
hot drinks and sweets
as the train traveled
on into the night from
dallas to el paso




go to unexpected places

go to unexpected places
go to the most unexpected places
go up to dark attics
and then go to the outer edges
of the dark attics, above the eaves
and open old boxes you left there

go to unexpected places
go up mountains to caves
go inside the caves
and then come back and sit
at the entrances of the caves
and look out, and look in

go to unexpected places
look for unexpected places
go to empty houses
and see what was left there
and even better, even more
see what was felt there

go to unexpected places
go to flat rooftops, especially
if their access doors are locked
find a way round to get up there
and then stand up on the parapet
go up there and look right out

go to unexpected places
go to a balcony high above the city
and pitch a tent late at night
and sleep there and wake there
and see the city from there
and let the city see you

go to unexpected places
look for and find unexpected places
go to the most unexpected places
and look out, and look in
find the most unexpected places
and let unexpected places find you

As The Crow Flies / Dance Your Heart Out, by Heather Boob

Heather Boob read these two poems on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


As The Crow Flies

If I could draw a map of my heart
it would need to be topographical
so that you could lay your hands on it —
like braille —
to feel my existence,
to empathize with the contours of my  experience,
and the inclines and rolling valleys
(upon which I have ridden)
representing my relief.

One day when I’m wise and the lines on my face
reflect the journey of my heart,
I hope that the crow who has made his footprints
at the corners of my eyes,
will come to rest on my shoulder —
as he will learn, that even
the shortest distance to fly
would not be fast enough
to get from here to there —
from every joyful smile to the next.



Dance Your Heart Out

The room was so hot that
the walls were sweating.
The floor was sweating.
A direct effect of the energy exuded
by a band called The Nightsweats.
When you really start to let go
your knees will sway.
Your pelvis will shake.
Your inner Elvis will show himself.
I dance alone
in an empty room
to let go.
I dance, surrounded by
strangers.
Sweating.
We harvest heated energy.
How efficient.

My Mother's Lipstick, by Sue Crowley

Sue Crowley read this poem on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.

 
My mother's lipstick, a deep shade of red, sat on her dressing table the morning after she died, the first thing I saw when I walked into her room.

My mind was already on what to take from her closet, what to bury her in, but that little pink tube arrested those thoughts, as did the odor, distinctly her own, that clung to her empty clothes.

I picked up the lipstick, looked in the mirror she had looked in every morning for decades, and colored my lips bright red.

Carefully, so carefully, gliding the cream across that delicate skin, thinking all the while: This is the last kiss.

Then I went to the closet and buried my face in an old sweater thinking: This is the last hug.

Numbered, by Susanna Drbal

Susanna Drbal read this story on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


Your days are numbered. Patty heard the man on the TV say that to another man. Both of them wore cowboy hats and neither of them had shaved for a few days. Patty rubbed her cheek, thinking of the kisses she got from her father every night when he tucked her into bed.

Patty knew days were numbered—she’d seen them on the calendar that hung in the kitchen next to the telephone. The calendar had pictures of cats wearing different, funny outfits. Right now the cat wore a cowboy hat and leather chaps. There was a number circled on the calendar, in red ink. Patty had watched her mother count on her fingers, with her lips moving, and then circle it. Patty didn’t know why.

Patty knew her numbers, or some of them anyway, and since Monica had taught them to her, Patty saw numbers everywhere. They were on tags inside her shirts and underpants, on the buttons on the telephone, around the dial on the TV, on the clock that ticked and chimed. Patty saw numbers outside too, on street signs, on a wooden board nailed to the front of the house, and on the back of the station wagon. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, Patty said to herself, over and over. Sometimes she counted on her fingers, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. She counted her fingers, but she didn’t count her thumbs. It didn’t seem right.

So Patty knew about numbers, she knew about calendars, and tonight she was allowed to watch channel 5, so when she heard the grizzly man say, ‘Your days are numbered,’ Patty knew exactly what he meant. But she didn’t know why he had to seem so angry about it.

When the commercial came on, the one where there was a little man on a little boat in a toilet bowl, the clock started chiming. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 and then another one. Patty didn’t raise her head up from her teddy bears and their tea party on the living room floor—she didn’t want her father to notice that it was bedtime. Patty wanted to see what happened after 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-and then one more.

But her father folded up his newspaper and her mother called from the other room that it was time for bed. Time for forty winks, she said, and Patty knew that was a number and that it was a big one, but she didn’t know how to get to forty and she couldn’t wink once, let alone 2-3-4-5-6-7 times plus one more.

Patty scooped up her teddy bears and her father scooped her up and said, one-two-button my shoe, and Patty wondered about shoes with buttons and then she wondered about shoes with zippers. She liked riding in her father’s arms and then he plopped her down on her bed and he helped her into her nightgown. The nightgown was blue and had darker blue flowers and squiggly lines all over it. Patty wasn’t sure if the squiggly lines were 6’s or something else entirely. Sometimes they looked like whales leaping out of the water.

Patty brushed her teeth and watched her father’s face in the mirror. He stood behind her, in the doorway, looking down the hallway at the TV. Patty could hear a pinging sound from the TV and horses neighing and people yelling. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, but her father watched and rubbed his chin where it was whiskery and grey.

Patty lay down in bed and her father pulled the covers up under her chin. She held her favorite teddy in her right arm and chewed on his left ear. The fur was starting to get thin and matted. Patty’s father sat next to her on the bed and read to her. His legs reached all the way to the bottom of the bed and his toes pointed right at the ceiling.

Patty didn’t listen to the story, not really. She knew it by heart. There was a barnyard with pigs and cows and sheep, and they were fed oats and slop and hay, and the farmer cleaned their pens and planted seeds and the animals ate a lot and ran around and played, and they tried to find a hole in the fence. They found a hole, but by then they decided they’d rather stay in the barnyard.

At the end of the story, the pigs and the cows and the sheep are lying in bed, with straw pulled up to their chins, and the stars twinkle overhead. One sheep looks at the stars and can’t sleep, and she starts to count, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, and before you know it, she is asleep.

How We Learn, by Yvonne Fisher

Yvonne Fisher read this poem on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.

Haphazardly, we learn
By tripping over our own feet
By trial and error, mistake after mistake
By listening to a mentor, a teacher
By listening to people
By listening
By looking around
We learn by finally realizing
By having an awakening, an epiphany
An aha moment
Or else gradually
We learn gradually
Too late
After trying everything else first
By crawling on our hands and knees
Bloody and broken, searching
By questioning everything, everything
By climbing toward the stars
Looking up, looking up
Sometimes we learn by giving in
By surrendering
Or by accident
Or sometimes we don’t even know
That we’re learning
But we do
We still do
We learn

Saying Goodbye to that Old Desk, by Jim Mazza

Jim Mazza read this piece on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


We sent my childhood desk to the dump this week.

It was not an especially nice piece of furniture — just a small, wooden, two-drawer, rectangular desk — drawers on the right and a place for your legs and feet on the left.

It was purchased when I was ten and my father said I could paint it any color I wanted, so I chose sunshine yellow — which for unexplainable reasons — seemed better than my favorite color, fire-engine red.

I was proud of my bright-yellow desk.

Later, in my teen years, the yellow was covered with a mahogany stain, which looked a bit more mature, I suppose.

My childhood desk held what all desks hold: scissors, a stapler, pens and pencils, and pads of paper — lined and unlined.

This is the desk where I spent endless hours drawing floor plans for houses that I imagined living in someday.  This is the desk that held my first electric typewriter — a powder blue and white portable, manufactured by Brother.

It was the place I sat to write my first love letter and it was the desk where I kept the first love letter written to me.

That was many years ago.  More recently, the desk had been relegated to our basement — being sort of ugly and a bit too small for practical use by an adult.

It sat there, in a dark corner surrounded and covered by many other discarded bits and pieces of the past thirty years.  So, when it came to our recent basement clean-out, the desk wasn’t the only item on the “to-be-tossed list.”

There was the 1950s-era cookie jar, covered with raised ceramic flowers — also yellow — but a dingy yellow pretending to be gold or mustard or, perhaps, butterscotch… a wedding gift to my parents, later handed down to me for my first apartment.

There were bottles of beer left over from an open house 15 years ago.

There were two decades of Utne Readers — the first ever printed — that Nancy had been saving.  (We decided to keep the first two years and selected covers of others.)

There were old lamps with broken shades; glass vases covered in heavy, opaque dust; decaying plastic planter boxes and more.

None of these objects added to the junk heap brought back fond memories — or really any memories at all.

But under this mountain of non-treasures, these throw-aways, stood my tiny desk — forlorn but resolute. In fact, I was sure the desk was looking out at me from beneath the piles and saying, “After all we’ve been through, how could you?”

I closed my eyes and opened them again as the desk was lifted onto the truck, destined for the dump.  As it reached the tailgate, I caught my breath.

For underneath the mahogany stain, in places that had chipped away, I could not only see the 50-year-old bright-yellow paint but the memories of my childhood, too.

See This Photo, by Summer Killian

Summer Killian read this piece on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.

See this photo of me in the kitchen with Teo. It is our first night home from the hospital, the third night of his life. I don’t know what I am warming up in the microwave, can’t remember what I ended up eating. In my face, see the softness, but the new edge, too. This is the face of somebody’s mama. See the pride: I grew him. I pushed him out. See the way he belongs. See the way the wrap I’m using to carry him is tied all wrong, though I practiced and practiced with a stuffed bunny while still pregnant. See how I don’t know it. See how I look like I know what I’m doing. See the way you just can’t know what’s to come. See me standing in the kitchen on Albany Street, believing I can fathom what it means to really love somebody.

The Hypnotist, by Marty Waters

Marty Blue Waters read this piece on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.

 
I was sitting at my desk in my 5th grade classroom, minding my own business, staring at the world outside my window, when an announcement came over the loudspeaker from the principal. “Everyone please convene in the auditorium now for a surprise event.”

We all walked silently to our assigned seats.

Our principal introduced a man who was going to present a special show for us and he said “we should all pay careful attention because things might not be quite what we think they are!” A big man strode up onto the stage. He was dressed like a magician, with a phony mustache, a cape, and a lopsided top hat.

He called out for four volunteers. My hand was the first one up. We marched up to the stage and sat on the chair we were motioned toward. I was on the far end so I could study what happend to the first three victims with an eagle eye. Mustache Man stared at each volunteer for quite a while, mumbling words I couldn’t hear. In turn, each slumped forward in their chair and seemed to be in a trance. When Mustache Man snapped his fingers, each jumped up and went back to the audience.

I was pondering what the trick was supposed to be when Mustache Man zoomed in on me. I didn’t like his eyes and one side of his fake mustache was starting to fall off. I kind of snorted a laugh and stared right back at him, narrowing my gaze. Then I realized I was supposed to be a part of some joke, so I pretended to fall into a coma, like the others had, and dramatically draped myself across my seat. Mustache Man snapped his fingers sharply and curtly motioned for me to return to the audience.

He went on to a new act making things disappear, or something like that. I was bored to tears.

Then Mustache Man started telling a story about a cat and a dog who met a donkey and a rooster on the road to Wichita. Whenever he said the word cat, Vonda jumped up and purred “meow, meow, meow.” Whenever he said the word dog, Tommy stood up and shouted “arf arf arf arf arf.” And whenever he said the word donkey, Dennis rose up and bellowed “hee-haw, hee-haw.” They were all visibly confused and embarrassed by their sudden impulses, but each time they heard Mustache Man mention their animal in the telling of his story, they shouted out again.

It was rather obvious whenever he said the word rooster nothing happened. Even so, the story was a huge hit and all the animals got wild applause and cheers.

Oh Good Grief! I was supposed to have been the rooster, if I had been able to understand what Mustache Man tried to plant inside my head. Oh well.

At the end, as Mustache Man was about to take his bows, I fiercely felt it was my moral duty to make sure the rooster didn’t get completely left out of the show. I jumped up and crowed at the top of my lungs, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

There was a stunned silence in the auditorium and I realized, once again, I had made my very important point at exactly the wrong moment. Something I had a tendency to do, unfortunately.

I slunk back down into my chair, hoping nobody would ever mention this day to me ever again. Fat chance of that.

Maybe I Should / Second Sight, by Peaches Gillette

Peaches Gillette read these two poems on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


Maybe I Should

Maybe I should move away to some remote place
where the trees stand ceremoniously tall
and the sun is forever setting.
 
There
I will embrace the quiet of my inner world —
speak no words — have no voice —
I will just listen,
Tenderly listen
to the whispers of all those who have suffered —
Those who still want to tell and retell their stories through the movement of the wind,
through the falling of the rain,
through the understanding
that we whose souls ache through time
will be forever one.

Maybe I should take all the metal I've collected over all these years
and get back to building the rocket ship I dreamed of building long ago.

I would take off,
fade into the pitch-blue of the night sky
throw kisses to my old friend the moon
and sketch along the contour of the universe
fueled by an urge to find home.

Maybe I should count backwards each time I have a birthday
and get younger and younger
with each breath I take.
This undoing of my aging self
will not be about any regret of growing older -
it will be about meeting my child-self again -
revisit the time I left behind
and linger, playfully,
in the details of days gone by.

Maybe I should go back into the dream I had last night and try to find my mother;
she sounded sad.
She wanted me to come and be with her,
but her voice trailed off into silence
before she could tell me where she was.



Second Sight

Sometimes I see more clearly with my second sight.

It is the sight that originates in the soul,
finds its way into the heart,
and spiritually crystallizes what I see in the world, and in others.

My eyes explore the composition and the delicateness of their perfect form.
My darling granddaughters -
their bodies young and free in this old world.

I gaze at their sweet lips forming words in whispered tones.
I listen to the secrets that only exist in the world of girls.
They dance for me -
another secret.

Their young bodies are hopeful and strong
like the beginning of a new day.

They watch me
making sure I don't look away.

You see Grandma Peach? We know how to do a split.

Their observant and socially curious eyes take- in and repeat all the latest dance moves.
They are exquisite visions of life in one of its greatest states -
moving,
energized,
growing-
pulsating spectacles of loveliness.

They are visions of grace
becoming a part of who I need to be.

I watch,
I cannot take my eyes off them.

I feel tears
rising from the deepest place of my love for them -
rising like a swelling body of water,
baptizing them
and carrying them to Holy lands within my very being.

They ask, Why are you crying Grandma Peach?

I say because you are so beautiful,
like the beauty of the sun
and sometimes so much beauty makes me cry.

They look deep into my eyes.
We share one of those special moments
in which we see one another
as clearly as one see the heavens.

Their dancing goes on.
I continue to watch
with both my first
and my second sight

Short Poems in Response to Phrases from the Work of Mary Oliver, by Rob Sullivan

Rob Sullivan read this piece on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


once the eyes are opened
the world never appears
without its juice and spark
the everyday becomes singular
==

set in stone?
all will crumble to dust
all will change form
over and over
maybe we know what we know,
all the rest
hearsay, conjecture, guess
eternity is one
of endless possibilities
who am i to say?
who am i?
who?
==

don't we all love
a good mystery?
myriad opinions
live together nicely
coexistence is plausible.
oh, dogma
you'll find that under philosophy.
no, i don't think
it's filed under non-fiction.
==

if one sees litter
strewn about the thoroughfare
it would behoove one
to pick it up
leaving the path
a bit more tidy.
if one experiences
wails of distress
from a dying mother (earth)
one should be prepared
to work for her salvation
and leave this planet
a bit more
alive and well
==

sacred vow
lifelong commitment
sacrament, most holy
yet divorce comes
nearly every time
for all,
save poets
willing to give all
in return for the great
big, beautiful world

Hands of a Gardener, Susan Lesser

Susan Lesser read this piece on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


I hold my hands in front of me and sigh. I have the hands of a gardener. The reason I do is because is I have an alarmingly large garden, a series of gardens really. There is the peony row, the perennial garden, the vegetable garden, the herb garden, the raspberry patch, and  the red and white garden down at the end of the lawn which isn’t really only red and white. Closer to the house you will find a couple of sincere hydrangeas and irises under the dining room window, azaleas and Lenten roses stand in front of the kitchen windows. Behind the garden shed is a secret garden that is so secret nothing is planted there, but we need to pull the weeds between the paving stones anyway. I could go on.

As soon as the ground thaws in the early spring, I am down on my hands and knees, digging in the muck, moving the Hidcote Lavender to the back of the herb garden and the common thyme to the front, pushing the shrunken pea pellets into the ground that is still splashed with lingering spots of snow, and removing last year’s canes from the raspberry patch.

I start out with gloves, gardeners’ gloves with thick bits where the designers think I might need some protection. I put the gloves on, honest I do, but very soon something happens and the gloves come off. I will find them later, soaked with rain, under a rhubarb plant. I want to pull out the early weeds, the dandelions and the invasive Michaelmas daisies with my bare hands. I want to wiggle my fingers into the mud to find the roots, to follow them and tug them out. My tiny lettuce seeds, like pepper from a shaker, need a warm hand to pull the earth over them and tuck them in. No gloves. Throughout the gardening season, it is easy to see my hands are the hands of a gardener, testimony to my hours in company with living growing things.

My fingernails are ragged and require repeated vigorous scrubbing, and much clipping. There are scratches where I tangled with a climbing rose in an attempt to prune it back. Roses are at once one of the loveliest and most vicious of garden denizens. There is a pinkish rash on my right palm from a misguided attempt to pull a rogue stinging nettle that was camping next to a Plantain Lily. Some days my knuckles are swollen from gripping the orange-handled trowel so tightly for so long. And totally yucky are the occasional gluey remains of a squashed slug, accidentally sacrificed as I weeded out the lettuce row. Slug residue does not wash off as easily as I might think; it will require scrubbing with the sturdy brush I keep under the sink. I am no fan of the garden slug, neither its name nor habit. However, when in my probing of the welcoming earth, I come upon a common garden earthworm, I am careful to treat him gently and move him to a soft spot of turned soil, out of reach of my trowel.

There is a story in my hands, not the sort a palm reader might tell, but a story just the same. It is a story of seasons and growing things and touching the earth we live on, live in.

==

NOTE: This piece appeared, in a slightly different version, in the journal GreenPrints, No. 117, Spring 2019

Watch Pocket, by Tina Wright

Tina Wright read this memory-piece on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


Some blue jeans have a little pocket on the top of the right front pocket and when I told someone in the family, younger generation, that it was a watch pocket for a pocket watch they said, I wondered what those were for (…good for loose change too.) I got thinking about pocket watches when a kid at work the other night talking about batteries in his wristwatch laughed when I told him I used to have wind-up watches and he gave me that you are a dinosaur look.

My first pocket watch said Little Ben on its face beneath a cracked plastic cover (smashed when picking stones). The Big Ben version was the alarm clock in my parent’s bedroom—with the big butterfly wind-up key—and when my sister and I heard it ringing in the morning from our bedroom down the hall, we pretended we were sleeping and waited for dad to pound on our door and say wake up, time to milk the cows.

I loved my Little Ben in its watch pocket, the brass back reflected the sun and felt cool and sweet in my hand. I set its time by the daily fire whistle five minutes to one that blew in the village of Moravia. Sometimes when we heard the siren in our hayfields miles away, we knew we were late for lunch.

One day we heard the daily whistle around the usual time and it kept blowing for many minutes letting the volunteer firefighters know that a fire had rudely started at a very inconvenient time, just when the daily whistle sounded. So it blew and blew to say hey Moravia this is a real fire!

The Formula for a Forever Life, by Barbara Anger

Barbara Anger read this poem on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.


First thing in the morning
Awake to gratitude.

Squint if it’s a gray day.
You may feel the sun
   Inside
   You.

Feel the vibrations of
   A prayer
   On your lips.

Feel the air on your naked body,
Put on something comfortable to wear.
Don’t mind
    The old stains
    Down the front of your shirt.
    The frayed cuffs of your pants
    Or the tear along the seam.
Please just let your elbow scrape through that hole.

Put on your old shoes
    That hold the shape of your arch
    Inside the definition of each toe.

Go out into the air
    With a twirl
    Find a spot
To stick your fingers
    In the rich darkness
    Of the soil.
Let the grains of dirt and sand
    Run
    Through your fingers.
Feel its moisture.

Then remember
You collected milkweed seeds.
Find them on the top shelf
    Of your cupboard.
For a moment
    Feel the silky
    White feathers
Still attached to the seeds

Grab a trowel
Dig deep and wide
Enough for each seed
To sprout
Upward and out
Reaching the sun
Till at the waning of summer
It calls to the monarchs,
“Here I am.
Come find me.
I will help you live forever.”