American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice book cover

American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice. New Village Press, 2011. Contributor.

SO MUCH LIKE A BEACH AFTER ALL

Turn the alley sideways, running north to south. Remove the houses on the south side of the alley. Remove the years of cobblestones, tar, small stones. See for quite a distance, knowing the water Is just out of sight.  Take a chair to the alley Which is no longer an alley but a strip Of ancient beach which your beautiful imagination Has made.  Sit in your chair and listen For the waves.

IT IS FAIR TO BE CROSSING

Fair to choose the other side And cross towards it.

Fair to cross over.

Fair to spend one hour Of one’s life considering The meaning.

Fair to be humble Yet take the chance.

Now you’re on it And you wonder:

What holds it in place What if the wind Picks up Will the beloved Be waiting Will anyone else Thing it fair That you have crossed Will what you imagined From steel and air Be True When you arrive And go no further?

BETWEEN NOW AND THEN

Art and nature… that’s what lights it up — Jean Valentine

The cottonwood tree was what mattered first to me. Cottonwoods meant water close by, I could follow The trees which led to the creek which led to the river. And I did.

The prairie was what mattered first to me.  How the wind Moved the fields, how the wheat and prairie grasses Lay down to let the wind pass by, rose up to hid The wild turkeys, the frantic, focused field mice, And me, not frantic, not focused, just a girl in the middle Of the country.

The sun was what mattered first to me.  We would drive North to find my Swedish relatives, stop near open fields, Throw down a blanket, eat our lunch and watch red-winged Blackbirds race and spin in the ditches, the sun burning Away the smell of my dad’s cigarette smoke, my mom’s Low voice.

Summer was what mattered first to me.  Freed from proving My goodness each school day I would walk in the bed Of the creek as farmland gave way to wilderness. On lucky Days the cotton would be floating and flying, turning The ground white, or landing on the water, and the water Would rush the cotton away.  Better than snow, in that heat The cotton would cover the world as I knew it, and no voice Could reach me in that little valley.

Between then and now matters to me.  This northern star State where I have abided, my ancestors arriving in New York Harbor, making their way to Moorhead, Living by the Red River, farming, running newspapers, Building little cabins and tiny saunas,

Stealing away from their endless labor to linger In summer sun for just a few days.  And we would Drive towards them, through hours and hours of Silver gold fields, and it mattered to me.

But the first thing that mattered to me was the cottonwood Tree, anchor and glory, shade and beauty, sign Of water nearby, tree I could follow, then and now.

NOT GETTING TIRED OF THE EARTH

He can go to the moon. And Mars, too. Take his patronizing face, vicious voice, His appalling definitions of loyalty, He can go.

The rest of us, we need to not get tired Of the earth. Need to care for parrots, Even if we don’t, revere sand, and buffalo, Butterfly weed and dunes. We need to not Get tired of the shattering beauty we live with, Need to not get tired of wacky little city Gardens, need to not be bored with Starlings circling, the holy crows Calling, the prairie grass replanted, Blade by blade. No Sleep! No Sleep!

Or, at the very least, no sleeping All at the same time. The ones who Want to leave for Mars seem never To sleep, yet seem unable to hear wrens Arrive in spring, the last lion roaring Out his furious, golden protest.

I won’t get tired of the earth. Will Love the moon from here, will Rejoice when those who do not Love the earth can only imagine it from their new permanent homes in the sky.

(First published in Orion magazine, then a letter press broadside from Laurel Poetry Collective, artist, Georgia Greeley.)

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