How to Love the World Read online

  shakes out its tent of light. Even dandelions glitter

  in the lawn, a handful of golden change.

  Amanda Gorman

  At the Age of 18—Ode to Girls of Color

  At the age of 5

  I saw how we always pick the flower swelling with the most color.

  The color distinguishes it from the rest, and tells us:

  This flower should not be left behind.

  But this does not happen in the case of colored girls.

  Our color makes hands pull back, and we, left to grow alone,

  stretching our petals to a dry sun.

  At the age of 12

  I blinked in the majesty of the color within myself,

  blinded by the knowledge that a skinny black girl, a young brown teen,

  has the power to light Los Angeles all night,

  the radiance to heal all the scars left on this city’s pavement.

  Why had this realization taken so long,

  when color pulses in all that is beauty and painting and human?

  You see, long ago, they told me

  that snakes and spiders have spots and vibrant bodies if they are poisonous.

  In other words, being of color meant danger, warning, ‘do not touch’.

  At the age of 18

  I know my color is not warning, but a welcome.

  A girl of color is a lighthouse, an ultraviolet ray of power, potential, and promise

  My color does not mean caution, it means courage

  my dark does not mean danger, it means daring,

  my brown does not mean broken, it means bold backbone from working

  twice as hard to get half as far.

  Being a girl of color means I am key, path, and wonder all in one body.

  At the age of 18

  I am experiencing how black and brown can glow.

  And glow I will, glow we will, vibrantly, colorfully;

  not as a warning, but as promise,

  that we will set the sky alight with our magic.

  Dorianne Laux

  In Any Event

  If we are fractured

  we are fractured

  like stars

  bred to shine

  in every direction,

  through any dimension,

  billions of years

  since and hence.

  I shall not lament

  the human, not yet.

  There is something

  more to come, our hearts

  a gold mine

  not yet plumbed,

  an uncharted sea.

  Nothing is gone forever.

  If we came from dust

  and will return to dust

  then we can find our way

  into anything.

  What we are capable of

  is not yet known,

  and I praise us now,

  in advance.

  Laura Grace Weldon

  Astral Chorus

  Stars resonate like a huge musical instrument.

  —Bill Chaplin, asteroseismologist

  Late for chores after dinner with friends,

  I walk up the darkening path,

  my mind knitting something warm

  out of the evening’s words.

  The woods are more shadow

  than trees, barn a hulking shape on its slope.

  I breathe in autumn’s leaf-worn air, aware

  I am glad to be in this place, this life.

  The chickens have come in

  from their wanderings. Lined up

  like a choir, they croon soft lullabies.

  A flock of stars stirs a navy-blue sky.

  I can’t hear them, but I’m told they

  sing of things we have yet to learn.

  Garret Keizer

  My Daughter’s Singing

  I will miss the sound of her singing

  through the wall that separates

  her bathroom from ours, in the morning

  before school, how she would harmonize

  with the bare-navel angst

  of some screaming Ophelia on her stereo,

  though she had always seemed a contented kid,

  a grower of rare gourds, an aficionado

  of salamanders, and a babysitter prized

  for her playful, earnest care, her love

  of children so pure she seemed to become

  a little child whenever she took one by the hand,

  entering heaven so handily.

  But it reminded me, that singing,

  of the soul depths we never know,

  even in those we love more than our souls,

  so mad we are to anticipate the future,

  and already I am talking—

  a year to go before she goes

  to college, and listen to me talking—

  in the past tense as she sings.

  David Romtvedt

  Surprise Breakfast

  One winter morning I get up early

  to clean the ash from the grate

  and find my daughter, eight, in the kitchen

  thumping around pretending she has a peg leg

  while also breaking eggs into a bowl—

  separating yolks and whites, mixing oil

  and milk. Her hands are smooth,

  not from lack of labor but youth.

  She’s making pancakes for me, a surprise

  I have accidentally ruined. “You never

  get up early,” she says, measuring

  the baking powder, beating the egg whites.

  It’s true. When I wake, I roll to the side

  and pull the covers over my head.

  “It was too cold to sleep,” I say.

  “I thought I’d get the kitchen warm.”

  Aside from the scraping of the small flat shovel

  on the iron grate, and the wooden spoon turning

  in the bowl, the room is quiet. I lift the gray ash

  and lay it carefully into a bucket to take outside.

  “How’d you lose your leg?” I ask.

  “At sea. I fell overboard in a storm

  and a shark attacked me, but I’m fine.”

  She spins, a little batter flying from the spoon.

  I can hear the popping of the oil in the pan.

  “Are you ready?” she asks, thumping to the stove.

  Fork in hand, I sit down, hoping that yes,

  I am ready, or nearly so, or one day will be.

  Ron Wallace

  The Facts of Life

  She wonders how people get babies.

  Suddenly vague and distracted,

  we talk about “making love.”

  She’s six and unsatisfied, finds

  our limp answers unpersuasive.

  Embarrassed, we stiffen, and try again,

  this time exposing the stark naked words:

  penis, vagina, sperm, womb, and egg.

  She thinks we’re pulling her leg.

  We decide that it’s time

  to get passionate and insist.

  But she’s angry, disgusted.

  Why do we always make fun of her?

  Why do we lie?

  We sigh, try cabbages, storks.

  She smiles. That’s more like it.

  We talk on into the night, trying

  magic seeds, good fairies, God . . .

  Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

  Fifteen Years Later, I See How It Went

  They say you fall in love with your child

  the moment you first hold them,

  still covered in blood and vernix.

  I held the strange being

  just arrived from the womb and felt curious,

  astonished, humble, nervous.

  But love didn’t come till later.

  Came from holding him

  while he was screaming. Waking with him

  when I wanted to sleep. Bouncing him

  when I wanted to be still. Love grew

  as my ide
as of myself diminished. Love grew

  as he came into himself. Love grew

  as I learned to let go of what I’d been told

  and to trust the emerging form,

  falling in love with the flawed beings we are.

  Until I couldn’t imagine being without him.

  Until I was the one being born.

  Kathryn Hunt

  The Newborns

  All through the night,

  all through the long witless hallways of my sleep,

  from my hospital bed I heard

  the newborn babies cry, bewildered,

  between worlds, like new arrivals anywhere,

  unacquainted with the names of things.

  That afternoon a kind nurse named Laura

  had taken me for a stroll to exercise

  the red line of my wound.

  We stopped by the nursery window

  and a flannel-swathed boy in a clear plastic cradle

  was pushed to the glass. We peered at him

  and said, “Welcome. You’ve come to Earth.”

  We laughed and shook our heads.

  All through the night, all through the

  drug-spangled rapture of my dreams,

  I heard the newborn babies sing,

  first one, then another. The fierce

  beginning of their lament, that bright hiss,

  those soft octaves of wonder.

  Christen Pagett

  Shells

  The curl of your ear,

  A tiny pearl of a shell

  That I kiss so gently

  You can barely feel it,

  Barely hear it.

  That pink flushing hot

  With sleep,

  Nape of your neck damp,

  As I tuck the blankets too tight.

  Remember when you were three

  And held one to your face?

  Was it a cockle shell, a conch shell?

  Some polished swirl of light.

  Wet sand on cheek,

  You listened.

  Like I listen,

  To make sure you are

  Still breathing.

  Watching for that

  Tiny throb of life

  Pressing at your throat.

  Laure-Anne Bosselaar

  Bus Stop

  Stubborn sleet. Traffic stuck on Sixth.

  We cram the shelter, soaked, strain

  to see the bus, except for a man next to me,

  dialing his cell-phone. He hunches,

  pulls his parka’s collar over it, talks slow and low:

  “It’s daddy, hon. You do? Me too. Ask mom

  if I can come see you now. Oh, okay,

  Sunday then. Bye. Me too baby. Me too.”

  He snaps the phone shut, cradles it to his cheek,

  holds it there. Dusk stains the sleet, minutes

  slush by. When we board the bus,

  that phone is still pressed to his cheek.

  January Gill O’Neil

  Hoodie

  A gray hoodie will not protect my son

  from rain, from the New England cold.

  I see the partial eclipse of his face

  as his head sinks into the half-dark

  and shades his eyes. Even in our

  quiet suburb with its unlocked doors,

  I fear for his safety—the darkest child

  on our street in the empire of blocks.

  Sometimes I don’t know who he is anymore

  traveling the back roads between boy and man.

  He strides a deep stride, pounds a basketball

  into wet pavement. Will he take his shot

  or is he waiting for the open-mouthed

  orange rim to take a chance on him? I sing

  his name to the night, ask for safe passage

  from this borrowed body into the next

  and wonder who could mistake him

  for anything but good.

  Terri Kirby Erickson

  Angel

  I used to see them walking, a middle-aged

  man and his grown son, both wearing brown

  trousers and white shirts like boys in a club,

  or guys who like to simplify. But anyone

  could see the son would never be a man who

  walked without a hand to hold, a voice telling

  him what to do. So the father held his son’s

  hand and whispered whatever it was the boy

  needed to know, in tones so soft and low it

  might have been the sound of wings pressing

  together again and again. Maybe it was that

  sound, since the father had the look of an angel

  about him, or what we imagine angels should

  be—a bit solemn-faced, with eyes that view

  the world through a lens of kindness—who

  sees every man’s son as beautiful and whole.

  Todd Davis

  Thankful for Now

  Walking the river back home at the end

  of May, locust in bloom, an oriole flitting

  through dusky crowns, and the early night sky

  going peach, day’s late glow the color of that fruit’s

  flesh, dribbling down over everything, christening

  my sons, the two of them walking before me

  after a day of fishing, one of them placing a hand

  on the other’s shoulder, pointing toward a planet

  that’s just appeared, or the swift movement

  of that yellow and black bird disappearing

  into the growing dark, and now the light, pink

  as a crabapple’s flower, and my legs tired

  from wading the higher water, and the rocks

  that keep turning over, nearly spilling me

  into the river, but still thankful for now

  when I have enough strength to stay

  a few yards behind them, loving this time

  of day that shows me the breadth

  of their backs, their lean, strong legs

  striding, how we all go on in this cold water,

  heading home to the sound of the last few

  trout splashing, as mayflies float

  through the shadowed riffles.

  Reflective Pause

  The Joy of Presence

  In “Thankful for Now,” we see Todd Davis pausing to appreciate an early evening scene while “walking the river back home” with his two sons. It is one thing to notice and beautifully describe the elements of nature, as Davis does—”the early night sky going peach, day’s late glow the color of that fruit’s flesh”—but it is another to cultivate the kind of presence that can make us all “thankful for now,” no matter our particular circumstances. As Eckhart Tolle has written: “You don’t have to wait for something ‘meaningful’ to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need.”

  We often strive to reach for experiences and things beyond what we have in this moment and forget the power of pausing and making space to say thank you for what’s right in front of us. Writing of his sons, Davis finds gratitude in simply noticing “the breadth of their backs, their lean, strong legs striding.”

  Invitation for Writing and Reflection

  When was the last time you felt yourself simply “thankful for now,” for the present moment that allowed you to notice and appreciate every detail of life as it was just then?

  Barbara Crooker

  Autism Poem: The Grid

  A black and yellow spider hangs motionless in its web,

  and my son, who is eleven and doesn’t talk, sits

  on a patch of grass by the perennial border, watching.

  What does he see in his world, where geometry

  is more beautiful than a human face?

  Given chalk, he draws shapes on the driveway:

  pentagons, hexagons, rectangles, squares.

  The spider’s web is a grid,

  transec
ting the garden in equal parts.

  Sometimes he stares through the mesh on a screen.

  He loves things that are perforated:

  toilet paper, graham crackers, coupons

  in magazines, loves the order of the tiny holes,

  the way the boundaries are defined. And real life

  is messy and vague. He shrinks back to a stare,

  switches off his hearing. And my heart,

  not cleanly cut like a valentine, but irregular

  and many-chambered, expands and contracts,

  contracts and expands.

  Diana Whitney

  Kindergarten Studies the Human Heart

  Nothing like a valentine,

  pink construction paper

  glue-sticked to doilies downstairs

  in preschool, the sand table

  filled with flour, the Fours

  driving trucks through silky powder,

  white clouds rising

  to dust their round cheeks.

  Up here, the Fives are all business:

  four chambers on the chalkboard,

  four rooms colored hard

  in thick-tipped marker, red and red,

  blue and blue, oxygen rich

  and oxygen poor, the branching vine

  of the aorta hanging

  its muscled fruit, carmine

  blood-flower blooming

  in a thick jungle.

  My girl squeezes her fist

  to show me the size of it.

  Pulses it like a live animal.

  Taps the double rhythm

  that never stops, not a trot

  but the echo of a trot, not a drum

  but the echo of a drum,

  small palms on the art table

  laying down the backbeat:

  become become become.

  Gail Newman

  Valentine’s Day

  Now that my father is gone,

  I send my mother flowers.

  She sleeps under a blue blanket

  alone on her side of the bed,

  fluffing both pillows just so.

  She balances as she walks,

  one hand skimming the wall.

  Sometimes she doesn’t know

  where her friends are, who is still living.

  Einstein was right about time

  moving in two directions at once,

  how everything that happens

  seems to have happened before,