Going home for Christmas

My friend Rick and I are going to walk around in downtown Seattle tonight, and then on Sunday I get to spend some time with my son Caleb; but best of all, on Monday, I get to go home to my beloved Nebraska! 

Here's a poem for Christmas --  My all-time favorite:

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see    i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don't be afraid

look   the spangles

that sleep all year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel" 

little tree, by e.e. cummings

All the irony of praise and sorrow are here, I think. 

For 'M' --as always

Dick Allen, Ode To the Cold War

Night Sledding

From Lookout Hill it was a long way down to the village.

The plowed steep road no cars would dare until morning

And the pine trees snowed into each other, forming ruined

Castles and English manor houses and gamekeeper huts

In the ravines and gullies and stark on the ridges,

Seemed more ours than anything would ever be again,

Whether our lives were short or long. I glanced

At the others to see if they felt it: the loosened knot

Of boys whose fathers were mostly off in World War II.

Kneeling and panting in the snow, their bodies

Gnomed by bulky jackets, their faces small round windows

sunk in wool, and saw their tremors

Of frozen-tongued awe, and how they tried to hide them

As I was trying, also, to not say anything

Too stupid or old. There were gusts of wind

Constantly sending clouds of powdered white

Off the rock outcroppings. Above us, a half-blasted moon

Was painted on a white sandpaper field of stars. 

"Let's get going," someone said. Hand-me-down sleds

Lined up, lying on our bellies, boot tips dug into snowruts,

We studied the village below us, the far-off lights

Of the D&H station, the Methodist church steeple,

Lights in the upstairs window of a dozen cottages

And "Isn't this something," the boy beside me whispered,

"Isn't this something!" who started, I don't remember,

But suddenly, faces held up, yelling for dear life,

All of us yelling and whooping, we were steering

Our sleds in great S's as we fell,

None of us trying to win, all of us half-crazed, shouting,

"Watch out! Hang on! Steer to the side!

Steer to the middle! Drop behind! Go ahead!"

Sparks from rocks our runners scraped, and then

At the last sweet drop, an absolute silence among us

As we swooped down, and some of our mothers and sisters

Waiting beneath the streetlights, some applauding

With soft mittened claps as we slowed. Walking home,

My house the last one before the village became a meadow,

I saw a comet streak, leaving in its wake

A crowfoot of light, gone the moment I blinked.

From : Ode to the Cold War Poems new and Selected

By Dick Allen (Sarabande Books, 1997) 

In this narrative poem, the speaker simply describes a group of boys sledding at night; but his description is so exact -- with just the right mix of the real, the imagined, and the philosophical -- to evoke his indelible memory of this moment. The reader can almost hear the "mittened" hands clapping.  I particularly love the line "As I was trying, also, not to say anything too stupid, or old." -- The war looms present, yet is distant enough and the boys who aren't going to be boys for long, some even having "short lives" are awake to life in this moment, perfect, the "sleds in great S's as we fell."

  

Three poems by Denise C. Banker

Oak Glen

Each day my dog Rosebud

and I hike to this same spot

at Oak Glen where prairie

crisp in late January calms

despite a chill wind

We muse among bur oaks'

rutted, furrowed trunks

and gnarled limbs

Rosebud, let us always return

We wait for wind's timbre

voice to fix us in its hum

to this horizon of grass

To set loose our calamities

To scatter memory's mulch

in lichen, leaves and acorn husks

Let these blow away from us

We walk off a friend's conceit

We lay a stretch of regret

beneath blue berried juniper

We soak a load of animus,

its ugly vapor hissing,

in the beaver's creek

Everywhere the hush alive

invites us to let go

Rosebud, let us let go

Preservation

The future belongs to anyone else.

I'm staying in the past

where your blue eyes hold me

in their smile, where nights are star-

filled and fragrant, where autumn

has arranged dried leaves in unmown grass.

In the future you will have faded,

so I cling to our past. The map

of your palm unfolded

and held out to me.

I finger our route along

the work-worn surface.

I give the future away,

the box wrapped in silver

and gold, like Christmas,

and write myself into a snowglobe:

the net of snow, the prairie, a dog,

two boys, and their parents walking.

Sculpture

The Platte river pulls a rim of fog

to its lip, and trees in fresh nakedness

toss. There was hard freeze last night.

I wind the clocks,

your old job,

so I take pride

in having learned

to turn the key

eight turns to the left

Wednesday and

Saturday nights.

A silence is here

like in the study of art.

It chisels your absence

into shape:

this fog-scarved river

and these bare trees

shift of stone unnoticed,

sap deep in heartwood,

fog diaphanous

shrouding the river.