January 2017
From 2011 until November 2015 I was Poet Laureate of Vermont, during which time I visited 116 Vermont community libraries, not so much to read but to talk about what poetry can do that other modes of discourse can't. I loved the Q&A the most, because those within the academy often ask things that show how much they think they know, whereas library patrons are inclined to ask the important things: Who's talking here? To whom? Why? Where? I hope my poems can answer those questions, that no one needs some special knowledge or language to penetrate them. My twelfth collection of poems, NO DOUBT THE NAMELESS, is just out, as is my fourth collection of personal essays, WHAT'S THE STORY? REFLECTIONS ON A LIFE GROWN LONG. www.sydneylea.net
Ukrainian Eggs
I’m off on a late-season fishing trip with the guys.
We bump along in my beat-up pickup, laughing.
Our humor’s adolescent, the day bone-chilling.
Meanwhile her dear friend Portia and Robin, my wife,
Are learning from Joan, north on a visit, to fashion
Ukrainian eggs. The teacher and students are certain
They’ll really be something to see — the eggs, I mean.
After our umpteenth idiot joke, obscene,
I feel some sadness rise up in me like one
A cello might summon. That trio of women back home
Will be chuckling too, I suspect, though their jokes will remain
No doubt a lot less puerile than ones we’re telling.
But the three will be serious too, each one intending —
And I’m sure they will — to make objects of beauty and grace.
But why would that cause this weeping response to rise?
Vain male, I turn my face aside. To call
Those women cute is absurd. There’s no way at all
To claim it wouldn’t sound so if spoken aloud.
They’re hardly a group you’d incline to patronize.
It’s perhaps that I’m thinking, and not for the very first time,
How much in my life I would if I could atone for,
Like the way my grade school posse of punks and jokers
Scoffed when the girls turned to projects of their own.
Some wore pants under dresses against the cold.
They’d play secretary, nurse or, laughably, doctors,
Even cops, firefighters, pilots, cowboys, soldiers.
And we, all solemn and witless — we mocked them, we clowns,
In that age before we helped to raise our daughters.
I’m off on a late-season fishing trip with the guys.
We bump along in my beat-up pickup, laughing.
Our humor’s adolescent, the day bone-chilling.
Meanwhile her dear friend Portia and Robin, my wife,
Are learning from Joan, north on a visit, to fashion
Ukrainian eggs. The teacher and students are certain
They’ll really be something to see — the eggs, I mean.
After our umpteenth idiot joke, obscene,
I feel some sadness rise up in me like one
A cello might summon. That trio of women back home
Will be chuckling too, I suspect, though their jokes will remain
No doubt a lot less puerile than ones we’re telling.
But the three will be serious too, each one intending —
And I’m sure they will — to make objects of beauty and grace.
But why would that cause this weeping response to rise?
Vain male, I turn my face aside. To call
Those women cute is absurd. There’s no way at all
To claim it wouldn’t sound so if spoken aloud.
They’re hardly a group you’d incline to patronize.
It’s perhaps that I’m thinking, and not for the very first time,
How much in my life I would if I could atone for,
Like the way my grade school posse of punks and jokers
Scoffed when the girls turned to projects of their own.
Some wore pants under dresses against the cold.
They’d play secretary, nurse or, laughably, doctors,
Even cops, firefighters, pilots, cowboys, soldiers.
And we, all solemn and witless — we mocked them, we clowns,
In that age before we helped to raise our daughters.
©2016 Sydney Lea
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