David Graham Verse-Virtual 2018 July

July 2018

Author's Note: It may say something revealing about me that I wrote both of this month’s poems years before the events each one concerns—“Mother Loss” anticipates my mother’s death this past winter, and when I wrote “Emeritus Prof at Ace Hardware” I was not yet retired from teaching, but thinking about it. Certainly I often deal with significant milestones by writing memory-based poems, but I also find myself rehearsing feelings in advance. (After reading my first book of poems, Magic Shows, my mother notably remarked that “You always were a worried child.”) I might also mention that the retired professor in “Emeritus Prof” is not me (he taught Biology), except in the sense that they say all characters in one’s dreams are aspects of the dreamer.

With “Page vs. Stage” I complete my seven-part series of Poetic License columns on the topic of performing poetry aloud. Next month something completely different.

Mother Loss

My mother sleeps now more than ever,
and I doubt she thinks of me much,

certainly not as often as I think of her.
I don't blame her for that, any more

than I blame February snow for falling,
or your mother for not being mine.

Still, my mother's been mine since
the universe began. Yours, let's face it,

is just a dwindling old woman with a lot
of fussy gray opinions. My mother

is vivid even as she thins like fog
in some overheated fluorescent room.

She has lost much, but will never
lose me, even when she dies.

Am I absolutely certain of that?
No. But it is true just the same.

Emeritus Prof at Ace Hardware

He's been becalmed in the washers/bolts/screws aisle
for five minutes, where knowing all about mitochondria
doesn't help. He hasn't dealt with a pleading smile
from a C-minus face in years. He needs assistance
figuring out the right size washer for his kitchen faucet
but the kid who comes can't be more than sixteen.
Addresses him so slowly and kindly he wants to scream,
but even as he thinks that he wonders if it's true, really.
Doesn't he enjoy pottering along full of theory?
He's away half the morning today. Staying out
of his wife's hair. He'll invent an errand or two more,
then head home for lunch, his two or three little bags
laid neatly on the passenger seat. His jaunty old cap.

Oh, he was going to blaze a path. He was lean
and mapless. Sure, his name's now on one or two
textbooks, one going into a fourth edition under
its new editorial team, who devote half a paragraph
to cautiously praising his work. That's something,
isn't it? As are the letters sometimes arriving
from former students, who send their articles
and Christmas photos of their children. Yes.

And isn't he standing right where he planned?
His own girl in a lab of her own now. His younger boy
partner at his law firm already. Well, of course.
Still, there is something he's been seeking,
and it's nothing so obvious as satisfaction or regret.
It has little to do with accomplishment, even,
and nothing whatever to do with God, he's afraid.
Something, though, he can almost feel rising
like floodwater, but gently, foot to knee and up.
He'd like to put a name to it, but not today.
Now he'd better get a move on before he attracts
more help. What a foolish sight, this wispy-haired gent
standing stock-still for ten minutes in the lightbulb aisle.

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF