November 2018
Lara Phelps
lnoelphelps@yahoo.com
lnoelphelps@yahoo.com
I’m a cataloging librarian in an Ohio public library, which is a job I love. The first poem I remember writing was one about dirty dishes that won a contest in fourth grade. If I’m not reading or writing, I might be found dangerously close to breaking out Zumba moves in public places (my husband and daughter would be delighted rather than embarrassed if I actually did).
Note: In fourth grade I wrote a short poem about dirty dishes to submit to a local contest with the theme “Home.” My poem was one of the winners and when it was published in a small chapbook, my mom (although proud) was mortified because everyone who read the poem would think she was a terrible housekeeper and might wonder why the association her daughter made with “Home” was dirty dishes. I think the poem won because everyone understands dishes piled in the sink. It happens. They’ve been there when it did. When you read, you enjoy that moment of resonance with the thing being described. That moment of Ah, I know that feeling. She described it perfectly. Poetry arrives at that moment in a special way and that’s what I love about it. It’s a distillation. A way of conveying entire scenes with maybe just a few words. Finding those few words is what it’s about for me, and I’m astounded, almost relieved, when those few words take an ordinary experience and turn it into a poem.
Note: In fourth grade I wrote a short poem about dirty dishes to submit to a local contest with the theme “Home.” My poem was one of the winners and when it was published in a small chapbook, my mom (although proud) was mortified because everyone who read the poem would think she was a terrible housekeeper and might wonder why the association her daughter made with “Home” was dirty dishes. I think the poem won because everyone understands dishes piled in the sink. It happens. They’ve been there when it did. When you read, you enjoy that moment of resonance with the thing being described. That moment of Ah, I know that feeling. She described it perfectly. Poetry arrives at that moment in a special way and that’s what I love about it. It’s a distillation. A way of conveying entire scenes with maybe just a few words. Finding those few words is what it’s about for me, and I’m astounded, almost relieved, when those few words take an ordinary experience and turn it into a poem.
I Approach the Rain with Confidence
Cherry red boots
go to puddles, mud-soaked lawns
with ease. I see the bridge
arcing away like a rib
above us, parts hidden
but made to bear weight. I know
you would bear mine as I stand
tucked into the crook
of your arm there
like Eve, helpmate,
born(e) from your side. I fear
the abruptness of tragedy
the single instant
the mundane acts of just before:
punctual shush and thud
of a knife to the cutting board,
hydrangeas hanging heavy
with rainwater. If you were gone
I’d wear my cherry red boots
and see in the curve of that bridge
the rib I was taken from.
Eclipse
As a child I didn’t understand
grains of rice in the salt shaker.
Explanations of moisture
and the tendency of rice to absorb
lost as I moved to other things.
I didn’t understand
the eclipse, which I thought
from their warnings would blind me
as I stepped outside
so I walked head down
all the way home from school.
No way to know
that there are ways to look full-on
be absorbed, soak in
an extravagance of systems
that spin, terrify.
No way to know that
dancing is the opposite of mourning,
that I would need a covering
provided at first as a fig leaf. That God
would gather the waters of the sea
into jars;
put the deep into storehouses
and move as the moon in front of me.
Things You Might Need to Groom a Graveyard
“I wound up there out of the beauty of the work in those stones. And I thought I could save them all.”
--John Walters
A calling, divine
intervention. The work
a raising of the dead
bringing back the erased
razed, the praise
etched in rock.
A way to match angles
of broken pieces;
the right kind of epoxy, knowledge
of moisture’s destructive power;
steel pins, clamps, rubber mallets.
How to build mortar out
to a shaped, carved thing.
Hands chalked white
with marble dust
chain hoist and pulley
to level history
into place. The graveyard
all tools and stone
guarding bone
and once threadbare tombs.
This poem was inspired by a story in the Lafayette, Indiana, Journal and Courier June 16, 2017 by Dave Bangert about John “Walt” Walters and his crew, the Graveyard Groomers. Certain phrases taken directly from or heavily influenced by Bangert’s article.
http://www.jconline.com/story/opinion/columnists/dave-bangert/2017/06/16/bangert-crew-comes-rescue-greenbush-cemeterys-oldest-headstones/402667001/
© 2018 Lara Phelps
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