Untitled Document
angerpoem #21,500
for sixty years we milked
a hundred cows a day at first
by
hand but in the twenties for
three hundred bucks my grandpa
had the
high wire come from
town he then bought six surge
milking machines
surge became
a household word just think the
difference if the
trillions we’ve
poured into this deadly war had
been marshalled
into milk cheese
butter eggs and poured out to the
starving all over
this globe what
a surge of chubby children all
our soldiers milkmen
milkmaids
© Jacqueline Jackson 2006
“Home is where the heart is.” We all know
that old saying. But it’s the particulars of a home that make it
ours. Here the poet Linda Parsons Marion, who lives in Knoxville, Tenn.,
celebrates familiarity, in its detail and its richness.
Home Fire
Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad, I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say “I’m passing this way.” Once out of
shyness, now reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery instead. I’ve learned where the lines are drawn
and keep the privet well trimmed. I left one house with toys on the floor for another with quiet rugs and a bed where the moon comes in. I’ve thrown myself at men in black turtlenecks only to find that home is best after all. Home where I sit in the glider, knowing it needs oil, like my own rusty joints. Where I coax blackberry to dogwood and winter to harvest, where my table is clothed in light. Home where I walk out on the thin page of night, without waving or giving myself away, and return with my words burning like fire in the
grate.
Reprinted from Home
Fires: Poems (Sow’s Ear Press,
1997) by permission of the author. Copyright © 1997 by Linda Parsons.
This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of
Congress, and the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
Ted Kooser served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from
2004-2006. For more information, go to www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.
This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2007.
