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deathwatchpoem #4
I don’t worry much about
my own death hope it’s
fairly
swift a few moments to say
goodbye and thanks for the
fish
or as lady montagu said it has all
been very interesting I
don’t want
too much trouble for my kids but
find myself
thinking this bleak cold
dawn it’s their deaths may they
have
good deaths nothing I’ll know unless
one dies before me
that wouldn’t be
good I stumble to the kitchen
jim
huston’s sunday morning concert is
into a handel concerto
the G major
one I call echo the tipoff is that last
movement I make
tea write my eldest
the dream I had just before waking
joshua bell in
sweatshirt and jeans
is in my living room he feels at home
relaxed
one leg over the chair’s arm
he’s listening meditatively to
her
play her violin which she is doing
sweetly it’s very
peaceful very natural.
© Jacqueline Jackson 2007
When ancient people gathered around the fire at
nightfall, I like to think that they told stories, about where each of them
had been that day, and what that person had seen in the forest. Those were
among our first stories, and we still venture into the world and return to
tell others what happened. It’s part of community. Here Kathleen
Flenniken of Washington tells us about a woman she saw at an airport.
Old Woman With Protea Flowers,
Kahalui Airport
She wears the run-down slippers of a local and in her arms, five rare protea wrapped in newsprint, big as digger pine cones.
Our hands can’t help it and she lets us touch. Her brother grows them for her, upcountry. She’s spending the day on Oahu with her flowers and her dogs. Protea for four dogs’ graves, two for her favorite. She’ll sit with him into the afternoon and watch the ocean from Koolau. An old woman’s paradise, she tells us, and pets the flowers’ soft, pink ears.
Poem copyright © 2007 by Kathleen Flenniken,
whose most recent book of poetry is Famous (University of Nebraska Press, 2006). Poem reprinted by
permission of the author. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The
Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of
English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Ted Kooser served as the U.S. poet laureate
2004-2006. For more information, go to www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2007.
