Poem: I Dare You

by Dorianne Laux

It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid 

of books, getting ready to retire, 
to move some place smaller, more 
manageable. We’re living in reverse, 
age-proofing the new house, nothing 
on the floors to trip over, no hindrances 
to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies, 
a small table for two. Our world is 
shrinking, our closets mostly empty, 
gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes, 
the bells and whistles. Now, when 
someone comes to visit and admires 
our complete works of Shakespeare, 
the hawk feather in the open dictionary, 
the iron angel on a shelf, we say 
take them. This is the most important 
time of all, the age of divestment, 
knowing what we leave behind is 
like the fragrance of blossoming trees 
that grows stronger after 
you’ve passed them, breathing 
them in for a moment before 
breathing them out. An ordinary 
Tuesday when one of you says 
I dare you, and the other one 
just laughs.

 Copyright © 2023 by Dorianne Laux. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 4, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

“‘I Dare You’ was written while in the midst of downsizing from a large house in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I taught at North Carolina State for thirteen years, to a small home in California where we retired. I had a party for my grad students and told them they could survey the house and take anything that caught their eye or fancy. They filed out the door with a white lace parasol, a red sequined cocktail dress, a tin angel, throw pillows, canned vegetables, rolled up rugs, pictures, potted plants, towels, posters and coasters of Dolly Parton, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Cher, the dining room table, and a roll of toilet paper. It was exhilarating! All that ‘stuff’ gone from my life. I’m a poet, so I wrote a poem about it. But it’s also a poem about aging and accepting that you too will be carried out like a broken lamp and buried in the dump we call a graveyard, or scattered into a plot of land, or poured out over the ocean. This exodus was somehow a preparation for the acceptance of this fact. I did not expect the final line, but when it came, I knew that other world I had belonged to was coming to a close. Youth. Remember when you’d do anything on a dare? On a whim? And that feeling of Why not? Poof. What remains between us is mirth.”
—Dorianne Laux

 

True Expression

— by Karen Sheahan

Tim McCarthy's talk on the subject of "The Perils and the Pride of Patriotism" awakened Karen Sheahan's spirit and renewed her beautiful poem "True Expression".

True Expression  

A Phoenix is rising.

A Phoenix is rising in the the flames of the candles 

I’ve lit, through the silent retreats of my life.

It’s growing, 

Growing a deepening spirit, a new sense of myself.

The two-winged bird is here, 

Its quiet center truth,

Its balanced wings balancing courage, 

Balancing the ups and the downs, 

The good and the bad,

The judge, the protector, 

Joy and sadness,

Creating dreams of a true life,

Expressed truthfully.

Written by Karen Sheahan

October 1989 and I am still dreaming.

Keep dreaming, Karen!  And keep writing.

Comments:

This in turn reminded me of Dorianne Low's dreams of a utopia the previous week.  "Dreams of a true life" echos some of the ideas we are looking at for the Spring 2021 lecture series.         Susan

Please add your comments below.

This is what you shall do

—Walt Whitman

This is what you shall do
by Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

"This is what you shall do..." by Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition.  Public domain. 

‘Hail and Farewell’

Delia Gist Gardner was the wife of cowboy poet Gail Gardner, and the grandmother of cowboy poet Gail Steiger.  She wrote this poem at the age of 65 when she visited her old home and left it with a note for her family when she died.

‘Hail and Farewell’

By Delia Gist Gardner
  (Reflection from a cabin in Skull Valley, Arizona, over an old Indian camping ground, 1945)

Think not on my brittle bones mingling with dust, for

These

Are but a handful added

To those gone before.

Think, rather, that on this borrowed hilltop

One lived joyously, and died content.

In this dark soil

I found reminders, saying:

“You, too, will pass; savor for us

The wind and the sun.”

From the smoke-blackened earth

I dug

A frail shell bracelet, shaped lovingly, skillfully,

For a brown skinned wrist, now dust.

The broken piece of clay

Was a doll’s foot and leg, artfully curved ,

Made for brown-eyed child.

Pottery shards saying:

“Yours for a little time only

Take delight in this, as we did.”

The tree will die; the vine wither and rattle in the wind.

For I broke a law of Nature.

I carried the water to the hilltop. Nevertheless,

For those after me there will be

These things I have loved:

Morning sun rays, slanting across the hilltop,

Lighting the great trees in the green meadow.

Wind, the great blue sky,

Peace of the encircling hills

And flaming glow of sunset.