David CookView other columns by David Cook
Last Sunday, this column focused on the magnificent Howard baseball team.
Next Sunday, I'll write about your magnificent response.
But first, poetry.
Every so often, a reader's poem will reach my desk. I hold onto them, until the time comes to share them with you.
Enjoy.
***
One day, Howard Brown dropped his phone into the toilet. Like any good poet, he wrote about what happened next. Originally published in January's "Burningwood Literary Journal, Issue 81," Brown's poem is one of my recent favorites.
Rescued
Standing in the bathroom,
attempting to text
and pee at the same time,
I dropped my cell phone in the toilet.
In a flash, I saw the phone's
micro-circuits signing off, one by one,
as I reached down and took hold of
the little urine-soaked rectangle.
And now,
after three days of silence,
no texts, no emails
no help from the ubiquitous Siri,
the phone still buried
in a bowl of Uncle Ben's long-grain rice,
I wonder who, in truth, has been rescued-
the cell phone or me?
***
Keith Landrum's poem "Push" is as much prayer as poetry. First published in December's "Holy Heretic," an underground zine from Mercy Junction's Justice and Peace Center, the poem is both social criticism and soul-work.
Push
If you push
a shopping cart
you either have
or have
not
you either have
a home
or you
don't
if you push
a shopping cart
it's either filled
with consumerism
or desperation
comfort or fear
protection or violence
life or death
if you push
a shopping cart
you are either inside
or outside
welcomed or
shunned
but nothing we fill
our carts with
will save us
we have to
save
each other
every day
forever
we must
push.
* * *
In February 1893, Alfred Blount was lynched on the Walnut Street Bridge. Then, Ed Johnson was lynched there in 1906. This haunting poem by Christian Collier reminds us of the dangers of forgetting.
A Blues for Walnut Street Bridge
For so many of us here in the city,
we are guilty of forgetting
that Ed Johnson & Alfred Blount's names
still rest on the back of the bridge's tongue,
that, after all this time, the dense weight
of their hanging bodies still haunts its broad girders
& we never stop to wonder
if it has ever rued that it was made
to bring about their brutal deaths,
that it was forced to feel the life
sift away from their flesh & muscle
or if it has ever once envied
how we, who casually walk & race across it,
claim ignorance as a shield,
how we have chosen not to be burdened
by the history that has stained it,
how we have worked ourselves
to the highest states of negligence
to avoid the loudest notes
of the blues it, alone, has had to bear.
* * *
Shortly after the Woodmore Elementary bus crash, Kemmer Anderson, a friend and colleague, wrote this poem, some of the most powerful words about the tragedy.
Villanelle for Bus 366
A yellow school bus crucified on a tree
With children scattered on Talley Road:
The mysteries of death are never free.
The mind behind the eye will always see
These memories of this tragic episode
When a school bus crucified on a tree
Ended the lives of Woodmore Elementary
Students. Who will write a new school bus code?
The mysteries of death are never free.
I drive by and stop, then read poetry
To the ghosts lingering on Talley Road
Where the bus was crucified on a tree.
Zoe in Greek is life: how could her mother foresee
Her child would not come home on the bus she rode.
The mysteries of death are never free
From the mourning and grief this city showed
Though the Saint Mary of Sorrows carries our load
For the yellow school bus crucified on a tree.
The mysteries of death are never free.
* * *
Lastly, a poem for winter, or what's left of it. It's by Alice Smith, who wrote what may be the best line about springtime - "the hope of emerald resurrection."
Winter Light
A ponderous sky
sheds minimal light on winter limbs,
twisted, misshapen, exposed,
a haunting skeleton displayed.
Dusk dissolves to black
peppered with points of light.
Yesterday's bony branches
wear early morning frost coats
as dawn gives birth to blue
streaked with pastel whimsy.
The diamond twigs shiver and creak
until the source of light
melts away the winter garments
worn for sheer protection.
A sudden breath of warmer wind
fired by noon day brilliance
whispers to the naked boughs
a promise billowing with blossom.
The leafless limbs inhale the hope
of emerald resurrection
as sunset colors wash the sky
in vivid confirmation.
David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.