Solitude

29 October 2014

Dear Friends,

To commemorate both my sister and my dear friend Jennifer’s birthday, I wanted to use an Edgar Allan Poe poem to celebrate Jennifer’s hometown of Baltimore, charm city. But, as anyone of you knows who has read an Edgar Allan Poe poem, you know how sad and dreary they are. So I’ve chosen this beautiful palm and hope that you enjoy it as well.

Solitude
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it’s mirth,
But has trouble enough of it’s own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits

27 October 2014

Dear Friends,

My dear friend Peter Temes shared this poignantly ironic poem with me years
ago, and for some reason I have been thinking about it this weekend. Perhaps
the reason is that the cashier at my local market has this name, and every
time he calls me Michael, I am fearful to call him by his name.

Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits

No one asks
where I am from,
I must be
from the country of janitors,
I have always mopped this floor.
Honduras, you are a squatter’s camp
outside the city
of their understanding.

No one can speak my name,
I host the fiesta
of the bathroom,
stirring the toilet
like a punchbowl.
The Spanish music of my name
is lost
when the guests complain
about toilet paper.

What they say
must be true:
I am smart
but I have a bad attitude.

No one knows
that I quit tonight,
maybe the mop
will push on without me,
sniffing along the floor
like a crazy squid
with stringy gray tentacles.
They will call it Jorge.

— Martín Espada

Icarus’ Fall

24 October 2104

Dear Friends,

On this cold, dreary morning, I hope that you enjoy this allusion to the boy who flew too close to the sun.

Icarus’ Fall
by Jeanette P. S.
As he fell into autumn
He marvelled
And smiled
Despite his fate
Her colours so stong
And her powers unreal
His hands
Still not cooled
After the fire he felt
When he reached out
To touch her hair
Under a perfect blue sky

He fell
And with the colours he faded
Into different shades
Of darkness

Trees

23 October 2014

Dear Friends,

What a beautiful poem. I hope that it’s simplicity inspires you.

Trees
by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Leisure

Dear Friends,

After a leisurely weekend, either celebrating Columbus Day or Rethinking Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day, I thought that you would enjoy this poem, which will gently bring you back into the work week.

Godspeed,

Michael

W. H. Davies

“Leisure”

WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Anne Sexton’s “Courage”

A sobering poem by a strong 20th Century voice:

Courage
It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.​

This is a brilliant remake of an exceptional song

Sometimes

A gorgeous poem of hope:

Sometimes – Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse.  Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen:  may it happen for you.

Still I Rise, Forgetfulness

8 October 2014

Dear Friends,

As I seek to honor my first teaching mentor, Carla Hausmann, on her birthday, I am drawn to a poem by Billy Collins that my friend Lynn shared yesterday. But, knowing Carla’s love of Maya Angelou, I wanted to share my favorite Maya Angelou poem in honor of Carla, who guided me and loved me through my first two years of teaching. I was blessed to have her in my life then, and I am grateful that she is still in my life, if only through daily poems and occasional e-mails. Thank you, Carla, and happy birthday.  

Maya Angelou, 1928 – 2014

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise

“Forgetfulness”

By Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye

and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,

the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,

it is not poised on the tip of your tongue

or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river

whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those

who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Journey abroad leaves me knackered and chuffed

Providence Journal
Published: September 21, 2014 01:00 AM
I’m knackered (a great British word, meaning “tired,”) after hours of travel back from Europe. To celebrate my father-in-law’s 75th birthday, our family traveled to England for a canal boat trip through Oxfordshire. The slow, leisurely sojourn through the English countryside had its challenges, as eight of us were packed away on 6-foot-6-inch-wide, 70-foot-long boat that fit snugly in the 58 locks we traversed.
The second boat, our twin, had eight passengers as well, so 16 family members in tight, cramped quarters for the better part of a week. Anyone who has traveled with eight children and seven other family members questions not why I am in need of another vacation.
But, as I put away the trifles, trinkets, and insouciance of summer and unpack the toil, busyness, and routines of autumn, I reflect on a summer that will warm me and brighten me during the coldest and darkest days of winter.
It is a blessing to have the means to travel, for traveling allows us not only to see the world with new eyes, but also to experience a sense of unbalance that sharpens the mind and deepens our appreciation for each moment.
Technology has shortened distances and seemingly connected all of us to places heretofore only imagined. In seconds, words reach worlds thousands of miles away, and conversations in multiple languages occur at all hours of the night. If I like, I can read newspapers from the Australian Outback with my breakfast, listen to music from a South African radio station for lunch, and watch, with subtitles, Japanese television with dinner without ever leaving my computer.
It’s wondrous and specious, all at once: as much as I may think that I am experiencing Australia, South Africa, or Japan, I am not, because I am not there rubbing elbows with the people. Travel involves seeing the sites, hearing the languages (learning new slang words, like “knackered,”) tasting the foods, breathing the air, and feeling the dirt on your feet and the wind on your face.
No matter how many times I travel to a foreign country, I experience it anew. My senses are more alert, not only because of the dialects and languages, but also the odd currency, the strange sirens slicing the air, and the general awareness that travel, of any sort, demands. As an educator, I know that we best learn when our senses are most alert, and travel, like nothing else, enlivens us. It also forces us to communicate with humility, as we seek support, while fumbling with the language, the currency, and the roadmaps.
In addition, travel allows us to feel good about simple accomplishments, such as navigating the Tube like a local, or ordering a pint as a native might. We return home with clearer eyes, a new perspective and a deeper appreciation for what we have, what we’ve done, and what we can accomplish.
More important than these small achievements, however, is the substantial sense that travel improves who we are: as Mark Twain opined in “Innocents Abroad,” “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” In sum, travel makes us more sympathetic, more compassionate, more understanding, and in a world filled with fearful, dispiriting, confusing news from the Ukraine, from Ferguson, and from Syria, among other places, it’s good to know that travel kills prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, while encouraging understanding and empathy.
“Frederick,” a children’s story by Leo Lionni, tells the tale of a seemingly lazy mouse who spends the summer months storing memories of the summer, while his compatriots gather the necessities. His companions curse his laziness, until the dead of winter, when Frederick steps forth and shares warm memories of their summer sun. Like Frederick, this winter, as I trudge around the slosh-filled roads of Rhode Island, wondering when spring will come, I will unpack my memories of a summer of travel, forgetting how knackered I was plodding through customs at Heathrow and feeling utterly chuffed (British for “completely satisfied”).

Michael C. Obel-Omia is a father and husband, educator and student, cycling enthusiast and baseball fan. He lives in Barrington.