JUST AN ORANGE

if you were an alley violinist

and they threw you money

from three windows

and the first note contained

a nickel and said:

when you play, we dance and

sing, signed

a very poor family

and the second one contained

a dime and said:

i like your playing very much,

signed

a sick old lady

and the last one contained

a dollar and said:

beat it,

would you:

stand there and play?

beat it?

walk away playing your fiddle?

I want to be
        famous
so I can be
        humble
about being
        famous.

What good is my
        humility
when I am
        stuck
in this
        obscurity?

~ by David Budbill

I came across this little gem while browsing through the bookstore on my birthday. The Blizzard Voices is by former poet laureate of the United States, Ted Kooser. Like Out of the Dust, this is a narrative told through poems. Unlike Out of the Dust, these stories are true accounts of a blizzard that ripped through the Great Plains for a few days in January 1888.

In the introduction, Ted Kooser says “The poems that follow are isolated voices heard in that blinding snowstorm we know as the passage of time. When the Alberta Clipper, roaring out of the north, rips apart a straw stack, only the frozen center remains and each of these memories is like that center, stripped of digression, picked clean of equivocation. What is left are the core narratives, spare and cold. Each clings to a concrete and specific detail, for memory works like that.”

The poems are titled either A Woman’s Voice or A Man’s Voice depending on the narrator of the event. Simply told are the tragedies next to the miracles that took place during that winter storm. It’s haunting in it’s brevity, but also in the reality that these things really happened. If you are looking for poetry that is accessible, this book would be a good place to start. But be prepared. When you have finished, you will sit and think for awhile about the fragility of life.

These poems were performed as a play by the Lincoln, Nebraska, Community Playhouse.

I think that we would understand and remember more of the past if it could be presented in such eloquent but simple ways. The base of this history are the true experiences of men and women who lived this event and told about it. Ted Kooser has taken those stories and shaped them for us.

We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.

We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.

The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.

To my surprise, you took my arm–
A gesture you didn’t explain–
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.

Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.

I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn’t speak another word
Except to say goodnight.

Why does that evening’s memory
Return with this night’s storm–
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won’t stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.

Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught

they’re hiding

they’re awake in there
dark in the dark
hearing us
but they won’t come out
not for love not for time not for fire

even when the dark has worn away
they’ll still be there
hiding in the air
multitudes in days to come may walk through them
breathe them
be none the wiser

what script can it be
that they won’t unroll
in what language
would I recognize it
would I be able to follow it
to make out the real names
of everything

maybe there aren’t
many
it could be that there’s only one word
and it’s all we need
it’s here in this pencil

every pencil in the world
is like this

-W.S. Merwin

That pack of scoundrels

tumbling through the gate

emerges

as the Order of the State.

-Stanley Kunitz

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off–they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. “I am your own
way of looking at things,” she said. “When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.” And I took her hand.

-William Stafford