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When I began posting at this space twelve years ago, I was about to have my first chapbook of poems published. The Gray Limbo of Perhaps was selected in 2012 by Finishing Line Press, which was a new kind of thrill for a poet who’d spent the previous four years trying out her poems with public audiences. I’d had several published in journals and anthologies, and a few poems had even won prizes, but holding a book with my name on the cover was surreal.

I was still teaching high school English at the time and attending writing conferences every summer, honing my craft, trying new forms and styles. Eventually, two more collections followed — Map Making: Poems of Land and Identity (THEAC Press, 2015) and A Matter of Dark Matter (Kelsay Books, 2022). During that time, I also tried my hand at editing, helping a musician with his memoir. Then, within a period of two years, three life-changing events happened: I retired from teaching, Covid-19 struck, and in August of 2021, my father died. It was as if I’d entered a whole new world.

In the fall of 2021, just weeks after I’d lost my father, something extraordinary and serendipitous occurred. I received a phone call from Judith Kaufman, who was founder and editor-in-chief of a literary arts journal in Highland Park. I’d gotten to know Judy and many other wonderful poets at readings in Highland Park over the previous few years and had developed a great respect and admiration for their warm, artistic community. Judy was calling me to see if I’d be interested in taking over for her as editor-in-chief of the journal she’d started twenty years ago, East on Central. She was preparing to retire.

The timing was perfect. I’d been in a funk all through the pandemic, unable to write or focus. My father’s failing health and death had crushed my artistic spirit even more deeply. A new creative role with a new set of responsibilities that combined all my passions and strengths was just the right antidote. For several years I’d dreamed of the possibility of editing a literary journal, and now that dream had materialized in the blink of an eye.

That year I worked as Judy’s assistant, learning the ins and outs of the journal’s publishing cycle, meeting the rest of the staff on the East on Central board, and figuring out all the technological details. Last year I took on co-editorship with Judy, working as her equal and finding out how to best fit the editor’s hat onto my own head. We honored Judy’s retirement at the 2023 journal’s launch party in October, and I was named the new editor-in-chief. It was the 22nd volume of the journal, and with a new graphic designer on board, and more submissions coming in from a wider range of poets and artists, we added big splashes of color to announce a new era.

I’ve now been retired from teaching for five years. It’s taken this long to find my “2nd career” stride, but it’s been a revealing process. Some of my volunteer stints with various organizations didn’t prove to be a good fit, so I’ve let them go. Now, my time is spent wholeheartedly with just two: the East on Central journal and the Friends of the Palatine Library group, where I work in the book donations room. This in addition to caring for my son and driving him to various programs, as well as reading like a fiend (75 books in 2023!) keeps me just busy enough. What I’m not doing so much anymore is writing.

So it’s time to bid farewell to this blog. I’ll keep it open, since there are dozens of posts that offer teaching tutorials (a few still get regular hits) and some that share glimpses of my growth as a thinker and poet. Maybe I’ll return to it one day. Many thanks to those of you who have taken the time to read the posts and respond to them. That has meant a great deal to me.

Kate

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It’s been nearly a year since I’ve written a post, but as I’m into the 12th year of keeping this page, it makes sense that I have less and less to say! Being retired from teaching, I no longer use it for lessons, either. But the air outside is slowly warming, the days are nearly as long as the nights, and my snowdrops are about to bloom, so my energy has been sparked.

The poetry world is also back in full gear, as many journals and contests start new editions in the spring and more people are heading out to readings. My third book, A Matter of Dark Matter, has just been named runner-up in the Illinois State Poetry Society’s first-ever “Book of the Year” contest for books published in 2022, so I’ll be a featured reader at their monthly gathering in Westmont on March 26. Next, I’ll be the presenter at the Northwest Cultural Council’s “Second Saturday Poets” workshop on April 8 in Palatine, talking about the importance of sounds in poems and leading the group through some exercises and revisions. Most exciting is my work with East on Central, the beautiful literary arts magazine out of Highland Park, which has just closed its submission period for the 2023-24 edition. I’ll be stepping up as co-editor this year in anticipation of taking over the editor’s reins more fully next year. Finally, my work with the Chicagoland Poets & Patrons organization will soon pick up, as I’m chairing their annual free sonnet contest again. Who says retirement is all about R & R??

This winter I’ve been working on a series of sonnets that tell the story of my mother’s life. It’s not an official “crown” of sonnets — a form that began long ago and requires strict adherence to the sonnet form and strict connections between each sonnet in the series. Instead, I’ve chosen unrhymed and non-metered “modern sonnets,” sticking only to the 14-line requirement and the repetition of just one word or phrase tying each sonnet to the next. For many years I thought I would try to write my mother’s biography in prose form, but I’ve realized I just don’t have enough information or the skills required to do it justice. Poems will have to do. Here is the first one. (It’s supposed to be single-spaced and look like a square on the page, but Word Press offers very limited editing tools for poets.)

_____

They were never alone, not even in the womb –

arms and legs entwined, heartbeats merged

with mother’s. Each woke to peer into the eyes

of her other self, the pull toward this first

friend as natural as breathing. Their coos echoed

in each other’s mouths. Were their cries of hunger

their own or merely prompted by those nearby

in the crib? Photos show her the smaller one,

dwarfed by a fuller, rounder face. So when

the illness came, how strange that it was she

who survived, suddenly bereft at two, her father

sitting sentry at the tiny coffin. She would claim

no memory of her twin, but how might an imprint

have remained? Of abandonment? Of a face?

_____

The first line of the second sonnet repeats the word “face” but in a different context:

_____

Three faces, then five, and more – sisters

multiplying through the years and posed

in checkered frocks and sausage curls.

_____

In this way, each sonnet will connect to the preceding one, with fifteen poems in all to tell the story. It’s been a rewarding project, one that has allowed me to connect with Mom in new ways as I try to imagine what she would have been thinking and feeling at key moments in her life, including meeting my dad, moving away from her family, raising four kids, becoming chronically ill in her thirties, and facing death at 46. Like any biographer, I’ve given myself a little leeway to stretch the details a bit beyond the facts and allow Mom’s spirit to come through. The writing has been quite emotional and an homage of sorts. I’ve written many poems about my mom over the years, but none that will put the whole scope of her life into one place. I hope it becomes something worth sharing with my family.

_____

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I’m happy to post that my 2 new books are here and ready for readers. If you would like to purchase any copies, contact me via Facebook Messenger or email me at k28hutch@yahoo.com. I’ll be happy to send or bring them to you, signed if you prefer! Or you can always order directly from Kelsay Books or Barnes & Noble online, though they’ll charge you $19.

A Matter of Dark Matter, published by Kelsay Books, includes 50 poems divided into 5 sections. (85 pages, $17.00)

Here are blurbs from the back cover (which I include here with much appreciation for my poet friends who wrote them!) —

• In A Matter of Dark Matter, Kate Hutchinson explores the facets of darkness and invisibility. She makes “mattering” a polestar of her poetry, keeping a keen eye on the Earth as half-dark treasure; she laments the disappearance of birds and trees, shriveling ice masses, and mounding plastic. Hutchinson moves the dialogue with herself and the reader to measuring memories and experiences darkened by an ominous sense of invisibility—vulnerable students, a son who knows “the constant bruise of his heart,” the disappearance of beloved “wild places,” the challenges of body image. The poems are both composed and starkly intimate, but ultimately the reader joins the poet’s triumph—full-out singing Eric Clapton in an empty grocery store, a “sawed-in-half woman stepping out of the box”—the small joys the poet relishes in these poems as she foot-stamps against invisibility. Hutchinson brings us hope that “the Earth whispers still.”

~ Gail Goepfert, author of Self-Portrait with Thorns and This Hard Business of Living

–

• “‘We must love something just enough,’ declares Kate Hutchinson at the end of her poem, “Cold.”  This killer line, coming at the beginning of A Matter of Dark Matter, launches a journey through themes of fragility, vulnerability and impermanence with bravery and fiercely acute perception. Yet despite the shifting presence of a bird on the shoulder that demands its pound of flesh, she is able to assert in “Gentle Yoga,” ‘Our arms/and legs are made to move/across the earth, toward each other.’ Never truer than in a time of COVID, this is the voice of a woman who has reclaimed herself, who never shrinks from the task at hand: to look, to see, to accept and ultimately, to be.    

 ~ Peter Ludwin, winner of the 2016 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award for the poem “Wolf Concerto,” and 2017 American Book Award nominee for Gone to Gold Mountain.

–

• A Matter of Dark Matter demonstrates Kate Hutchinson’s versatility with its thought-provoking poems on science and social issues and poems inspired by her experiences as a child with a mother who was sick, as a confused teen, and as wife and teacher. She is deft at writing both free and formal verse. And sometimes a line (like “the bride waking with regret on her honeymoon”) pops out and slaps the reader’s face, but bits of humor and hope peek through like stars in a cloudy sky. I highly recommend this collection.        

~ Wilda Morris, author of Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick and past-president of the Illinois State Poetry Society

–

Resolve in Her Voice is a hand-crafted chapbook that contains 21 poems divided into 3 sections. (33 pages, $5.00)

–

Women of Now and the Future (such as Katherine Johnson, Nancy Pelosi, Malala Yousafzai, and Greta Thunberg)

Women of the Past (such as Helen of Troy, Anne Boleyn, Cleopatra, and Joan of Arc)

For My Family of Women (including my mother, grandmothers, and aunts)

–

–

I’ll also note here that my 2 previous books are still available as long as I still have copies!

Map-Making: Poems of Land and Identity. THEAQ Books, 2015. (63 pages, $5.00)

The Gray Limbo of Perhaps. Finishing Line Press, 2012. (25 pages, $3.00)

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We awoke to fog today in Chicagoland, and it never quite lifted. We have yet to see any snow accumulate — the latest we’ve ever gone in northern Illinois without it. I spent much of the day alone and had time to think about the state of the world, which has lately been an exercise in gloom and doom.

Being outside among the trees and birds can always lift my spirits, so that’s where I went.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season, and wishing the world peace and healing in 2022.

---

Christmas Eve Day, 2021

–

Just two dog walkers share the path with me,

stepping through mist in their coats and caps.

We trade quick smiles and brief hellos.

–

How many shades of gray and brown grace

a Midwest winter landscape? Bared limbs

–

reach into dense clouds in seeming supplication.

Across the field, a gray squirrel halts

to paw the ground and nibble its find.

–

Above me, a flock of starlings alight

in treetops, chattering of their news.

–

With urgency in its chirp, a cardinal

swoops past – one dot of red. It is 3:00

and darkness has already begun to descend.

–

Nearing my neighborhood, I see windows

glowing white against the dusk. Strands

–

of Christmas lights cling to branches and eaves.

Soon I will be back inside where I, too,

will light candles and sit by a glowing tree.

–

There is so much to despair in this world.

–

Hope alone is not enough. But its constant

and crucial simmer will abide this night.

–

–

---

2nd photo source: Better Homes & Gardens

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When I started writing poetry in earnest in the early 2000’s, many of my poems were about my mother. She’d been gone nearly twenty years, and as I approached the age she was when she died, I developed a new kind of relationship with her that I’d never had when she was alive. In some cases, my poet’s voice speaks directly to my mom, like this one that notes the long passage of time since she left us:

–

Two Mothers 

–

At the side of the trail I see

a small patch of white clover,

and I am back with you, sitting

on the side stoop in ’63 or ’64

when there was only a meadow

between our house and the road,

with the vast forest preserve beyond.

–

We shared the clover with honeybees—

hundreds of them—plucking the tiny

petals and nibbling them for sugar.

You’d pick the largest dandelion—

a sunburst—and hold it under my chin,

saying the yellow reflection meant

I was as sweet as creamy butter.

–

The sky is sometimes still that blue, Mom,

and today the clouds stretch across it

like the giant feather boas we saw

on those lazy May mornings when

the older two were off at school,

the baby and cat lay napping inside,

and I was still a little part of you.

–

In time we saw the meadow plowed

for custom homes, the road widened,

the forest chopped apart for paved paths,

the creek dammed for a fishing lake.

What would you say if you knew

that the wild fields and honeybees

are disappearing too?

–

This patch of clover seems a relic, from

a time when earth was more than ground

beneath our feet.  You showed me my

second mother—one who fills me with

the wide blue sky—and still you drop

sweet nectar on my tongue, even all

these years since you’ve been gone.

–

I suppose the reason why it’s so easy for me to write about Mom is because she’s become more of a memory than a reality in my mind. I’m free to explore who she was and who she might have been had she lived into her 50’s and beyond. And I’m able to write about her as a peer, too, not just as her daughter, now that I’m as old and older than she ever was.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve only written a couple of poems about my dad, who just passed away last month at 89. He’s been here with us, preventing me from being able to ponder his existence beyond the details of his daily life or the cliches about what a great dad he’s been. Not that I haven’t reflected on his life more deeply or on my relationship with him as I’ve matured. But there’s a shift that occurs after a person’s death — a distancing, or a kind of poetic sensibility, I guess you could call it — that unlocks whole new perspectives. For that, I’ll have to wait a while yet.

But this weekend, two very short poems came to me. The first came yesterday while I was going through some of the many photos and family albums Dad left behind for us. One photo in particular really struck me.

–

A black and white photo of him —

crew-cut hair, on hands and knees,

with three of us climbing over his back —

“rassling” he called it —

evokes a recent image:

gray-haired now on his hands and knees,

his legs no longer able to hold him up.

–

And this morning just after waking, I pondered what I imagine we all do when our last parent has gone, leaving our generation to be the next in line facing mortality.

–

How vast the sky becomes

when no one is here

to rein it all in for us

and clamp it down at the edges.

–

Dad and Mom in 1979

–

Image credits: American Meadows; Medical News Today; Pixabay; Kathy Keatley Garvey blog

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Like lots of folks my age, I’ve been clearing out my stuff lately, realizing I don’t need much of it and don’t want the burden to fall on family members after I’m gone. My son Ramon, now 30, still lives with me, but I long ago stopped asking him to cull his supply of books and movies. (See the poem below for that story.)

Some have a much harder time getting rid of their possessions, I know. I’ve written before of my mom, who stockpiled food and other items almost obsessively, probably due to a childhood in the ‘30s and ‘40s where many siblings had to share what they had. She died at 46, before much was known about obsessive-compulsive disorder, but we think now that she probably struggled with that, too. 

Reading about the psychology behind hoarding is sometimes fascinating and sometimes sad. According to multiple sources, around five percent of people struggle with it at a clinical level, and it’s usually attributed to a condition such as OCD, anxiety, or depression. Signs of a tendency to hoard often show up in adolescence and can lead to isolation and a growing fear or anxiety about self-protection. In a few cases, people even describe an irrational fear that their possessions will be despondent if they are thrown away or given away.

For my son, who has autism, his accumulation of possessions is driven by something a little different. Yes, he does deal with high levels of anxiety and OCD. Yet he also has what I call a “videographic memory” – an uncanny ability to recall people, places, dates, and episodes from his life going far back into early childhood. I joke that Ramon collects people. He never lets them go from his mind as the years go by, including a substitute teacher he may have had for two days in second grade or a restaurant worker who served him a few times when he was 12.

Another huge part of Ray’s early and ongoing life experience involves the stories he’s grown up with in books, films, and videogames. This is where the hoarding tendency comes in. Without the typical ability to imagine stories of his own making, Ray has always over-identified with fictional characters he likes. We all do this to a certain extent, but I believe for him, the “friends” he makes in fictional tales are more real than for most of us. He revisits some of his favorites again and again, running along with Woody and Buzz on their way to Pizza Planet, or with Anne of Green Gables as she chases the neighbor’s errant cow, or with Forrest Gump as he outruns the bullies and lets his leg braces fall away.

For most of us, Winnie-the-Pooh or young Laura Ingalls become faded memories as we grow up, leaving only a vague imprint on our identities. For Ramon, these characters continue to surround him, reassuring him of his identity and self-worth, his past, and his hope that things will always work out alright in the end. Nothing made this clearer to me than this past year, when so much uncertainty filled our lives and I wasn’t able to give him definitive answers about when he would be able to go back to grocery stores or stop wearing his mask. In his screen world of Scooby-Doo and Arthur the Aardvark, the demons and bullies are always defeated.

—

Child is Father to the Mom

—

Jewelry rained down around me

and a second later, my jewelry box.

I startled and looked up to see my son

on the stairway landing, smiling.

There was then yelling, questioning,

a forced picking up, a forced apology,

early to bed, talk of a better tomorrow.

—

Later, on hands and knees, I sought

the last missing pieces – and answers.

Autism keeps Ramon from telling me

what he’s feeling, so I can only guess.

Was it still last year’s divorce and

the move? Was I on the phone too long

that day? Did he eat something odd,

see something he shouldn’t have seen?

—

As earring sparkled by the door,

next to the box I’d filled to take

to Good Will: clothes, tableware,

a few of Ramon’s oldest videos.

He’d watched as I’d taken them

from his shelves, listened as I told him

that at age 8, he needed to let them go.

He hadn’t argued. But my jewelry

landed just feet from this box.

—

In the morning, Ray woke to my

tearful apology, my promise, and

his tapes returned to his shelves.

Now at 30, he’s curated crates full

of books and movies – a collection

that grows as an extension of him,

a constant reminder of who he is and

who he’s been. Long after I am gone,

he will still be surrounded by them.

—

---

---

---

Photo credits (in order):

The Spruce, Oriental Trading Company, Etsy, Kate Hutchinson (photo of some of Ray’s shelves)

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March 12 is a date many of us will now always remember, like December 7 or September 11. It seems like five years ago, not just one, when many of us closed our front doors for good, peering out into the scary world with wide eyes. While millions risked their lives to keep the world turning and to treat the sick, many of us became hermits, glued to our TVs and devices for news updates. We learned a whole new vocabulary and developed new ways of being.

I’ll add to the one-year anniversary of the lockdown by offering an abecedarian poem that crams it all in — literally Covid-19 from A to Z. I’ve only written a few abecedarians, but for the purposes of a “list poem,” the alphabet can come in handy and actually be fun. Word geek that I am, I spend lots of time with dictionaries and thesauruses. A new book on my long list of must-reads includes A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order by Judith Flanders. I’d never even considered that at some point, some smart person trying to organize things decided that the alphabet could be a handy tool! Samuel Pepys and George Washington were early adopters, it seems. Now, we couldn’t function without it.

So here it is, my compact retrospective of Life With Covid, 1 Year Later — from horrific to hopeful. Perhaps it will prompt you to think about the A to Z of what this time has meant for you.

It All Matters

Antiseptics. Air for our lungs and air hugs for our hearts.

Antiseptics. Air for our lungs and air hugs for our hearts.

Boxes of beans plus blue skies and bikes and bare feet.

Clorox on the shelf along with cat food, chocolates and coffee.

Doctors, yes, and drive-thru windows and drive-by birthdays.

Exercise, elastic waistbands, evergreen trees in the yard.

Facts over falsehoods . . . and Facebook. Food kitchens.

Gloves and newly-gray hair and grandparents on screens.

Hospitals full of heroes plus houseplants and hummingbirds.

IV drips, igloos outside restaurants. Vivid imaginations.

Jeans, jammies, jigsaws, Jeopardy! and Jupiter kissing Saturn.

Keeping our distance but keeping the faith. Kindness.

Libraries, leaves greening then falling on lawns. Love.

Masks and music and movies and mothers and miracles.

Nurses, oh yes. Newspapers and neighbors on the front porch.

Oximeters, ovens full of bread. Open minds, open hearts.

Personal protective equipment. Pets on laps and leashes. Poetry.

Q-tip swabs and questions on quarantining.

Remdesivir plus reading, reading, reading.

Steroids, sourdough starter, and solos on balconies.

Too much toilet paper and TV. Treadmills. Tireless teachers.

Ultraviolet light and unsung unselfishness everywhere.

Ventilators. Vaccines! Vegetables from our own gardens.

Windows kept open and long walks and wine.

X-rays of lungs, experts who temper our expectations.

Yeast and yarn and yoga and yearning for normal.

Zoom gluing us together under zillions of stars.

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Darkness can be a metaphor for so many things – depression, despair, evil, death – none of them positive. But Longest Night reminds us that light (joy, hope, goodness, life) will come again. After all, without darkness, we wouldn’t recognize or appreciate light. Winter Solstice rituals have important for thousands of years, and this year they will be even more meaningful, as we close out one of the worst years the human race has collectively experienced.

What’s so special to me about all the centuries-old Longest Night celebrations is just how universal they are in acknowledging human faith in rebirth and renewal.  Pagan Yuletide, Jewish Hanukkah, Christian Christmas, Chinese Dongzhi Festival, Hopi Soyal – each marks the turning of the planet back toward the sun and the hope this instills in us, that we’ll survive another year.  Now we understand why nights get longer and shorter in regions far from the equator, but it’s fascinating to think about how ancient peoples attributed it to the gods or some intentional force.

This year we’re also being treated to the astronomical rarity of the Jupiter-Saturn “Great Conjunction” – which is truly uncanny in its timing, since we need this phenomenon of bright light more than ever this year. We haven’t witnessed it during night-time hours since 1226!  If anyone believes in miracles or spiritual symbolism, this would be quite the thing to ponder. Some scientists believe this planetary convergence may have been what happened to create the bright “Christmas star” mentioned in the bible that led the wise men to the manger.

My lifelong fascination with the Druids and their henge building is stirred each year as we approach the Solstice. Several years ago I wrote a poem about it, and I had forgotten about the poem until a dear and talented friend shared it with me over the phone the other day. Among the many pieces Paul has chosen to memorize during the Covid lockdown (as a worthwhile mental exercise), he chose this poem of mine. What a beautiful honor! I’ve included the poem here, along with an audio recording of Paul reading it for others to enjoy.

“Winter Solstice” read by Paul Quinn

(Just a note about the opening line of the poem – I hope no one finds it offensive. Sometimes poets choose words and phrases for their sound as much as their meaning, and that’s what I did here. Of course Christians didn’t “steal” the Solstice. They wisely incorporated the powerful metaphors associated with Longest Night into their new message of hope so as to resonate with their followers. But phrasing it that way wouldn’t be nearly as poetic!)

Happy Longest Night, everyone!  May 2021 be a year full of light and love and healing.

—

Winter Solstice  

—

Maybe it’s alright that the

Christians stole the Solstice,

carried it off to church and

dressed it up with stars and crosses

and called the Son their own.

—

Those with ancient blood know

the wreaths and candles and songs

tell a different tale wherein the

promise of the Sun’s rebirth

is powerful enough to bring hope,

and where Elder and Birch are the

wise men who share secrets

with the guardians in their

sacred woodland circles.

—

Once Earth’s darkness told us

to be still and contemplate her

deep womb from which all

life springs; the ancient tombs

at Maeshowe and Newgrange

glowed with the first rays

of our reinvigored god as

he lit upon the buried cairns

promising life would come again.

—

So womb gave way to manger

and Earth’s light to holy child, now

called the hope of all mankind. But on

the longest night under the black

dome of ice, Earth whispers still.

—

Images by: history.com, GroupWorks, CaptureLandscapes

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Sometimes artists just want to improvise — throw convention to the wind, go zig-zagging off somewhere they’ve never been. We can get trapped in a rut of our own making, recycling the same old words, images, tunes. That’s when it’s time to start scatting.

Every week, I spend a good 3-4 days getting through the hundreds of pages of the Sunday New York Times. This week, I let some pages speak to me and channeled some sort of inner jazz tempo to “find” poems in them. Poets call this “erasure” – discovering a poem hiding within a text.  It’s a fun exercise that can shake free the cobwebs, with surprising results. My students used to love it.

A true erasure poem remains on the page with its words highlighted or otherwise set off from the text around it. (See images below, found online.) My poems have been extracted from their texts, but vestiges of their original sources remain.

 

Three Erasure Poems Taken From The New York Times, 11/24/19

 

Original page of text for first poem

 

From “A Honeymoon on a Harley,” an essay by Marcos Villatoro

 

As a child

I came to love

my mother

stitching closed the cloth

across the country

with its elongated words.

 

Gatsby Summer Night by Cathy Dee

When I was

too blind

to worry about

my mother

she worried about

my childhood:

 

A half breed.

A mongrel.

 

Mama told me about

LaSiguanaba

a witch that

ripped out the guts

of bad men.

 

From Snow City by Fred Sasaki (Poetry Foundation)

Hers was a silent warfare

woven into the fabric

of love.

 

 

From “Fathers and Sons,” a review of Tim O’Brien’s Dad’s Maybe Book,

by John Schwartz

 

He wanted to have kids

but he found himself terrified.

His own father had been a mystery.

 

He wrote sentences –

scattershot, cobbled-together defects –

when confronted with his worries.

 

Tom Phillips (Gwarlingo)

He tries to pretend the lasting burdens

of writing are the return to awe –

his unbounded love for his son.

 

 

From “The Mister Rogers No One Saw”

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

 

Deconstruct. Doubt. Distrust

the blank canvas.

Jot down a word.

Enter it. Work for the core

of what you’d like to be.

Carry all the stuff —

filthy, random junk —

a flea market

of the meager and marginalized.

Show the ghosts at the lectern

what God looks like.

 

  *   *   *   *   *

 

The Mowers

But they are not “masses.” They are individual human beings, each with a heart that beats and a soul that I’d imagine is yearning for a bit of peace. Millions of individuals on our planet today desire what they do not have:  a safe place to call home.

By no right can any ancestor of immigrants in America deny to new immigrants the same opportunities their family had. And just as our ancestors needed time and help to become self-sufficient, so do today’s seekers.

All statistics show recent immigrants to be, on average, more consistently reliable employees and more law-abiding than U. S. citizens. The income taxes they pay more than offset the money they receive in public aid — which they need largely because their unskilled jobs pay such low wages. Yet stereotypes abound of “lazy slackers who are gaming the system” – stereotypes that make it easier to scapegoat and hate.

Time Magazine photo

Recent immigrants each have names, families, dreams and ambitions, skills and ideas to offer, and the right to a decent life alongside us.

 

 

 

 

 

They pull in at 7 a.m. sharp on Thursday

as they have every week since April,

every summer for the last 15 years.

The pick-up truck and trailer are nestled

at the curb, cones placed at the front

and back. Three men in orange shirts

and yellow vests unload the machines,

start the engines. Two mowers and

a trimmer wind around the circle of lawns

in the gathering summer heat. By nine

they’re done, packed up and headed out.

 

These men, whose names I do not know,

may or may not be the same who came

last week, last year, or a decade ago.

Black-haired and brown-skinned, they tend

to our yards while we sleep or watch

from windows, sipping our cups of coffee.

Our homeowner’s fees pay their wages,

these men who push mowers all summer,

then snow plows in the cold, plus who knows

what else in between to make ends meet.

 

Some days I step out for the newspaper

and wave hello, exchanging smiles as they

NYTCREDIT: Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos

pull their machines down the wooden ramp.

Self-conscious in my slippers, I wonder

what they think of my clothes or my car,

then remember I am as much of a nobody

to them as they are to me. We go about

our business. Our selves and our plans,

our losses and loves, remain shrouded

from each other as weeks and years go by –

the easy invisibility my privilege affords me

and their need demands of them.