Poetry Friday: "Invisible Work" by Kwoya Fagin Maples

 

I subscribe to "Poem-a-Day" at Poets.org, but I must admit my attention ebbs and flows. Sometimes I faithfully, and happily read the poem each day. In other seasons, poetry piles up in my Inbox and I later mass-delete in a frenzy of Inbox cleaning.  

But recently I was walloped by marvelous finds two days in a row — Eve L. Ewing's "eschatology" (which I shared last week) and Kwoya Fagin Maples' "Invisible Work." 

Obviously, that was enough to launch me back into my daily habit. Enjoy this beauty! 

Invisible Work

by Kwoya Fagin Maples

or teachers,      guides whose gestures      I recall better than names

            so much I’ve been taught I have yet to know

but ode            to every stitch of braid past my mother’s fingertips 

sewing countless

                                     buttons for every day my grandmother

cooked and cleaned house twice

& Sis. Eugenia Foster 

who kept my brother and I in summer who taught me 

              steeping and drinking tea  & how      I could call for someone 

but not cry       when they passed over

the wind chimes too        all their constant worry with wind

even after her stroke        my grandmother Dorothy rose on cold 

        nights                    

...

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

Margaret, at Reflections on the Teche, has the Poetry Friday round-up this week. 

Poetry Friday: Eve L. Ewing, on talking to bus drivers and the end of the world

Eve L. Ewing said of this piece: 

"This poem started out as being about the everyday moments that sustain us, born from an interaction with a bus driver. Due, probably, to both the times we live in and my generally apocalyptic character, it also became a poem about the end of the world." 

I gotta love any poet who combines small talk and eschatology. I'm there. 

eschatology
by Eve L. Ewing

i’m confident that the absolute dregs of possibility for this society,
the sugary coffee mound at the bottom of this cup,
our last best hope that when our little bit of assigned plasma implodes
it won’t go down as a green mark in the cosmic ledger,
lies in the moment when you say hello to a bus driver
and they say it back—

when someone holds the door open for you
and you do a little jog to meet them where they are—

....

Read the rest here, at Poets.org. 

I think perhaps my favorite lines from this one — though it's hard to pick a favorite — is: 

"and actually everyone who tried to keep me alive, keep me afloat, /and if not unblemished, suitably repaired."

Carol Varsalona, at Beyond LiteracyLink, has the Poetry Friday round-up today.

(Photo courtesy of William Larsen, Pexels.)

Poetry Friday: James Weldon Johnson

I love this one from James Weldon Johnson (not that I could ever pick a favorite from among all these treasures.) 

Enjoy all kinds of Poetry Friday goodness with Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading. 

Before a Painting

by James Weldon Johnson

I knew not who had wrought with skill so fine
What I beheld; nor by what laws of art
He had created life and love and heart
On canvas, from mere color, curve and line.
Silent I stood and made no move or sign;
Not with the crowd, but reverently apart;
Nor felt the power my rooted limbs to start,
But mutely gazed upon that face divine.

And over me the sense of beauty fell,
As music over a raptured listener to
The deep-voiced organ breathing out a hymn;
Or as on one who kneels, his beads to tell,
There falls the aureate glory filtered through
The windows in some old cathedral dim.

(This poem is in the public domain.)