Poetry Friday: "Great Things Have Happened" by Alden Nowlan

Do you need to take a beat? Are you longing to sink back in time to a snapshot — both tiny and enormous — of your past? 

Then I give you this lovely poem by Alden Nowlan. 

May you have a Friday of Great Things. 

Great Things Have Happened
by Alden Nowlan

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived

who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

....

(Read the rest here, at The Writer's Almanac.) 

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Marcie Flinchum Atkins has the Poetry Friday round-up this week.  

Photo thanks to Pixabay.

Poetry Friday: "Fireflies" by Frank Ormsby

Do you call them lightning bugs or fireflies? 

Glow worms? 

Something else? 

Whatever you call them, they've probably provided you with a little wonder and a lot of enchantment. I've always been charmed and intrigued by these tiny summer lanterns. As poet Frank Ormsby asks, "What should we make of fireflies, their quick flare/of promise and disappointment, their throwaway style?" 

And just in case you want to know more than you ever thought you'd be able to learn about lightning bugs, I'll point you (just follow the glowing lights) to one of my favorite podcasts, Alie Ward's Ologies. This episode is all about lampyridology. As always happens when I listen to Ologies, I had no idea that I wanted to know this much about the subject at hand. I'm always completely sucked in by each episode and end up sharing fascinating factoids over dinner. ("You will not believe how disgusting baby lightning bugs are! They basically hunt in packs!"*)

* See page 7 of the transcript for the horrifying, funny, interesting conversation about these predatory babies. 

And now, back to something not disgusting and not horrifying: this week's poem. 

Fireflies
by Frank Ormsby

The lights come on and stay on under the trees.
Visibly a whole neighborhood inhabits the dusk,
so punctual and in place it seems to deny
dark its dominion. Nothing will go astray,
the porch lamps promise. Sudden, as though a match
failed to ignite at the foot of the garden, the first squibs
trouble the eye. Impossible not to share
that sportive, abortive, clumsy, where-are-we-now
dalliance with night, such soothing relentlessness.
What should we make of fireflies, their quick flare
of promise and disappointment, their throwaway style?
....
(Read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.)

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The Poetry Friday round-up can be found this week at Bookseed Studio. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: “Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant” by Billy Collins (and other thoughts on aging)

Last week, Tabatha, who happens to be the host of today’s Poetry Friday round-up, mentioned the poem she once wrote for me during a Summer Poem Swap. She touched and delighted me with “Imaginary Billy and I Discuss the Founding Documents.” And since I’m always delighted by the charming Mr. Collins, and since I’m working my way through one of his books for my morning poetry reading, it's only fitting that I share another bit of Billy for this week’s post. 

This one makes me think about how much we get wrong about “old people.” The older I get, the more I see (and experience for myself) the way we lump people of a certain age into a supposedly homogenous group. Elderly. Aged. Retired. Senior citizen. 

From my own experience of getting older, I know that “old people” are just people. People who have been on the planet for a particular amount of time. People who are funny, interesting, boring, grumpy, effervescent, insightful, ignorant, and all manner of wide-ranging personalities. They are people whose bodies keep surprising and betraying them, and believe me, they don’t like it anymore than anyone else does. (Not that I’d know this from personal experience, except, yes, I know this from personal experience.) In August of 2022, when we adopted our kitty, Maisy, the young woman at the animal shelter said, “And since you are over 60, you get the ‘elderly discount’ on the adoption fee.” This is me in 2022: 

And this was my expression when she told me I was elderly: 

I hadn’t felt that old since 2008, when Ramona was five years old and I shared this blog post: 

Anyway. 

I’ll grant you that my hair has gotten grayer in the last three years (what is with that hair at our temples?!) since that visit to the animal shelter, though I still don’t dye it as I’ve always thought coloring it would be too much trouble. But I still don’t feel elderly. I’m like the old man in the Chinese restaurant that Charming Billy introduces us to in this poem. For the most part, I’m livin’ my best life. 

Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant
by Billy Collins 

I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world
and with only a book for a companion.
He'll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour
soup is here at Chang's this afternoon
and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

….

(Read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.)

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Visit Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference for the full round-up of poetic goodness this week. 

Poetry Friday: "There are No Kings in America" by Aileen Cassinetto

This week, Mary Lee Hahn, at A(nother) Year of Reading, is hosting an "Independence Day Roundup of Protest and Praise for This Complicated Country We Call Home." Mary Lee shares a powerful original piece entitled "America."

I didn't get any new writing done this week, but I'm sharing a powerful and timely poem from Aileen Cassinetto, "There are no kings in America," which was first published in 2020.* I've included some excerpts here but be sure to read the whole thing. (Link below.) 

There are no kings in America
by Aileen Cassinetto

we are not that kind of country.
We are sanctuary for the hungry,
the homeless, the huddled,
held together by an idea
our immigrant fathers believed in.

....

To be an American is to
recognize the sacrifice
of the widow and the orphan;
it is to understand the weft of tent
cities expecting caravans,
and the heft of a child in a camp
not meant for children, or sitting
before a judge awaiting judgement.
What do we say to the native
whose lands we now inhabit?
What do we say to our immigrant
fathers who held certain truths
to be self-evident?

.... 

(Read the whole poem here, at Poets.org.) 

* ETA: On Cassinetto's website, she notes that she first presented this poem publicly on July 9, 2019. She writes:

On July 9, 1776, General George Washington ordered the Declaration of Independence to be read aloud to members of the Continental Army in New York. This poem, written in 2019, is a commentary on immigration, and how our actions compare with the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress.

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Photo courtesy of Pixabay.