Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    Soiled Dove
        by Carl Sandburg
         from Complete Poems
    
    Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a
        corporation lawyer who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus.
    Before then she never took anybody's money and paid for her silk
        stockings out of what she earned singing and dancing.
    She loved one man and he loved six women and the game was changing
        her looks, calling for more and more massage money and high
        coin for the beauty doctors.
    Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself, reads
        in the day's papers what her husband is doing to the inter-state
        commerce commission, requires a larger corsage from year to
        year, and wonders sometimes how one man is coming along with
        six women.
    

    Harrison Street Court
        by Carl Sandburg
         from Complete Poems
    
    
    I heard a woman's lips 
    Speaking to a companion
    Say these words:
    
    "A woman what hustles
    Never keeps nothin'
    For all her hustlin'.
    Somebody always gets
    What she goes on the street for.
    If it ain't a pimp
    It's a bull what gets it.
    I been hustlin' now
    Till I ain't much good any more.
    I got nothin' to show for it.
    Some man got it all,
    Every night's hustlin' I ever did."
    

    Old Woman
        by Carl Sandburg
         from Complete Poems
    
    
    The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
    From building and battered paving-stone;
    The headlight scoffs at the mist
    And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
    Against a pane I press my forehead
    And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.
    
    The headlight finds the way
    And life is gone from the wet and the welter - 
    Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared
    Far-wandered waif of other days,
    Huddles for sleep in a doorway,
    Homeless.
    

    Working Girls
       by Carl Sandburg
         from Complete Poems
    
    
    The working girls in the morning are going to work - long lines
        of them afoot amid the downtown stores and factories, thousands
        with little brick-shaped lunches wrapped in newspapers under
        their arms.
    Each morning as I move through this river of young-woman life I
        feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach
        bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and
        memories in their eyes of dances the night before and plays
        and walks.
    Green and gray streams run side by side in a river and so here are
        always the others, those who have been over the way, the women
        who know each one the end of life's gamble for her, the meaning
        and the clue, the how and the why of the dances and the arms
        that passed around their waists and the fingers that played
        in their hair.
    

    "The Woman Inside"
            by Michael Blumenthal
            from "Days We Would Rather Know"
    
    
    There is a woman
    inside me.
    She is not beautiful
    or divine,
    but when I turn
    in my sleep, restless
    with other worlds,
    she is always there -
    placing a lilac
    in my hand, gesturing
    to the earth where 
    it all begins and
    all ends.  She knows
    there are cruel men
    everywhere, and angels
    in unlikely places.
    She knows the darkness
    is only a passage
    between light and light,
    that the wisteria
    climbing the house
    are real, and lust
    only tenderness gone wild
    in the wrong field.
    She is the one who is
    always fertile in times
    of barrenness, the one
    with the silver hair
    carrying a candle
    through the long tunnel.
    She is Halcyone,
    calming the waters
    after all my deaths;
    she is Eurydice,
    refusing to fade
    when I look behind me.
    She is the one
    who wakes
    with her arms around me
    when I wake
    alone.
    

    The Pleasures of Old Age
               by Michael Blumenthal
               from "Against Romance"
    
    
    When my grandmother Lisette turned ninety-nine,
    all she could think of was men -
    how they would enter her room during the night
    from the vast mixer of the mind, wild
    with desire, drunk with a desperate love
    for only her.  All day she sat, spectacle-less,
    over romance magazines, until, at night,
    she could dream them back into her arms,
    those beautiful men, and, when morning came,
    rise from her immaculate bed, pink
    with the glow of the newly deflowered,
    to enter the world again.  All over our island
    that was Manhattan, bachelors sprouted like dandelions
    in the field of her hungers - Baruch Oestrich, stifled
    by shyness at eighty-eight, for whom she would primp for hours;
    Hugo Marx, a youthful seventy-seven, but too tired to notice;
    Walter Hass, a sprightly eighty, who had sat shivah
    for his wife for thirty years.  Afternoons,
    like a young girl dateless at prom time,
    she would wait by the phone, sure that deliverance
    would come in the voice of some stranger, resolved
    that her double digitry would grow centuried
    in a whirl of romance.  I don't know what she was thinking
    that day, when she fell from the top of the stairs
    to die at the bottom, but I like to imagine
    it was of who would enter her room that night,
    and of her great joy in beautiful men -
    how she had trembled for them once,
    how she would gladly tremble for them again,
    even now.
    

    if I have made, my lady, intricate
    imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
    your eyes(frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
    songs less firm than your body's whitest song
    upon my mind-if i have failed to snare
    the glance too shy-if through my singing slips
    the very skillful strangeness of your smile
    the keen primeval silence of your hair

    -let the world say "his most wise music stole
    nothing from death"-
			you only will create
    (who are so perfectly alive) my shame:
    lady through whose profound and fragile lips
    the sweet small clumsy feet of April came

    into the ragged meadow of my soul.

    ee cummings
    "IS 5"
    Harcourt, Brace & World, inc. NY,NY 1926

    This poem is one my mother cut of of a newspaper many years ago, she
    always wanted to show it to my father but never did.
    So for all of you women who are or once were wives and mothers:
    
    
    		Regardless of what you think woman should be,
    		I'm a separate being, a person, I'm me.
    		
                Not just your wife and not just their mother,
    		I don't and can not live just for another.
    
    		I never was born to martyr myself,
    		to put my dreams away on a shelf.
    
    		The things I want are so pitifully few,
    		it seems very little I'm asking from you.
    
    		I want faith and respect and a very small part
    		of the love you must carry down deep in your heart.
    
    		I don't want to be taken for granted or bossed;
    		I don't wnat myself as I am to be lost.
    
    		Maybe I'm not all you'd like me to be,
    		but if you'd just open your heart you could see,
    		that just as I am I feel I am worth,
    		the right to be me for my whole stay on earth.
    
    
                

    Rel: -1
    
    Thank you for that one!
    
    Barb

        In those times when Nature in powerful zest
	Conceived each day monstrous children,
	I would have loved to live near a young giantess,
	A voluptuous cat at the feet of a queen.

	I would have loved to see her body flower with her soul,
	To grow up freely in her prodigious play;
	To find if her heart bred some dark flame
	Amongst the humid mists swimming in her eyes;

	To run leisurely over her marvellous lines;
	To creep along the slopes of her enormous knees,
	And sometimes in summer, when impure suns

	Made her wearily stretch out across the countryside,
	To sleep carelessly in the shadow of her breasts,
	Like a peaceful village at the foot of a mountain.

    Charles Baudelaire from the "Selected Poems of CB".
    translated from French by Geoffrey Wagner
    Grove Press 1974

		HAIR


	In a scene in the film
	shot at Bergen-Belsen days after
	the liberation of the camp
	a woman brushes her hair.

	Though her gesture is effortless
	it seems also for the first time,
	as if she has just remembered
	that she has long hair,

	that it is a pleasure
	to brush, and that pleasure
	is possible. And the mirror
	beside which the camera must be rolling,

	the combing out and tying back
	of the hair, all possible.
	She wears a new black sweater
	the relief workers have brought,

	clothes to replace the body's
	visible hungers. Perhaps
	she is a little shy of the camera,
	or else she is distracted

	by the new wool and plain wonder
	of the hairbrush, because
	on her face is a sort of dulled,
	dreamy look, as if the part

	of herself that recognizes
	the simple familiar good of brushing
	is floating back into her,
	the way the spiritualists say

	the etheric body returns to us
	when we wake from sleep's long travel.
	With each stroke she restores
	something of herself, and one

	at a time the arms and hands
	and face remember, the scalp
	remembers that her hair
	is a part of her, her own.


	      	-- Mark Doty, from his book
		Turtle, Swan, 1987

    re .11
    
    I don't usually read poetry, but that was truly beautiful.  
    Thanks.
    
    Nancy

	
    Warning:  When I am an old woman I shall wear purple...
    With a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
    And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer 
    gloves and satin sandals, and say we've no money 
    for butter.
    
    I shall sit on the pavement when I'm tired 
    and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
    and run my stick along the public railings and 
    make up for the sobriety of my youth.
    		
    I shall go out in my slippers in the rain 
    and pick flowers from  other people's gardens
    and learn to spit.
    
    You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat 
    and eat 3 pounds of sausage at a go
    or only bread and pickles for a week
    and hoard pens and pencils and beer mats 
    and things in boxes.
    
    But now we must have clothes to keep
    us dry and pay our rent and not 
    swear in the street and set a good
    example for the children.
    
    We will have friends to dinner and read the papers.
    But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
    So people who know me are not too shocked
    and surprised when suddenly I am 
    old and start to wear purple.
    
    Jenny Joesph
    

    Comes the dawn
    
    After awhile you learn the subtle difference
    between holding a hand and chaining a soul
    and you learn that love doesn't mean security
    and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
    and presents aren't promises.
    
    And you begin to accept your defeats 
    with your head up and your eyes open
    with the grace of a woman -- not the grief of a child.
    And you learn to build all your roads
    on today because tomorrows ground
    is too uncertain -- And futures have a way 
    of falling down in mid flight.
    
    And after awile you learn that even sunshine burns
    If you get too much.
    So you plant your garden and decorate your soul
    instead of waiting
    for someone to bring you flowers
    
    And you learn that you really can endure...
    That you really are strong
    and that you really do have worth
    and you learn and learn
    With every goodbye you learn.
    
    
    

    This is something I wrote a few days ago that I thought the =wn=
    community might enjoy -- not as good as Sandburg and Millay, I'm
    afraid . . . 
    
    
                     The Empty Nest
          (c) 1990 Bonnie Randall Schutzman. All rights reserved.
    
    	We lay on the bank by the pond in the dark
    	After the children ran us ragged, 
    	"Will you go to sleep now?" we said, and they giggled, "Never,"
    	And ran away screaming.
    	We chased them around the fire
    	And ended the tag with a kiss.

	In winter now I treasure that kiss
	And the games we played in the dark.
	I gather kindling for the fire.
	My hands are old and ragged.
	Outside the blizzard is screaming
	And I ache with the flame of never.

	I asked, "When will you go?" And you said, "Never,"
	And you closed my mouth with a kiss
	Nighthawks swooped, their tiny screaming
	Finding mosquitos in the dark.
	The wind-torn clouds were ragged,
    	Flashing blue with lightning's fire.

	I sit alone and tend the fire.  
	Its baleful heart hisses, "Never."
	Sleep's careworn knitting leaves my mind's sleeve ragged.
	Do the mountains miss the morning's kiss
	While they wait alone in the dark?
	Do they ever wake up screaming?

	You held our firstborn in his screaming,
	Warmed his bottle by the fire
	And walked him through a house grown quiet and dark.
	"Is he asleep?" I asked, and you almost laughed.  "Never,
	I think.  Here, he wants a kiss."
	Who minded that our clothes were poor and the quilt 
                 for his bed was ragged?

	The wound in his chest was ragged.
	I pounded the pillow, screaming,
    	"What use now is a mother's kiss
    	When the enemy's fire
    	Has frozen all our dreams?  We will never
    	Forget those games in the dark."
    	
	Through ragged tears I watch the fire
	And run screaming through my dreams.  I cry, "Never?"
	And the answer is a bloodless kiss from a world forever dark.

    
	       FROM BLOSSOMS



	From blossoms comes
	this brown paper bag of peaches
	we bought from the boy
	at the bend in the road where we turned toward
	signs painted "Peaches."

	From laden boughs, from hands,
	from sweet fellowship in the bins,
	comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
	peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
	comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

	O, to take what we love inside,
	to carry within us an orchard, to eat
	not only the skin, but the shade,
	not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
	the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
	the round jubilance of peach.

	There are days we live
	as if death were nowhere
	in the background; from joy
	to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
	from blossom to blossom to
	impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

		-- Li-Young Lee, from his book Rose, 1986
    
    
    
    
    (ok, so it's about peaches, but they're fruit, right? produced by the
    feminine, right? anyway it seemed feminine somehow...) 

    <------That was beautiful!
    
    
    Barb

	
     
    People hug us and cry 
    and pray we'll be strong
    and know we'll see her again someday 
    And we nod and they pat and rub 
    reassuring her to heaven

	She's with Jesus now
	no suffering where she is 

    Then sit on hard benches and sing
    of precious memories how they linger
    and farther along we'll understand it

	Cheer up my brother 
	We're not forgotten
    
    The preacher studies his Bible and stares at the ceiling
    and the song leader in his blue funeral suit sweats
    and strokes the air 
    with a callused hand

	We'll understand it
	all bye and bye

    And powdered and rosy cheeked
    Miss Anne sleeps in an open coffin
    the children standing tiptoe to see through the flowers
    but scared to go near and drawing back when lifted
    And the choir brings a balm in Gilead
    and a roll is called up yonder

	When the trumpet of the lord shall sound
	and time shall be no more
    
    And big men shake heads white at the hat line
    while women weep and flutter air with palm leaf fans
    And later we stand amidst the stones
    by the mound of red clay our eyes wet against the sun 
    and listen to preachers and mockingbirds
    and the 23rd Psalm

	
    II
    
    Men stand uneasy in ties 
    and nod their hats to ladies
    and kick gravel with shoes too tight
    and talk about life

	Nobody no better'n Miss Anne
        No Sir
	No Sir
    
    Smoking bull durhams around the porch
    shaking their heads to agree
    and sucking wind through their teeth

	Never let you go thirsty
	bring a jugga tea to the field
	ever day
    
    They open doors for us and look at the ground
    as if by not seeing our faces they become invisible
    There are not enough chores
    so three draw well water
    and two get the mail
    and four feed the dogs
    and the rest chop wood
    and wish for something to say 

	Lester broke his arm one time 
	and Miss Anne plowed that mule
	like a man
	put in the whole crop
    
    And they talk of crops and plowing 
    of rain and sun and flood and drought
    The seasons passing in memory
    marking changes in years and lives
    that men remember at times
    when there's nothing to say
    
    III
    
    Ladies come with sad faces
    and baskets of sweets 
    teacakes, pecan pies, puddings, memories
    and we choose and they serve
    telling stories and god blessing the children
    
	I declare that Miss Anne 
	was the sweetest Christian person
	in the world
    
    Saying all the things to be said
    doing all the things to be done 
    like orderly spirits
    freshening beds from the grieving night
    poking up fires gone cold
    filling the table and sideboard
    then gathering there to urge and cajole
    as if the dead rest easier on our full stomachs

	Lord how Miss Anne would have loved that country ham
    
    No sadness so great it cannot be fed away
    by the insistent spirits

	That banana cake is her very own recipe
	I remember how she loved my spoon bread
	She canned the berries in this cobbler
    
    And suddenly we are transformed
    and eat and smile and thank you
    and the ladies nod and know they have done well again
    in time of need
    And the little girls watch and learn
    And we forget the early spring cemetery
    and the church with precious memories
    and farther along we do understand it
    the payments and repayments
    of all the ladies that were and are 
    and we pray ever will be. Amen


    James A. Autry
    Nights under a Tin Roof

		DAPHNE


		  I

	Of yourself and your beginnings,
	these scattered images
	say what you are
	and what you may become.

	Morning, and Spring come again
	to the island where you live,
	always Daphne. Soul of the wind,

	there are vines at your throat,
	your ear thinned to a shell
	that listens to water and the vice
	of a sea bird crying in the fog.


		  II

	I know three women that are you:

	One keeps track of the silver
	in a box of drawers, she loves
	the glitter and the falling sound.

	Another climbs all day the rooms
	in a vacant house; she rocks
	at night before a fire, reads
	from a large red book, withheld
	and alone.
		   And the third
	calls music from a heart of wood.


		  III

	You rise from your sleep
	as from a lover gone silent and cold.
	You walk in a sunken green light,
	stand before your water mirror,
	then cut off your hair.

	I find you, I lose you. You change,
	stand fast in a makeshift of shadows;
	you leave, and ferry my heart away.

	Your voice from its inner distance
	saying your poem, your myth,
	born from the bark of your tree.

		-- John Haines, from Cicada, 1977

    
    
    			Old men stand
    			around her tiny form
    			gibbering like
    			circus clowns
    			giving up their dignity
    			for her smile
    			for her smile
    			for her
    
    			Young men stand
    			cool pretensions lost
    			to nervous glances
    			none will say the words
    			but each would give his soul
    			for her heart
    			for her heart
    			for her
    
    			Lost men stand
    			around her quiet form
    			father, brother, lover, friend
    			the time was just too brief
    			each will grieve a different way
    			for her love
    			for her love
    			for her
    
    			- Anonymous
    
    			kj
    

I wrote this in 1986 when my grandmother became ill and we all became
worried.  In the poem life ends, (or more precisely, is "interrupted"),
but my grandmother recovered and is still with us today.  The rebirth of
the Spring season naturally brings this poem to my mind.

Sandy Ciccolini




			THE PACT


		Spring waits in a whisper.
		Poised on thin ice, her tantative step
		Awaits its acceptance in patient repose,
		Then with delicate hesitancy,
		She lifts her toes.
		
		Beyond the equinox the soft days of May,
		Secure in their footing and resting on promises kept,
		Will linger and flirt to tease and attract,
		And with the weight of their heat firm and exact,
		Force life from the wasteland of what life lacked,
		On point in the perpetual dance of the pact.

		Cling as we did in the shadows of Fall,
		Drawn together at the Winter's call.
		Leaves that were taken long on the wind,
		Hear the wind in the trees and gather again.

		Consanguineous circles with backs to the cold,
		Suckle the young and comfort the old.
		As we braced for the struggle in fear of the known,
		She withdrew at the solstice and left us alone.

		And so we remain in the grips of our fate,
		On the snow-covered hillsides to ponder and wait.
		The emptiness threatens, grip tightens and then,
		Spring lifts her tentative leg again.
    

    I wrote this one around 1984 to mark a beautiful rainy morning,
    which I used as a setting for a woman who is realizing that she 
    has fallen in love, and who goes through many emotions before ultimately
    surrendering to that fact.  I may have posted this one in an earlier
    version of wn.
    
    			RAIN IN THE MORNING
    
    		In the rain in the morning,
    		When I think of him in bed,
    		In that strong and silent solitude
    		Except for what we've said,
    		I could blindly pour the coffee,
    		I could settle down to read,
    		And discover I'm caressing
    		Such a private greed.
    		My mind becomes my lover,
    		And then my enemy,
    		And worst of all,
    		Cold indifference,
    		Through which I fail to see
    		The softness and the sweetness
    		That has him wanting me,
    		And missing, almost craving
    		Sweet mediocrity.
    
    		But deeper into panic,
    		Then up to ecstacy,
    		I'm paralyzed in passing
    		By this strange passivity.
    		Skipping over calmness,
    		Headlong into hell,
    		From loathing into loving,
    		(Oh, I knew me once so well!)
    
    		But now the feeling is the fire
    		And that mandatory dread,
    		Is just a flicker in the distance
    		When I think of what we've said.
    		And the gentle mist sedates me
    		When I see where this has led,
    		In the rain in the morning
    		When I think of him in bed.     

    This one I wrote when I was thinking about the possibility of
    reincarnation and weaving a terrific fantasy that the odd quirks we 
    have as humans may be the vestigial remnants of past lives.  And if so,
    then is there any such thing as free will?  I was also trying out a new
    poetic form I learned, the villanele, (sp?), which has strict rules for
    rhyme, meter and stanza structure like a sonnet or a haiku does.
    
    		
    			FREE WILL
    
    		All the things I had to have and be,
    		The wants, the needs, the ways to make things last,
    		Ignored the antecedent, (he or she).
    	
    		Half dozing with the paper over me,
    		A myoclonic jolt and then it's passed.
    		I'll win the things I want to have and be.
    
    		But in my books as far as I can see,
    		The truths are not without a suble cast.
    		That craving antecedent, (he or she). 
    
    		My deepest fears make no real sense to me.
    		Covert and brief, these moments hold me fast
    		To all the things *it* used to have and be.
    
    		Collect yourself, and know your will is free!
    		I turned but just went forward in the past
    		And met the antecedent, (HE not she!).
    
    		My life's inclined by this new subtlety,
    		For who it was and when it was at last
    		Are now the things I need to have and be
    		To calm the antecedent one, (and me!).
    		
                   

    I am a woman 
    and a warrior born
    I am a poor woman
    and afforded no armor
    
    Yor flesh is the only silk
    I will feel against my skin

    Noon Hour
       by Carl Sandburg
    
    She sits in the dust at the walls
      And makes cigars,
    Bending at the bench
    With fingers wage-anxious
    Changing her sweat for the day's pay.
    
    Now the noon hour has come,
    And she leans with her bare arms
    On the window-sill over the river,
    Leans and feels at her throat
    Cool-moving things out of the free open ways:
    
    At her throat and eyes and nostrils
    The touch and the blowing cool
    Of great free ways beyond the walls.
    
    
    (from Complete Poems, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.,NY)
    

    
    Note: This was a poem I wrote for my daughter Christine by her request.
    
                           THE JOY I ONCE HELD
    
                          I held you in my arms
                          to keep you from all harm.
                          Your tiny eyes were smiling
                          just for me my little darling.
    
    
                          Your face so fair, beyond compare
                          these moments are oh so rare.
                          Hands and feet so pink and small
                          they make me feel so tall.
    
     
                          Time passes by, the tears they go
                          baby then, young lady now,
                          soon a Lady you will be.
                          My thoughts are always of thee.
    
    
                          Someday a mother you'll be
                          with children of your own.
                          Then you too will know of 
                          the joy I once held.
    
    
    
                                                 Lenny Sundblom
                                                  WMOIS::Sundblom_L

    Wanted to share this beautiful poem that Carla Blazek wrote about an
    experience that she, Nanci VanFleet, Carole Fretts, Karen Berggren, and
    I shared this weekend.  Carla has captured in words an interlude in
    time that I will cherish always.
    
    
	Uncommon Women
	--------------

	staggered, one by one, soul by soul
	brought us together
	in a setting ne'er before set
	in a lifetime ne'er before met
	in a desert ne'er before wet

	and the golden threads connecting
	our hearts pulsate with abalone love
	tough and shatterproof yet
	nourishing and soft, amazing
	how destiny set in motion
	the gentle waves that washed
	us ashore, sealogged, foamy,
	squinting at the white sand
	unsure of our legstrength and
	whether we could swim and walk
	if one is easier than the other
	forgetful, perhaps ashamed, that
	we can do both
	with grace and strength
	with our hands intertwined
	and our hearts alive
	and our eyes ablaze
	and our spirits aflame

	between the threads are memories
	between the memories are silent reflections
	of past connections
	as powerful as the sea which guided us here
	to the now
	to the healer's room
	and it is as it was

	five crones weaving a blanket
	five spiders spinning a web
	five sunrises gracing Mother Earth
	five candles flickering in a storm
	five hurricanes, beautiful in their strength

	as we are

	crashing, rising, rebuilding,
	relearning, accepting, chanting,
	laughing, rejoicing, touching,
	healing, resting, living

	dance, sisters, rise
	let us go within to find the way
	let us find the way to embrace our power
	and to find our voice
	and to never fear the gifts we hold
	together, we can
	united, we will

	- clb
	  6/26/91