Some People Can Really Say It For Us

 Laure-Anne Bosselaar

It seems like so much is going on.  Some is personal, so much has a national and an international impact.  Some is good, some is not.  So many lives impacted.  Some hurting. Some rejoicing.  Some afraid,  Some hopeful. Some just living on.  That's why I love this poem.  It reminds me that Heaven knows about it all, too.  Laure-Anne Bosselaar is a very talented contemporary poet, don't you think?  Try to read it through to the end.  I think you'll like it.




The Worlds in this World

Doors were left open in heaven again: 

drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages 

around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters 

flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town,

its last angles caught in sopped

newspaper wings and billowing plastic — 

all this in one American street. 

Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide 

recedes, incense is lit, an infant 

sucks from a nipple, a grenade

shrieks, a man buys his first cane. 

Think of it: the worlds in this world. 

Yesterday, while a Chinese woman took 

hours to sew seven silk stitches into a tapestry 

started generations ago, guards took only

seconds to mop up a cannibal’s brain from the floor 

of a Wisconsin jail, while the man who bashed 

the killer’s head found no place to hide, 

and sat sobbing for his mother in a shower stall —

the worlds in this world. 

Or say, one year — say 1916: 

while my grandfather, a prisoner of war 

in Holland, sewed perfect, eighteen-buttoned 

booties for his wife with the skin of a dead 

dog found in a trench; shrapnel slit 

Apollinaire's skull, Jesuits brandished 

crucifixes in Ouagadougou, and the Parthenon 

was already in ruins. 

That year, thousands and thousands of Jews 

from the Holocaust were already — were 

still — busy living their lives; 

while gnawed by self-doubt, Rilke couldn’t 

write a line for weeks in Vienna’s Victorgasse, 

and fishermen drowned off Finnish coasts, 

and lovers kissed for the very first time,

while in Kashmir an old woman fell asleep, 

her cheek on her good husband's belly. 

And all along that year the winds 

kept blowing as they do today, above oceans 

and steeples, and this one speck of dust 

was lifted from somewhere to land exactly 

here, on my desk, and will lift again — into 

the worlds in this world.

Say now, at this instant: 

one thornless rose opens in a blue jar above 

that speck, but you — reading this — know 

nothing of how it came to flower here, and I 

nothing of who bred it, or where, nothing 

of my son and daughter’s fate, of what grows 

in your garden or behind the walls of your chest: 

is it longing? Fear? Will it matter?

Listen to that wind, listen to it ranting

The doors of heaven never close,

that’s the Curse, that’s the Miracle.

 by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Jabberwocky and Beyond For My Scholarly Friends

You may have heard me brag at one time or another that I had memorized the following poem in high school for some insane reason, but you may not have realized how much I truly loved it.

During the viewing of the recent phenomenal Alice in Wonderland with the equally phenomenal Johnny Depp, there was a bit of schoolin' afoot concerning some of the vocabulary in the poem like the "frabjous day" and the like, and I, with my inquiring mind, took it a step further to Wikipedia and found much, much more.  Much.  The link follows the poem and if you know what's good for you, you'll follow it as well.  There's all kinds of fascinating other info included as well.  

I all ready knew that the beast itself was not the Jabberwocky but merely the "Jabberwock".  The name of the poem is "Jabberwocky" for obvious reasons.




JABBERWOCKY
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


And now, follow the link or pay:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky

Grandma's Shoes (Today is Daughter's of the Utah Pioneers Christmas Party)

When I was very little
My grandmas (there were two)
Always wore the same black kind
Of ugly grandma shoes.

You know the kind I mean, right?
The clunky lace-up kind
That looked so very awful?
Well, it weighed upon my mind

For I knew, when I grew old
I’d have to wear those shoes.
I’d think of that, from time to time
It seemed like such bad news.

Not being a rebel, I
wore saddle shoes to school,
Next came ballerinas
then sandals, pretty cool.

Then came spikes with pointed toes
Then platforms, very tall.
As each new fashion came along
I wore them, one and all.

But always, in the distance,
Looming in my future there
Was that awful pair of shoes,
The kind that Grandmas wear.

Eventually I got married
And then became a Mom
My kids grew and grew, and then
Grand kids came along.

And when I was a Grandma
It still was quite a scare
Thinking that those clunky shoes
Were what I’d have to wear.

But fashions kept evolving
And one day I realized
That the shape of things to come
Was such a great surprise

Cause now when I go shopping
What I see fills me with glee
And in my jeans and Reeboks
I’m comfy as can be.

And I look at these teenage girls
And there, upon their feet
Are clunky, black, old Grandma shoes.
Now that’s what I call neat.

Author Unknown