Lately, because of my craaaaazy life (new teaching gig/teenager issues/sis's problems), I have been unable to finish any novel I begin. Instead, I turn to poetry. I can get in and get out and be entertained and enlightened in the short process.
Currently I am enjoying
Good Poems, a collection featured on
The Writer's Almanac, (an edifying web site if ever one existed) and edited by one Garrison Keillor, whom I would immediately track down and seduce should his wife leave him. Yeah, yeah, I know he's "old" and "not all that attractive," but day-um I love the way he thinks and writes. I've always maintained that the sexiest part of a man is his brain.
Digression.
Sorry. My ADD is a-flame.
Thus, I present one of my favorite all-time poems. When I taught high school, "Courage" was in our literature anthology. The students had great fun snickering over the poet's last name, Sexton. Such is adolescence.
"Courage," by Anne Sexton
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
