Poem from assignment: write 10 lines about "I feel..." use imagery

Who Can
 

Touch the tears of trapped and cornered women

counting nickels for grocery money,
while their husbands down another beer at the corner bar.

Smell the songs not yet written as the river sunset

burns in orange and red and waits for nightfall,
or old modal tunes soaked into weathered wood porches.

Taste the wind which fails to rustle through August afternoons

as someone searches for a scrap of shade
beside a now-gone mountain.

Ease weary feet, heavy inside steel-toed boots at 6 PM

on the hottest day of the year.

Understand the curve of a yellow tulip, filled with fragrance,

the promise of pollen covered stigma,
the gentle mourning in its bloom.

Ignore the skin of tomorrow thinning and thinning and thinning.

Older Poem - Remember as I washed my hair this morning

The Ceremony of Hair

 
Today as I wash my hair I think of you,
of my Mother, of my Aunts, of my Grandmothers.
I remember lying across the red countertop,
my head at the edge of the sink,
the rolled towel beneath my neck;
I remember their hands and fingers
wrapping my hair and head with lather and
the rinse, and rinse, and rinse from the well.
I remember the hand pump at the sink
in the house down the holler,
the chill and anticipation of that water.

And I knew other sinks and tubs and

the pleasure and play of that intimate time,
my head raised in expectation and joy
and always the water,
flowing and flowing and flowing.
Afterward the long strokes of comb and
brush, the rise and fall of that cadence
as my hair gave into the rhythm
and my body joined in the rocking.

Now I think of my children.

Recall the texture of their hair
in my hands, the smallness of
a newborn head, their growth beneath
my hand over the years;
I remember length and thickness and the
twirling into spirals and spikes and other shapes,
the laughter of that time, the soapsud tears,
the tangles, the pins, the clips, the ribbons,
the rubber bands and the braids.
I know now their hands fall into
the hair of their children and I
find comfort and pleasure in that vision.

I think of all women now.

Years and years of hair and hands,
wells and springs, rivers and streams
flowing down and through
the brilliant universe of hair.
There is duty everywhere
but nothing as elegant
as this simple ceremony.

Since the mulberries are ripening I thought I'd post this poem again.

Their First Love Story - Pyramus and Thisbe

There is the sun and slight morning chill;

There are the mulberries outside the window

ripening, without instruction;

White, green, palest pink, a certain sort-of orange

moving toward red and their

soon-to-be lush darkness.

There are the mocking birds and blue jays

eager among the branches

their choral delights fill the open window,

praise from the uncoached throat;

The silk of ordinary miracles spins.

There is the sun and a slight morning chill.