Diamond Mining

So many lit mags, so many podcasts.
All manner of web searches and untold
number of New Yorker articles interrupted
to go spelunking into a poem
that leads nowhere.
So many musty library smelling books
by the dead or nearly dead.
There’s treasure to be found
but it’s tiresome tedious work.
I keep hope
imagining an African diamond miner
dressed in rags, covered in mud
finding a small gleaming stone
to hide in his gums and steal away with.
I’m not the miner.
I’m one of the villagers
that hears the rumor and joins
the small fevered ring. I am a witness
to the slow cautious reveal
and the startling contrast
of the gemstone
and the scarred and dirty hand.

from Main Street Rag

 

Anne and Alex (two poems by Mary Oliver)

Anne

The daughter is mad, and so
I wonder what she will do.
But she holds her saucer softly
And sips, as people do,
From moment to moment making
Comments of rain and sun,
Till I feel my own heart shaking–
Till I am the frightened one.
O Anne, sweet Anne, brave Anne,
What did I think to see?
The rumors of the village
Have painted you savagely.
I thought you would come in anger–
A knife beneath your skirt.
I did not think to see a face
So peaceful and so hurt.
I know the trouble is there,
Under your little frown;
But when you slowly lift your cup
And when you set it down,
I feel my heart go wild, Anne,
I feel my heart go wild.
I know a hundred children,
But never before a child
Hiding so deep a trouble
Or wanting so much to please,
Or tending so desperately all
The small civilities.

Alex

Where is Alex, keeper of horses?
Nobody knows.
He lived all year in the broken barn,
Dry summer stashed above the eaves.
Now that he’s gone, who grieves, who can,
For Alex of the tangled beard?
The soiled old man,
He chased my brother once,
Waving a rusty gun,
And he had hungry eyes
For money and the bottle.

Last week the town officials
Came in their gleaming trucks
And tore his old barn down,
And the last horse was sold,
And he wasn’t anywhere.
Well, maybe he’s in the madhouse,
And maybe he’s sleeping it off
Down at the edge of town,
Sprawled in a weedy bed,
Dreaming of horses and leather.

And maybe, with luck, he’s dead.

 

In Memory

By Jim Koger, for Jeanne Koger, 1944-2009

Mother Goddess, Mother Supreme.
She could sing the Fab jingle
prettier than the woman on tv.
Inhale the intoxicating scent of Fab
to be found on a bath towel,
then add her own twist:
a pantomime retch,
as if the smell of Fab
was nauseating. When she laughed
she lost herself in laughter.
Big wet rolling tears. The family dog
was always drawn to her,
always followed her, as did I.
She had more kindness and life in her
than any other person on earth. And fire.
Once, when we had been warned
but wouldn’t listen, she stopped the car,
ordered us bickering kids to the curb,
and left a stinging handprint on my thigh.
Smoldering reminder of God’s wrath.
When I was older, we became friends.
I came to know her as a person,
know her strengths and weaknesses.
She was not good
at going with the flow or following along.
That was her strength, or one of them.
A fiercely independent mind
paired with a limitless capacity
for love and kindness
in a life lived as a work in progress.
Always questioning, always seeking,
and never quite satisfied, or so it seemed,
until the end, when it became clear,
to me at least, she had lived exactly
as she intended. She looked back on her life
with pride, and when she passed, she was
not only at peace, she was happy.