The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Fri 4/25/2008)

[RetroLounge]

First Gestures

Among the first we learn is good-bye,
your tiny wrist between Dad's forefinger
and thumb forced to wave bye-bye to Mom,
whose hand sails brightly behind a windshield.
Then it's done to make us follow:
in a crowded mall, a woman waves, "Bye,
we're leaving," and her son stands firm
sobbing, until at last he runs after her,
among shoppers drifting like sharks
who must drag their great hulks
underwater, even in sleep, or drown.

Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map--
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once. Think of the time
and things we accumulate, all the while growing
more conscious of losing and leaving. Aging,
our bodies collect wrinkles and scars
for each place the world would not give
under our weight. Our thoughts get laced
with strange aches, sweet as the final chord
that hangs in a guitar's blond torso.

Think how a particular ridge of hills
from a summer of your childhood grows
in significance, or one hour of light--
late afternoon, say, when thick sun flings
the shadow of Virginia creeper vines
across the wall of a tiny, white room
where a girl makes love for the first time.
Its leaves tremble like small hands
against the screen while she weeps
in the arms of her bewildered lover.
She's too young to see that as we gather
losses, we may also grow in love;
as in passion, the body shudders
and clutches what it must release.

Julia Spicher Kasdorf

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Julia Spicher Kasdorf was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, in 1962. She was educated at Goshen College and New York University. Her books of poetry include Eve's Striptease (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) and Sleeping Preacher (1992), which received the 1991 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Award for New Writing in 1993.

She is also the author of the biography Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American (2003) and The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life, 1991-1999 (2001), which won the Book of the Year Award from the Modern Language Association's Conference on Christianity and Literature. With Michael Tyrell, she edited the anthology Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn (2007).

Her work has been described by the poet Eamon Grennan as "Crosshatched by body, spirit, and the relation between them; animated by bright instinctive exchanges between carnal and religious zones of experience; driven by an honest, explicitly female consciousness of what 'animal' and 'soul' might mean."

Kasdorf's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Poetry, as well as numerous anthologies, including the 2003 Pushcart collection. She currently teaches creative writing at Pennsylvania State University.


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:hi:

RL

[lizziegrace]

1. ..

"as we gather
losses, we may also grow in love

I'm done accumulating my share of losses - maxed out.

:hug:

[RetroLounge]

2. Careful. Don't tempt fate...

:hug:

RL

[lizziegrace]

3. Had enough of the losses

time to cash in on some of the love I've earned...

[RetroLounge]

8. Good plan...

:hug:

RL

[xchrom]

4. ...

Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map--
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once.

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. My dear Retro...

Oh, this is as perfect a poem as I have ever had the privilege to read...

It breaks my heart with its perfect description of life, loss, and love...

Wow...

Thank you!

:hug:

[RetroLounge]

7. ...

:hug:

RL