Poetry Reading Today

Every semester the library hosts a poetry reading. Today was the day. Several students read their own poetry and several faculty. This is the dean of the library reading the selection he chose for this event.

This is the first semester that my schedule didn't get in the way of my participating. So I gathered four of my favorites and read them. Maxine Kumin's "Our Ground Time Here will be Brief" and Ted Kooser's "A Perfect Heart" and from a colleague that teaches English in Sacramento, Thomas E. Miner's "Empty Nest."

I also read one of my own poems "Morning Musings." I actually think I've included it here previously in the pages of my journal, but at the moment I am not sure where. I wrote it early one Sunday morning after our grandkids had been here all afternoon and part of Saturday evening while their parents were out. When I woke the next morning, I walked downstairs, saw what was left behind, sat down at my computer, and quickly wrote this:


Morning Musings

Downstairs chairs are robed like royalty. Large
Colorful cotton towels cling loosely to white plastic
Skeltons, dried in formation, remnants of a gala
Gathering of wet grandchildren.

This morning the house seems huge. The
Rooms swell with emptiness. The refrigerator
Purrs a monotonous monologue; it's the only voice
In this house.

Outside, the pool water now still and growing
Stagnant, without one wet footprint decorating the
Cement. Every floaty toy deflated. Lizards run
Unafraid along the garden bricks.

I descend carpeted stairs and wander the length of polished
Tile looking for a trace of my legacy of three. The only place I find
Life -- feel their supple skin, see their youthful smiles, hear their
Juvenile jargon -- is in their melody that lingers as I sit amongst these towels.


Good night from Southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol

P.S. I found these notes I wrote years ago in one of the books of poems: It is better to open a poem up too far than to have poetry closed to me. When does an image lift itself up from what it means?

P.P.S. I really am not a poet, but occasionally I enjoy writing a poem.