A Kitchen-Window Poem
Not quite so big a collection as Bus Poems, but give me time.
A trifle this week, a tiny nod to the hootenanny down in Hollywood on Sunday night. My kitchen window is as close as I'll ever get to a red-carpet event of any kind, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that.
MOON ON THE EVENING OF THE ACADEMY AWARDS
Two nights from the full,
round-bellied, radiant in a shadow-blue sky,
fluttering a feather boa of cloud,
glancing south toward the red carpet and the stars
but in no rush, content to linger
and keep me company at my kitchen window,
peering over the backyard fence
like a neighbor gossip in her best clothes.[You can listen to an audio version of the poem using the little widget above the photograph.]
In the midst of [looks around, waves her arms] everything, what in the world is the point of making a movie? Or a couture dress for a movie star to wear to the Academy Awards? Or a silly poem about the view from one’s kitchen window on Oscars night?
Maybe no point. Or maybe it’s repeated small actions for good, carried out with great attention — making, mending, cleaning, tending, attention attention attention — that allow love and healing to enter the world, in one small way after another.
Anyway, it was nice of the moon to look in and say hello, when she clearly had places to be.
I love this, Elizabeth. Especially this paragraph, which is exactly the wisdom my broken heart needs today: "[M]aybe it’s repeated small actions for good, carried out with great attention — making, mending, cleaning, tending, attention attention attention — that allow love and healing to enter the world, in one small way after another." Thank you.
Lots to ponder here. Both in your lovely poems and your thoughts that follow it. It is the attention we give that etches our memories for later years. And as some have said, in the end, our memories are all that we have.