Upon the request of one more poem...

Sermon given February 8, 2015 at South Church, Portsmouth NH
[Story for all ages:  The Tale of Custard the Dragon, Ogden Nash] 

What if we were always listening for the poems around us? If we saw in one another the same beauty and eloquence that we find in written prose? What if we are the poem, the poet, and the audience all at once?

One of my fondest memories from childhood was when my dad would read us bedtime stories.  My three brothers and I would all pile onto the beds in one room or another.  Rest our heads on dad’s belly, into the crook of his arm, or snuggle at his feet. On hot summer nights we’d lay on the floor with our legs running up the wall, soaking in the cool of the plaster.  We listened to stories of magic wardrobes, hobbits and dragons, wrinkles in time.  My dad was great at voices and the characters would come alive as we played footsie, wiggled, and wound down.  I don’t know for how many years this happened, in my mind it was a nightly routine, but I suspect there were nights when we didn’t have stories.  It’s funny the way our memories bloom, and scenes become perfect. 

My favorite nights were the poetry nights.  We had a big dusty gray-blue book of children’s poems that was taped on the binding and its spine creaked when you opened it.  My dad would bring the book in and say to us, pick a number.  And then, he would read the poem on the page we chose.  And sometimes, in picking a random number we’d find a new poem we loved, and sometimes we’d tell him stop, and want to pick again. We quickly amassed a small group of favorites, and as times passed, these were the ones we’d asked for, again and again.

            (from the Casey at the Bat, Ernest Lawrence Thayer)

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;

The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.

And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,

A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

Oh, I loved the Mighty Casey.  Each stanza building and you know in the deep of your gut that he’s going to strike out, but the words aren’t there yet, and somehow you also believe it’s possible this time for him to make contact.  You can taste the dirt of the ballpark in your throat.  The sound of the audience.  The snap of chewing gum, even.  And you can’t help but groan when you get to the end:

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.

I finish those words and I can hear my dad close the book.  And stand up and say goodnight, and I can picture the room going dark, and laying there thinking about Casey and about how it feels to loose, and about the crowd and the spit.  Images and feelings all floating in my mind, as I lay planning which poems I might want to hear next time, and I fall asleep.

I went looking for that book of Poetry on Ebay a few years back and bought it so I’d have it in my own house.  Be able to read poems to my own boys some nights.  I wonder, now, why this seemed the thing to do- like so many pieces of our lives, which we latch on to- believing they are an answer to some question we can’t quite formulate. I imagined that upon opening that book the sound of crickets or spring peepers or cicada’s would fill the room, and the smell of shampoo would waft past, and heavy easy sleep would approach, all from inside the book, just as it was in my memory.  And my boys would have all the gifts from my own childhood, and any mistakes I’ve made would disappear.

                       

And opening those pages would take me back to a time when my siblings and I weren’t yet grown and edgy with each other. That family in my memory is so perfect, so happy.  They sing the Everly Brothers on road trips to Wisconsin and know harmonies to Country Roads by John Denver.  They are perpetually coated in farm dirt and kissed with sunshine, and no one is depressed, no one drinks too much.  No one is lonely or lost.

I suspect I am not the only one of us who still knows Lewis Carroll’s words by heart, who still marvels at the idea of hunting down the Jaberwocky and returning home. It is, in its way, proof that there was a different time, a time we shared with each other so intimately.

            The Jaberwocky, Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

That early love of poems has stayed with me ever since. Often, when I’m grappling with a new experience, or struggling to articulate something, I go looking for poetry.  It does something so complicated with such ease, putting words exactly where I need them.  Telling me that the feelings in my heart are shared.  Reminding me that humanity—humans-- have so much in common.  That the things we share are so much more than the things that separate us.  All that, planted with the seeds of a few poems at bedtime. Of course I would want to do the same.

I wonder why we are able to find these connections in written word?  Somehow we are more willing to let down our guard as we listen to the words of a writer.  We trust in this process, that if we listen with our heart we can make the leap to understanding- and then we find ourselves nodding and laughing or crying or clenching our fists.  Even when we don’t find commonality in words we read, it seems we are, at these moments, willing to understand the perspective being expressed. We are able to connect.  

I’d suggest that our best moments in life happen when we approach the world in the same way.  Open and searching to relate, ready to nod our heads or at least to tip them sideways and try-on this other point of view. Still, most times, I think I lose that perspective in my day to day. I rarely see poetry in the defiance of my son as he refuses to tie his shoes, or wear a hat. I offer only sarcastic mumblings under my breath about the driver in front of me on my way to work. Shaking my head at clips on the news. Feeling desperate about the direction our world seems to be heading.  Most of the time day to day life feels polarized- you are either on my team or you’re… not.

So what is there, in a poem that keeps us so open? How can we use these moments as teaching tools—take them into the kitchen with us as we get the kids ready for school.  Pull them out and lay them on the table as we talk with our spouse about a conflict we feel building. See the people who surround us in our day to day as if they are words in a book, as if they likely have the same dreams and hopes, or at the very least, that they, too, need to be understood. What if we were always listening for the poems around us? 

When I was in college, I would collect favorite poems in a journal. Read them out loud to myself and bask in their righteousness; poems about the strength of women, poems about heartbreak; and about death and loss. My first year away at school, I met a friend who also loved poetry.  We would share favorites with each other, scribbled on a note left under our dorm room doors.  When we moved away we started writing letters, almost always including another poem we thought the other might love. Claire and I still write, though sometimes a year passes between letters these days.  She is in Alaska and I haven’t seen her since 1995, but we still send each other poems.

This is a wildly wonderful thing- that sharing a poem with someone brings you close to each other so quickly. Words crafted by someone else and inspired by some memory unknown to you, but they become your own, somehow.  As if by sharing them, you add your voice to their existence. Certainly, my father is planted deeply in the stanzas of that childhood prose.  Those favorite poems in my 20s have taken on the magic and heartbreak and drama that those days held for me.  Layer after layer of new meaning affixes itself to the life of a poem, and on it goes.  One of the first poems Claire mailed to me when I moved to New Mexico, is forever one of my favorites.  I will share it with you here. It is written by William Carlos Williams:

This is Just to Say

   

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold