The Little Ways that Encourage Good Fortune

Wisdom is having things right in your life
And knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
You will be overwhelmed:
You may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you do not have things right in your life
But do not know why,
You are just lucky, and you will not move
In the little ways that encourage good fortune.

The saddest are those not right in their lives
Who are acting to make things right for others:
They act only from the self
And that self will never be right:
No luck, no help, no wisdom.

William Stafford

After a While

After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn
That love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t always mean security.
And you begin to learn
That kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman, not the grief
Of a child
And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down
In mid-flight.
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns
If you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting for someone
To bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure,
You really are strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn
And you learn
With every goodbye, you learn…

Veronica Shoffstall

Respite

And then this morning, on the seventh day of crying,
A calm came over me like the one I remember.

I’d been laboring all night
And into the next afternoon, the white
Room filled with doctor, midwife,
Photographer, friends. Someone
Suggested they all leave us alone.
I lay with my head in my husband’s lap,
And in that quiet, contractions ceased,
Pain stopped. A stillness
Came over the enclosed world
Like the cool emptiness coiled in a basket
Of sweetgrass. Like the air
Inside a bell. I couldn’t stand it.
I thought I should get going again,
Get back to my work.

Many times since, I’ve wished
I’d lain there longer:
A kind of Eden, a bestowed peace.

But today, when the respite came,
I didn’t move. I lay limp as a lizard
On a lizard-colored rock, spent.
I didn’t question it, this hush.
I felt my breath enter
And leave. The small wind of it
In the mesh sacs of my lungs
Like that too brief gap in labor
That I couldn’t give myself to
Then, hellbent, ignorant as I was.

Ellen Bass

ice skating

“Just fall,” she said, and of course, at 13, falling’s easy.
You do it everyday, ballooning embarrassments
in the locker room, in English class, singeing your hair
over the Bunsen burner 6th period, a mispurchased outfit
calling attention to your breastlessness, your too-bony hips,
a school dance dismantling your chances for a boyfriend.
the lack of everything you wish would hurry up and get here.
So when she said it, her stare widening under arched brows,
there was disbelief and impatience in her voice, in the way
she eyed my frame, how she couldn’t understand the difficulty
in allowing this self-induced tumble, a brief horizontal flirtation
on the outside corner of the rink, where there was no one watching,
no one there who would stare at me with their leveling ridicule
as I lay on my knees to get the idea of what falling would feel like.
She didn’t understand my hesitation, didn’t understand why I didn’t
just shove off and go, speed down the lane like the rest of the skaters,
make long wide arcs in time to the Christmas music blasting out
the speakers rink-side, didn’t understand my wobbly comportment,
why I kept looking down but not out, why I insisted on being left
behind while she and her sister glided past like little snow angels,
like mini Olympiads. She couldn’t see the lock of my ankles
against the skates, didn’t know the heat of my back at the inside of my jacket,
my stiff arms, my flighty, fearful heart doing its best to keep me upright.

“Just fall,” she said and I couldn’t do it, not even when she showed
me how, splattering herself comically on the ice, buckling her knees,
stretching her arms flat against the cold wet, not even when it looked
so easy to just give into the rules of gravity, that sweet slip earthward,
a tumble to elicit giggles and revelry and a reason to form an impromptu
snowball to hurl at a younger sister, not even then. Standing rigid
on her right, never too far from the edge, my palms outstretched to
ward off any possible fall, I had never felt so fragile,
so far from safety, ice so slick, a sea of skaters swimming by,
“Just fall,” she said, “so you know how it feels” and instead I thought
about the poem I could write about ice skating, a beautiful poem
about grace and twilight and December and the visible air
coming out in bursts all around, small children squealing their
way around a circle, teenagers holding hands shyly, an old man,
maybe a grandfather, teaching his granddaughter something of his
past, I thought about that poem, and perfection, and the glide
and symmetry of skates, and how white the ice was, and the
mother grip of winter, and the warmth inside afterward, hot
drinks sipped gratefully, all this love intact and pure.
And then, lost in my own impossible dreaming,
I fell.

Maya Stein

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic-decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons 
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in though the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

Louise Erdrich

The Dental Hygienist

She said "open up,"

so I showed her my teeth,

a chipped-white fence

that keeps my tongue penned in.


She rinsed my mouth.

She suctioned my cheek.


She said "How do you like this town?"

so I said "Mmpllff"

though I meant "More every day,"


and she said "Gorgeous weather!"

so I said "Mmpllff"

though I meant "In my mouth?"


and she didn't say anything,

so I said "Mmpllff" and "Mmpllff"

though I'm not sure what I meant,

and she took me to mean 
"Would you like to go out tonight?"

and "to an expensive restaurant?"


When I arrived with a bouquet of roses,

she stuffed them in my mouth.


She told me all about her feelings:

how she feels about fillings,

how she feels about failures.


She said "open up." 
She said "It's like pulling teeth

trying to get men to talk about their feelings."


So I said "Mmpllff"

though I meant "You smell prettier than the flowers in my mouth,"

and I said "Mmpllff"

she thought I meant "I'm afraid of dying alone."


She said I was a good conversationalist

and showed me her perfect teeth.

I felt an ache in my jaw.

I felt drool crawling down my chin.

Tom C. Hunley

The Art of Disappearing



When they say Don't I know you?
say no.


When they invite you to the party

remember what parties are like 
before answering.

Someone telling you in a loud voice

they once wrote a poem.

Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.

Then reply.


If they say We should get together

say why?


It's not that you don't love them anymore.

You're trying to remember something

too important to forget.

Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.

Tell them you have a new project.

It will never be finished.


When someone recognizes you in a grocery store

nod briefly and become a cabbage.

When someone you haven't seen in ten years

appears at the door,

don't start singing him all your new songs.

You will never catch up.


Walk around feeling like a leaf.

Know you could tumble any second.

Then decide what to do with your time.

Naomi Shihab Nye