Lean Times

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

Lean Times

Early robins visit
the shriveled apples —
leftovers,
too high
in the branches to pick
last fall.
So, I left them
to the winter’s
cold wind
and
a tree full of
desperate,
crafty birds.

–Steve Peterson

 

Bringing it home

A first poem about school shootings because writing is a way for me to work things out.

Bringing it home

Unless you teach children
you may not
know this:

that sometimes
late.at.night
especially
after another school shooting
dreaming teachers
hear the classroom door burst open
into a startled silence

panicked teachers
wake up sweating
after the flash
after we
throw ourselves
in front of the gun,
placing ourselves
between it and our kids –
screaming to them,
Run.Run.Run!

Hearts pounding.
Our dream-blind eyes.
The chairs overturned.
The reading corner a jumble of books.
Our bodies on the floor.
It all seems
like dark magic, something too evil; to utter
these words might conjure
a too-common unthinkable, to bring it
home.

An image pauses in my mind:
the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary rushes
from a mundane meeting
out into the hallway,
her flesh and blood confront a gun
intended
for the battlefield.
A first-grade teacher,
just out of school, stands between
the muzzle
and her cowering children.

You say that I have a too-active imagination,
that this would never happen here.
Perhaps.
But it happened there and
there and there and there and there
which is here
unless I place it
over there,
far from home,
mistaking their loss for
my safety
until
late.at.night
after another school shooting
their ghosts
shake me awake and whisper:
Do something.

 

– Steve Peterson

 

Three Stumps

Textures Madacor via Compfight

Dad’s death on Feb 4th will unlock many poems, I’m sure. Here’s one.

Three Stumps

Three stumps squat in the woods.
Three mossy stumps,
the last of a forest of trees
we dropped together,
my father and I,
before he fell, too,
taking a world with him
on his descent.

– Steve Peterson

 

PS. And, so I’ll have it here, I’m including this bit I sent to my colleagues at school so they could know him just a bit.

Dear good folks of DMS,

Thank you so much for your kind words of support and for your gift after the death of my father on Sunday evening.

I was lucky to have known him.

I wanted to tell you just a bit about him, ’cause, from his example, I believe in stories.

Dad grew up on a hardscrabble farm in north central Minnesota. He was born in the family house at the beginning of the Great Depression, though he recalled that his family never knew when the Depression started and stopped. They grew their own food and sold small amounts of corn, wheat, beef, pork, milk, and eggs for cash and grew oats and hay for the horses. There was no indoor plumbing, they hand-pumped their own water from a well and used a kerosene lamp and gas lantern for light until Dad wired the house (and barn) when he was in high school. His mother finished the 8th-grade and his father finished 6th-grade.

Dad became a Lutheran minister who served churches in Illinois for 37 years.

I learned many things from Dad, including these:
* Words are beautiful, they matter, and they can be savored;
* Even if you don’t know how to do something, start, keep your eyes open and improvise until you get it done, but most importantly: start;
* Making art, building stuff is important, even if you don’t think you are an artist or a builder;
* It’s okay for a man to listen with his heart;
* Serving others is good;
* Laughter feels good (and sometimes heals);
* Second chances are possible;
* And a whole bunch more…

Again, thanks for the kind words and support.

With high regards,
steve

Buying Time

After a visit to the parents, I see what sixty-plus years can do.

Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash
Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash

Buying Time

4,000 extra minutes
on the flip phone,
that’s what Dad thought
Mom might need
when he was gone:
“to get her through
those first months.”
He was planning ahead,
he said:
finally, new countertops
and brighter lights
in the kitchen;
the deck rebuilt,
more solid, without
yearly re-staining, too;
a more reliable car;
a quieter ceiling fan;
bird seed packaged
in portable plastic milk jugs,
ready for the winter birds
when he’s gone.
62 years come with an
extended life warranty
against breakdown
and loss.

– Steve Peterson

Night Terrors

Because this happened in Grand Rapids, MI, and it continues to happen all over the US.

Night Terrors

In
the middle
of the night,
in the glare
of
a squad car light,
police wrenched
the arms
of an
eleven-year old
Black girl
behind
her back,
handcuffed them
together
while
she screamed
in terror.

She could
have been
in
my classroom
this year
learning,
simply being
a kid.

But,
arms twisted
behind
her back,
she screamed
because
she had
heard
the stories,
seen
the videos;
she had learned
how this
goes

down.

– Steve Peterson

How To Spot an Agate

photo by Steve Peterson

I sat down to read Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s (@amylvpoemfarm) terrific new book, Poems are Teachers, for inspiration for my teaching. As it happened, inspiration found me, first.

As I read, I savored teacher-poet, Mary Lee Hahn’s (@MaryLeeHahn) poem, “Riches”, and remembered an ongoing conversation I’ve had with one of the kids in my class this year, someone who appreciates agates and cool rocks at least as much as I do.

@MaryLeeHahn

Here’s what came of all of that: a reminder to slow down and gather with small stones.

How to Spot an Agate

First, you must find a place
Where the small stones gather.

Look to the beach
Where restless waves rock.

Go to the roadside
Where tires rarely tread.

Or, if courageous, to the graveled center,
Where hither ignores yon.

Then sit. Plant yourself, as if a tree.
And open your eyes.

Adjust your gaze.
Look past all shapes.

Look beyond every color.
Catch the glint, instead,

The brilliant shaft,
A moment’s reflection.

That jeweled spark?
That is what you seek.

Reach out.
Hold it to the light.

– Steve Peterson

Heartwood

Photo by Erda Estremera on Unsplash

It’s been busy ’round these parts, which makes my life no different than everyone else in my world. Still, I’m not without some agency in all this craziness. This poem contemplates how “slow” also, sometimes, means “open.”

Heartwood

Beetles discover the heartwood,
something I’m trying to do
every day; maybe
I will stumble upon
an unnoticed place
deep under the bark; maybe
I will learn to find
that dark-quiet, too.

The clam that
backs into a rocky crevice
will open its shell
and take in the ocean; maybe
I will learn to filter
what I need
from what should be
left behind.

– Steve Peterson

 

 

Two Tanka

Fall is coming to NE Iowa, and with it the falling leaves and the fog in the valley.

Here are two tanka – ish poems. One is about a moment I experienced in the woods the other day. A leaf detached itself from a nearby tree. I heard it strike the ground. The other? Hmmm…besides the fog? I’ll let you ponder that.