13 YEARS OF AGE

Poem for Today - January 25, 2014

PORTRAIT  OF A GIRL

WITH COMIC BOOK

Thirteen’s no age at all. Thirteen is nothing.

It is not wit, or powder on the face,

Or Wednesday matinees, or misses’ clothing,

Or intellect, or grace.

Twelve has its tribal customs. But thirteen

is neither boys in battered cars nor dolls,

Not Sara Crewe or movie magazine

Or pennants on the walls.

Thirteen keeps diaries and tropical fish

(A month, at most); scorns jumpropes in the spring;

Could not, would fortune grant it, name its wish;

Wants nothing, everything;

Has secrets from itself, friends it despises;

Admits none of the terrors that it feels;

Owns a half a hundred masks but no disguises;

And walks upon its heels.

Thirteen’s anomalous - not that, not this:

Not folded bud, or wave that laps a shore,

Or moth proverbiaI from the chrysaIis.

Is the one age defeats the metaphor.

Is not a town, like childhood, strongly walled

But easiIy surrounded; is no city.

Nor, quitted once, can it be quite recalled -

Not even with pity.

 © Phyllis McGinley

                                                                                                          “Portrait of a Girl With Comic Book” 

by Phyllis McGinley: from Times Three 

by Phyllis McGinley. 

Copyright 1952 by Phyllis McGinley.

ON FOOT

On foot beats driving every time ….

Those in cars might miss the sight

of tree roots and what they can do

to sidewalks - causing cracks and

pushing up bricks and cement ….

Walking on foot - one sees the poetry

of frozen footprints in snow and ice

as well as of dead leaves  lingering

in corners and under wooden porches

and dead cigarettes outside churches.

Walking strengthens legs and lungs -

and gives one a feel for variations

of wind - breeze - gusts - gales -

as well as chance meetings with

neighbors - the mail carrier and 

a baby smiling at us - as a mom

in sporty gear glides by us with a baby

carriage in front of her - and sometimes

we spot a perfectly good ballpoint pen

someone dropped on the sidewalk

and we end up using it for a year

and a half - - or we spot both halves

of a photograph of a couple -

ripped in two lying next

to a tough plastic garbage can.

What happened? Did roots

or the push of underneath stuff

erupt and disrupt their dream

of a picture perfect future?

On foot beats driving every time ….

Sidewalk stories  - a novel in

progress - the stuff we can read

as we walk on foot on snow, on ice,

as well as on the boxed cement or
red or yellow brick roads of life.

© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2014

15 YEARS OF AGE? 

WHAT'S IT LIKE?

Poem for Today - January 24, 2014

FIFTEEN

South of the bridge on Seventeenth

I found back of the willows one summer

day a motorcycle with engine running

as it lay on its side, ticking over

slowly in the high grass. I was fifteen.

I admired all that pulsing gleam, the

shiny flanks, the demure headlights

fringed where it lay; I led it gently

to the road and stood with that

companion, ready and friendly. I was fifteen.

We could find the end of a road, meet

the sky on out Seventeenth. I thought about

hills, and patting the handle got back a

confident opinion. On the bridge we indulged

a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.

Thinking, back farther in the grass I found

the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped

over the raiI. He had bIood on his hand, was paIe --

I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand

over it, called me good man, roared away.

I stood there, fifteen.

- William Stafford  ©

“Fifteen” by William Stafford: 

from The Rescued Year 

by William Stafford. 

Copyright 1964 

by William E. Stafford. 

WATCHING ONE 

ANOTHER WATCHING

Poem for Today - January 23, 2014

CORNER

The cop slumps alertly on his motorcycle,

supported by one leg like a leather stork.

His glance accuses me of loitering.
I can see his eyes moving like a fish

in the green depth of his green goggles.

His ease is fake. I can tell.

My ease is fake. And he can tell.

The fingers armored by his gloves

splay and clench, itching to change something.
As if he were my enemy or my death,

I just standing there watching.

I spit out my gum which has gone stale.
I knock out a new cigarette

which is my bravery.

It is all imperceptible:

the way I shift my weight,

the way he creaks in his saddle.

The traffic is specific though constant.
The sun surrounds me, divides the street between us.

His crash helmet is whiter in the shade.

It is like a bull ring as they say it is just before the fighting.

I cannot back down. I am there.

Everything holds me back.
I am in danger of disappearing into the summer dust.

My Levis bake and my t-shirt sweats.

My cigarette makes my eyes burn

but I don’t dare drop it.

Who made him my enemy?

Prince of coolness. King of fear.

Why do I lean here waiting?

Why does he lounge there waiting?

I am becoming sunlight

My hair is on fire. My boots run like tar.

I am hung-up by the bright air.

Something breaks through all of a sudden,

and he blasts off, quick as a craver,*

smug in his power; watching me watch.

© Ralph Pomeroy

*[Craver = an intense,

quick desire]

TO LIFE 

“L’Chaim!” 

A morning prayer ….

A toast to our God

at the beginning of each day,

for what is to appear

on the table of life

called, “Today!”

“L’Chaim!”

A night prayer ….

A toast to our God

at the end of each day,

for what we tasted

on the table of life,

called, “Today!”

And then 
tomorrow,
there will be
another today.
Thank You, God,
for today.
"L'Chaim!"

© Andy Costello, Prayers, 2014

JUST DO IT

Poem for Today - January 22, 2014

CLAMMING

I go digging for clams every two or three years

Just to keep my hand in (I usually cut it),

And whenever I do so I tell the same story: how,

At the age of four,

I was trapped by the tide as I clammed a vanishing sandbar.

It's really no story at all, but I keep telling it

(Seldom adding the end, the commonplace rescue).

It serves my small lust to be thought of as someone who's lived.

I've a war, too, to fall back on, and some years of flying,

As well as a staggering quota of drunken parties,

A wife and children; but somehow the clamming thing

Gives me an image of me that soothes my psyche

As none of the louder events — me helpless,

Alone with my sand pail,

As fate in the form of soupy Long Island Sound

Comes stalking me.

My youngest son is that age now.

He's spoiled. He's been sickly.

He's handsome and bright, affectionate and demanding.

I think of the tides when I look at him.

I'd have him alone and seagirt, poor little boy.

The self, what a brute it is. It wants, wants.

It will not let go of its even most fictional grandeur,

But must grope, grope down in the muck of its past

For some little squirting life and bring it up tenderly

To the lo and behold of death, that it may weep

And pass on the weeping, keep it all going.

Son, when you clam,

Watch out for the tides, take care of yourself,

Yet no great care,

Lest you care too much and talk too much of the caring

And bore your best friends and inhibit your children and sicken

At last into opera on somebody's sandbar.

When you clam, Son,

Clam.

© Reed Whittemore

HEROES

INTRODUCTION

The title and topic of my comments for this 2^nd Tuesday  in  Ordinary Time is, “Heroes.”

Last night, when I read the readings for today, that’s the theme and the question that hit me. Ideas and wonderings about heroes popped up. I might have, but I don’t remember speaking on this topic before.

I noticed that David is mentioned in both readings as well as today’s Psalm. [Cf. 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 89: 20, 21-22, 27-28; Mark 2: 23-28.]  And David was certainly a hero in Israel and down through the centuries in various cultures.  If you’ve been to Florence, Italy, you’ve seen for sure, the famous statue of David - which brings out cameras and tourist dollars to this day.

HEROES

Heroes are the men and women we put on pedestals and carve into statues. They appear on posters on our walls. We look up to them for inspiration and motivation - courage and stick-to-it-tiveness.

Heroes: they name sandwiches after them - as in Chick and Ruth’s here in Annapolis.

In the Jewish scriptures we have Abraham, Moses and David.

In time - like so many heroes - they become larger than life.

I remember attending a great talk in New York City by a little known rabbi about the power of the pen - how David’s story keeps on getting better and better with the centuries. It made me want to always read at least 2 biographies of someone I wanted to know more about.

QUESTIONS

Last night, as I was working on this 2 page sermon on “Heroes”, I asked myself, “What are the questions that ought to be asked about heroes?”

I jotted down: “Who are my heroes?” and then the correlative question: “What does the ones I pick  say about me?”

“Have I ever been betrayed by a hero?”  In other words, “Do I have any fallen heroes?”

Like the Wizard of Oz, who’s behind the curtain?  We’ve all heard the quote, “To a valet no man is a hero.” Goethe and a half dozen others have made that remark. How about to one’s spouse and kids? What’s the president or the pope really like? Talk to his brother or sister - or wait for the biographies. Whom can we trust?

At every funeral I ask: who is this person who has just died - and that’s what I try to figure out in the funeral parlor. Of course I don’t want to throw mud - just to find out the good stuff about someone.

A question: is having a hero or heroine - starting with one’s mom and dad -  part of every person’s growing up?

A question: in our life time we’ve seen mobs or crowds - tear down statues - do we tend to do the same silently as we grow older?

In Bertolt Brecht,’s 1938 play, Life of Galileo, Scene 12, page 115, Andrea says: “Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo responds: “No, Andrea: Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

I assume we need heroes - because it seems so much a part of everyone’s life.

CONCLUSION

My goal is two pages - so I suggest we all continue to do our homework on the question of heroes.

When it comes to oneself, we better have a sense of humor, honesty and humility - humor first.

When it comes to others as heroes, we also better be able to laugh.

A closing story….  Remember Willie Nelson’s song, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.”  Well, one night I was watching TV with a priest named John Barry. He was a very proper guy. Willie Nelson comes on the TV screen, scruffy beard, ear rings, pony tail and bandana. John says, “Who’s that?” as in “What’s that?” And I said, “That’s Willie Nelson.” And he says, “Oh no, he’s my favorite singer.”