Barbara Crooker | Alison McGhee

Poem of the Week, by Barbara Crooker

Posted on August 23, 2014 by alisonmcghee

Next week my oldest heads to Nepal and Australia for a year, one of his sisters heads back to college for her senior year, and the other to college for her freshman year. All of them far, far away. I spent many hours this week going through giant saggy cardboard boxes filled with mementos from their childhoods, artwork and papers and ribbons and letters, focusing on how funny and sweet and sometimes startling they were. And giant waves of sadness and disbelief that they are no longer little keep washing through me. “What isn’t given to love, is so much wasted.” You just have to throw yourself into it all and keep right on throwing yourself into it, I guess.

How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River

– by Barbara Crooker

how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try,
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.

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For more information on Barbara Crooker, please click here: http://www.barbaracrooker.com/

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Poem of the Week, by Barbara Crooker

Posted on November 9, 2013 by alisonmcghee

In the Middle
– Barbara Crooker

of a life that’s as complicated as everyone else’s,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather’s
has stopped at 9:20; we haven’t had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don’t ring. One day you look out the window,
green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
and evening’s slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between,
his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We’ll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time.

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For more information on Barbara Crooker, please click here: http://www.barbaracrooker.com/
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My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts