Poem of the Week, by Richard Jones
Spots are still available in next month’s mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. July 17-19, 10 am and 6 pm Central time. Cost: $100. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.
Last week I was walking with someone I love when we saw an old man trip and nearly fall. He dusted himself off, made sure his hat was on straight, and kept going, cane in hand.
My friend and I were both quiet. We didn’t look at each other. Let it go, Alison, I told myself. He’s fine. I imagined the old man on his way to his daughter’s house, his whole family waiting there, full of love. A story conjured up to keep the sadness at bay, to turn it into something else, to transcend it.
But it didn’t surprise me when my friend turned to me and said quietly, “If I keep thinking about that old man I’ll be sad for the rest of the week,” and I nodded, because we are alike. “It’s a curse to feel so much,” she said.
A curse, and a blessing.
After Work, by Richard Jones
Coming up from the subway
into the cool Manhattan evening,
I feel rough hands on my heart –
women in the market yelling
over rows of tomatoes and peppers,
old men sitting on a stoop playing cards,
cabbies cursing each other with fists
while the music of church bells
sails over the street,
and the father, angry and tired
after working all day,
embracing his little girl,
kissing her,
mi vida, mi corazon,
brushing the hair out of her eyes
so she can see.
For more information on Richard Jones, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter
Old men who hold their wives’ handbags for them as they put on their coats. Young fathers who hold their toddlers’ hands as they cross the street. The girl who jumps up to open the door for the woman using the walker. The cafe manager who keeps a water bowl outside, filled with cool water, for passing dogs. The man with the truck who goes up and down the rural road, plowing out his elderly neighbors. Everyone waving goodbye, tears in their eyes, as the ones they love disappear into the airport, like in the movie Love Actually*. The movie Love Actually. A note left in a poetry box, thanking the “poem attendant” for “all the good poems.” A carful of grinning men chattering in Spanish, pulling over to the side of a snowy road and pushing the young woman’s car out of the ditch. The world is full of sweetness. When I need to remind myself of that, which is often, in these days of bewildering cruelty and greed by our elected employees, this is one of the poems I recite to myself. 
Alison McGhee 