Nancy: I loved my thimble and my stork scissors, mastered embroidery, learned cutwork and failed lace. But the times were changing. In 1951, in Juarez, street peddlers offered me tablecloths, "genuine nylon made by the Indians."
Sometimes In The Summer
Sometimes in the summer
dusk, dark
all the hidden, sought, found
children quiet
screen doors
slapped
closed
cicadas
my grandmother said come
and we carried the linen
cutwork
roses, fine rolled hems
stitched, laid by in chests
used, darned
into the garden,
where for years linens were spread
to whiten
in dew
in moonlight
we laid them on the grass
the paths
between pale shapes
of nightblooming flowers
sometimes
my grandmother smiled
on her knees
her rough hands smoothing
linens
breathing the flowers
Alan: Sometimes a poem, or a conversation, seems to fall out of the air like a strange seed blown in from a distant place.
Nearing Blue Hill
You say:
Each afternoon
cloud piled the mountain,
crashed as rain.
Women
in their gardens
or chatting by the roadside
tore off banana leaves,
held them overhead,
scampered home,
laughing.
Men,
emerging from offices
in skirts and coats and ties,
hoisted identical
black umbrellas.
I say:
The Dharma
falls equally on all,
nourishing
each according to need.
You say:
On the dry side,
in the cane fields,
water buffalo stood,
lifting moist muzzles
to the distant thunder,
wondering.
“Sometimes In The Summer” first appeared in Chester H. Jones Foundation National Poetry Competition Winners (1983).
