Martha Jean's Blog

How lucky that I ran into you

When everything was possible

For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart

And so happy to see any woman -

O woman!  O my twentieth year!

Basking in you, you

Oasis from both growing and decay

Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis

A palm tree, hey! And then another

And another - and water!

I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,

Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what unlucky fellow,

Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable

For the moment in any case, do you live now?

From my window I drop a nickel

By mistake. With

You I race down to get it

But I find there on

The street instead, a good friend,

X—- N—-, who says to me

Kenneth do you have a minute?

And I say yes!  I am in my twenties!

I have plenty of time! In you I marry,

In you I first go to France; I make my best friends

In you, and a few enemies. I

Write a lot and am living all the time

And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you

After my teens and before my thirties.

You three together in a bar

I always preferred you because you were midmost

Most lustrous apparently strongest

Although now that I look back on you

What part have you played?

You never, ever, were stingy.

What you gave me you gave whole

But as for telling

Me how best to use it

You weren’t a genius at that.

Twenties, my soul

Is yours for the asking

You know that, if you ever come back.

-Kenneth Koch

“In you I first go to France…” The picture below is from my first and only trip to Paris, France (can you guess which one is me?!?).  I want to go back, and I will, one day. “How lucky that I ran into you / When everything was possible…”

Because a woman had eaten something

when a man told her not to. Because the man

who told her not to had made her

from another man’s bones.  That’s why

men badgered the heart-side of her chest,

knowing she could not give the bone back, knowing

she would always owe them that one bone.

…

And you could see how older girls who knew

their catechism armed themselves against it:

with the pike end of teasing combs

they scabbarded in pocketbooks that clashed

against the jumper’s nightwatch plaid.

In the girl’s bathroom, you watched them

wield the spike in dangerous proximity to their eyes,

…

shepherding the bangs through which they peered

like cheetahs in an upside-downward-growing grass.

Then they’d mouth the words to “Runaway”

while they ran white lipstick round their lips,

white to announce they had no blood

so any wound would leave no trace, as Eve’s

having nothing more to lose must have made

…

her fearless.  What was weird was how soon

the ordinary days started running past them

like a river, how willingly they entered it

and how they rose up on the other side. Tamed,

or god no…you mother: ready to settle

with whoever found the bone under her blouse

and give it over, and make a life out of the getting

     back.

Poem from “Luck is luck: poems,” by Lucia Maria Perillo

Photo credit: dhammza on Flickr.com

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.