USA

bcrooker@ix.netcom.com 

THE LOST CHILDREN

The ones we never speak of--

miscarried, unborn,

removed by decree,

taken too soon, crossed over.

They slip red mittens in our hands,

smell of warm wet wool,

are always out of sight.

We glimpse them on escalators,

over the shoulders of dark-haired women;

they return to us in dreams.

We hold them, as they evanesce;

we never speak their names.

How many children do you have?

Two, we answer, thinking three,

or three, thinking four;

they are always with us.

The lost children come to us

at night and whisper

in the shells of our ears.

They are waving goodbye

on schoolbuses,

they are separated from us

in stadiums,

they are lost in shopping malls

with unspeakable pools,

they disappear on beaches,

they shine at night in the stars.

The Poetry Review, 1984 (I hold the copyright)

OBBLIGATO

The burble of house wrens colors the air,

it's early summer and everything is possible.

The iris shine in their silken petals,

peonies have burst into

cerise, magenta, cream.

The lawn is impossibly lush and green

to us, who know how soon August comes with its hot breath,

who see the grass dry and thin under this lavish verdure,

who know how the earth shuts down like an iron fist,

and are still transfixed.

And what the house wren babbles,

the mockingbird repeats,

adding trills and cadences of its own,

embroidering in the liquid notes of thrushes,

the scree of the swing set, doing a riff on

the endless cheer! cheer! cheer! of the cardinal.

Bird with no song of its own, and everyone else's in its

heart.

This heart's been tight as a peony bud

waiting for rain;

how briefly it blooms,

resplendent in its carmine longing.

What a hard carapace

old loves and losses have built up,

years of chitinous excretions,

but even it can break.

I used to want to hold onto friends for life,

mourned each falling off, each move away,

but now I see them drifting in and out of our lives,

careless and gorgeous as blossoms

wandering in the wind,

which blows, as we know, wherever it pleases.

But no matter how short, our lives have been blessed.

We live in a land without famine or war,

each night we smooth down into the grace of sheets.

How we forget to be grateful.

In the morning we will have fresh fruit,

and music and news.

Roses will scent the air.

And all that we have forgotten,

the mockingbird will repeat

into the small green spaces

of our still unripened hearts.

Published in Negative Capability, 
© Copyright, 1988, Barbara Crooker. 

RED,

red the cherries turn,

burning in the dark green sky,

a thousand suns, almost as red

as the true sun that's going down

right now behind the mock orange

and weigela, so hot you'd think

it would sizzle, hiss

as its light's put out

for the night.

At the heart of each cherry

there's a pit, a stone.

And we are built on an architecture

of bone, our sweet flesh ripening

so fast, so fast.

Robins steal the cherries one by one.

And who can blame them?

Such fierce burning.

This world, red in tooth

and claw, with so much loss

sometimes you wish

your heart could turn to stone.

But still, the flesh is sweet.

Now the sky darkens, and the cherries

cannot be seen. It is one of those sweet

summer nights, after a day of bake oven heat,

soft air playing with the hair on your neck,

the bare skin of your arms and legs.

In the grass, fireflies rise in their sultry dance,

little love notes that flicker, that burn.

Published in The Cuirt Poetry Journal (Ireland), 
© Copyright,1999, Barbara Crooker.

SUNFLOWERS

This time of year, the hot sun spiralling down on the farmlands,

makes me think about Van Gogh's wheat fields, the unrelenting

light, sky scratched with crows, their dark raucous chatter--

and I think about our short lives, chaff in the wind,

momentary in the darkening sky. I think about

his cypresses, their black flames, his bruise-blue

irises that wince against the yellow wall, the vase

of sunflowers, those molten golds, the fierceness

of their burning. Even the blues, Vincent's blues,

the cobalt intensity behind the yellow house,

the thunderclouded sky, should cool us down, but don't.

Instead, they boil at low flame.

He said in a letter to his brother, "I am in it with all

of my heart," and I am in it, too, this life, with its longing

and sorrows. When we're gone, what will be left of our small

songs and minor joys? Still, when I drive by a wheat field

turning ochre and amber, every awn and arista shouting sun!

sun! sun! something in me rises, makes me look

for a scrap of paper, a pencil nub,

even as the hot wind lifts,

blows the dust we are, carries it away--

Published in Two Rivers Poetry Review
© Copyright, 1998, Barbara Crooker.

NEARING MENOPAUSE, 
I RUN INTO ELVIS AT SHOPRITE,

near the peanut butter. He calls me ma'am, like the sweet

southern mother's boy he was. This is the young Elvis,

slim-hipped, dressed in leather, black hair swirled

like a duck's back side. I'm in the middle of my life,

the start of the body's cruel betrayals, the skin beginning

to break in lines and creases, the thickening midline.

I feel my temperature rising, as a hot flash washes over,

the thermostat broken down. The first time I heard Elvis

on the radio, I was poised between girlhood and what comes next.

My parents were appalled, in the Eisenhower fifties, by rock

and roll and all it stood for, let me only buy one record,

"Love Me Tender," and I did.

I have on a tight orlon sweater, circle skirt,

eight layers of rolled-up net petticoats, all bound

together by a woven straw cinch belt. Now I've come

full circle, hate the music my daughter loves, Nine

Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Crash Test Dummies.

Elvis looks embarrassed for me. His soft full lips

are like moon pies, his eyelids half-mast, pulled

down bedroom shades. He mumbles, "Treat me nice."

Now, poised between menopause and what comes next, the last

dance, I find myself in tears by the toilet paper rolls,

hearing "Unchained Melody" on the sound system. "That's all

right now, Mama," Elvis says, "Anyway you do is fine." The bass

line thumps and grinds, the honky tonk piano moves like an ivory

river, full of swampy delta blues. And Elvis's voice wails above

it all, the purr and growl, the snarl and twang, above the chains

of flesh and time. 

Published in Karamu, 
© Copyright,1996, Barbara Crooker.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.