In this month's installment of the "Third Tuesday" series, I'm presenting two poems: one kind of "long and lean," yet brief; the other somewhat "wider" and "fuller," in terms of the amount of verbiage used. Both are in a different style than I've used here before.
Kalliope
Means "beautiful voice" from Greek καλλος (kallos) "beauty" and οψ (ops) "voice". In Greek mythology she was a goddess of epic poetry and eloquence, one of the nine Muses.
Join us every Tuesday afternoon at the Daily Kos community political poetry club.
Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments.
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional.
The keyboard is mightier than the sword.
Both of these poems are set in Anatone, WA, a town my family lived in for only one year, the year I was in first grade. Anatone is in the extreme southeast corner of Washington state; the closest "sizable" urban area is Clarkston, WA/Lewiston, ID, one on each side of the Snake River, which divides the two states at that point. As it happens, this was also where the blizzard episode briefly referred to in an earlier poem took place. Our house was at the bottom of the hill that the school was at the top of, and that day when we got out of school, the wind coming up the hill from where our house was, was fierce. When I tried to walk down the hill, I literally couldn't catch my breath, the wind was blowing so hard. I was standing at the top of the hill with my back to the wind, crying, not knowing how I was going to get down that hill to my house in that wind, when an older girl, maybe a fourth or fifth grader, stopped and asked me what was the matter. I explained, and, as stated in the poem, she wrapped her coat around my head so I could breathe in the wind, and walked me all the way down the hill to my house. I don't recall her name, but I will never forget her kindness to that little first grader that I was.
There isn't a great deal I remember about Anatone, but these two little poetic vignettes point to a couple of the memories I do have (besides the one about the blizzard):
Merry-go-round
First grade
Love spinning!
Faster, faster!
Fly out
Lose grip
Fall off
Skinned knee
Find Teacher
See Nurse
Get bandaid
Healing time.
All better.
"Be careful!"
Do again!
Worth it.
A.G. Bell’s Lament
Old box telephones on the wall
My father hopefully installed
To quiet yelling between floors
Of echoing two story home.
At first, we girls were enchanted
With box telephones on the wall.
The quaint antiques we did embrace
To call each other up and down.
Despite my father’s earnest work
Alas! Voices could not be heard
On box telephones on the wall.
Tin can phones would have been better.
Still, we girls clearly understood
Screaming between floors did not fly.
So, more trips up and down ensued.
Ignored, the box phones on the wall.
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule
We have a volunteer (yep, it's me, Kit RMP)
for the third Tuesday
of each month.
Three more such volunteers,
and I (bigjacbigjacbigjac) can relax!
So,
aside from any third Tuesday,
such as the 15th of October,
aside from those,
all the other Tuesdays
are opportunities for you.
You have the poetry in you;
I can feel it!