Unexpected Adventures in Housecleaning

 

Bygones

Bygones

My eyes

will always twinkle,

even when 

they become surrounded

by wrinkles.

I will read thousands of pages,

see sunsets and rainbows,

witness a long lifetime of history.

My smile

will always turn down at the corners

just like

my grandmother's did.

I will smile at my husband's dear face,

my children's accomplishments,

my friends' news,

my cats' playfulness.

My hands

will always be busy,

sewing, 

cooking, 

gardening.

I will hold these photos

one more time,

amazed at my big life,

remembering.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016

Found Object Poem Project -- Dolls

photo by Laura Shovan

Abandoned

As a child,
my dolls were my closest friends.

When I left for college,
I tried to pack them in a trunk,
but had to release them before they suffocated.

They've lived my entire adult life
(up until now)
on the closet shelf
in  my childhood bedroom.

Soon,
they will be auctioned away
to strangers.
I will hear them calling to me
for the rest of my life.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016

Found Object Poem Project -- 100 Year-Old Mailing Box

Photo by Robyn Hood Black

The Box I Keep at the Back of My Dresser Drawer

I remember
when he sent the new watch
I'd had my eye on.
He was thoughtful that way.

The postman handed me this wooden box
with the address written
in his confident handwriting.

Written before the accident,
when a whole different future lay before us.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016

Museum Guard

MUSEUM GUARD

It's a good enough job, I guess.
I tell my friends it's dead boring,
walking around watching old ladies
who pretend to look at art
until it's time for lunch
in the museum cafe.

You don't know art
until you spend an 8-hour shift with it;
until you put in a 40-hour week
studying every brushstroke out of the corner of your eye.

In the afternoons,
couples come,
sometimes standing close,
heads bent together,
murmuring.
Sometimes one drags the other by the hand to a painting,
points,
and they laugh softly at an inside joke.

That girl stands with her nose
way too close to the Monet.
I walk by so she knows I see
but she is lost in the mystery
of light and shadow and color,
stepping forward, stepping back,
as I have done so often
when the gallery
was empty.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2015

Flight

FLIGHT

Outside my apartment
is a small patch of grass
and a parking lot.
Beyond that is a ditch
full of dirty snow and trash.

But across the road
are power lines
where a hawk often perches
long enough for me to sketch.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2015

What Does a Teacher Do on a "Dangerously Cold Windchills" Day Off?

What Does a Teacher Do on a "Dangerously Cold Windchills" Day Off?

I'm up early.
The house is quiet
except for the tick and clong
of two old clocks
that are impossible to synchronize.

At my end of the couch,
I am surrounded in a bubble of warm light.
My tea steams.
I finish a book I've been meaning to read,
then flip open my computer to read blogs
and Tweet new learning.

I nearly freeze driving to school
to feed the fish
but at least the car is warm when we go out to lunch.

I set the timer and write for forty-five minutes,
just like I'll ask my students to
next time we meet.
(Tomorrow? Next week?)

I plan a writing lesson,
what we'll do next with division,
and I'll play around with a photo.
(Again, just like I'll ask my students to.)

Later, I'll go to my water aerobics class
--BRRRR--

After dinner,
I'll watch a little TV.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2015

Shadow

Flickr Creative Commons Photo

Shadow

The shadow before me shimmers,
then waddles,
then has a white stripe
and a tail that's lifting
as I'm backing away
hands up
not a word.

I'm just a tall shadow
that will disappear as suddenly
as it appeared.

We both walk away
more wary,
changed.

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

Wonder

WONDER
5:30 in the morning
I'm walking along
in the dark neighborhood
my brain already full of the day ahead
not paying the kind of attention
that will keep me from
stumbling into a skunk
by accident
when I look up
and see a very large dog
in the park
that resolves into a fawn
whose sibling and mother are across the street
not quite hidden in the shadows of the front yard
and it's as if the plug was pulled
and my brain is empty of everything
except the here
and the now.

I continue walking slowly down the sidewalk
toward the fawn
who bobs its head
looking at me
assessing my threat level
until suddenly its tail flags and it
floats silently
across the street to its family
on impossibly thin legs and tiny feet
and I struggle to keep the wonder
hold the moment
stop the everyday thoughts from flooding back in
but the pure animal focus
is gone.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

To My Students

To My Students

I am the riverbank

and you are the water.

You flow past me

year after year

fresh 

eager

a little wild.

I do my best 

to ensure you

a safe passage

and teach you 

endurance

stability

and the ways of the world.

But you rush on.

Time passes.

You return

to the familiar banks,

the remembered curves and shallows.

I will not know you,

and yet I will have

a deep memory of your passing.

Your passing

wore me down

changed my direction

made me new.

©Mary Lee Hahn, date unknown

Our Wonderful World: The Polar Ice Caps

Details of my Poetry Month Project can be found here.

26. The Polar Ice Caps

The Birdhouse in the Sycamore Tree

The summer between 5th and 6th grade,
I fell out of the sycamore tree
that stood in the alley
outside the back garden fence.

There was a birdhouse in the sycamore.
I wanted to get it down.
I had climbed up to check it out
and the rope that tied it was weathered into a
rock solid knot.

I got the silver bottle opener –
the one with the shiny sharp triangle
for poking and prying –
out of the kitchen gadget drawer.

I climbed the fence and then into the sycamore
with the bottle opener
clenched between my teeth.

I remember the surprise I felt
when the branch broke,
but I don’t remember falling
or hitting the fence on the way down.
I came to with the bottle opener
still between my
(unbroken)
teeth.

My right arm was a different matter.

I began 6th grade,
already awkward and buck-toothed
with a full cast on my right arm.
I’m right handed.

And on the first day of school,
Mrs. Bonner,
cold as the polar ice caps,
made me pass out the Scholastic book orders.

I struggled with those tissue-paper fliers,
stared at and and snickered at
but stubbornly refusing to ask for help.

I can’t remember if I ever got the bird house
out of the tree,
but I’ll never forget how Mrs. Bonner
treated me.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

I couldn't bear to write about human destruction of the polar ice caps.  Kevin came through. He wrote a passionate ode to the ice caps that includes a fierce warning to humankind. Powerful.

Carol's polar ice cap poem is just as powerful as Kevin's, but in a "take you by the shoulders and shake you" kind of way.

Carol has an abecedarian for Victoria Falls over at Carol's Corner.

Our Wonderful World: The Great Wall of China

Details of my Poetry Month Project can be found here.

5. Great Wall of China

Wikipedia

My Uncle's Getting Married

My uncle's getting married

in the church at Broad and High.

He's wearing a tuxedo,

cummerbund and bolo tie.

After all the boring stuff,

it's off to the party house.

We'll eat a fancy dinner

and we'll toast his brand new spouse.

The fun will really start then,

the groom will dance his bride,

we'll do the Macarena,

chicken dance, electric slide.

We'll boogie woogie, bump and grind,

we'll limbo way down low.

We'll shimmy, shake, we'll shuffle, swing

we'll do our best disco.

And when the bride says, "One more dance!"

the conga line she leads.

We ribbon all around the room,

we curve, we swerve, we weave.

A snake of happy revelers,

the young and old alike,

connected hand to waist to back,

we dance away the night.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

I'm giving myself permission to have more fun with this project. I don't think I can write 25 more poems that are exactly about the wonders. So anything at all about the wonder that inspires me is fair game. 

Can you tell how I got today's poem from the image of the Great Wall? I hope you can see the conga line in the photo!

Here's Kevin's beautiful poem, Walls Won't Hold Us.

Here's Carol's poem about the Catacombs from yesterday, at Carol's Corner.

Recipe

Recipe
The yellowed newspaper clipping
is attached to an index card
with brittle cellophane tape.
"Nov. 1949
Women's Day Kitchen"
is written in faded ink
at the top of the card.

Her canned tomatoes
were from the garden,
mine are from the store.
Her biscuits were made from scratch,
mine are a boxed mix.

She washed up the prep bowls
by hand,
tired after a long day's work.

Some things don't change.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

Thug

As seen/passed around on FaceBook

THUG

All summer it's been cool
but just in time for school
the heat comes back,
like a big muggy bully.

One afternoon, regardless of the math lesson,
the air conditioning goes out.
Just up and leaves.
Walks out of the room without permission,

leaving the door open
for the bully to swagger in,
disrupt the lesson,
and make us sweat ourselves.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

Fly Fishing

Sun on the Mad River, by Mary Lee Hahn

Fly Fishing

The small stream
and its bank-side buffer of trees
winds through corn fields.

Do not be tricked --
the current's pull is swift.
Step slow and steady. Don't trip.

Cast with patience.
Relax and find a kind of grace
in the rhythm, in the day.

Driving home, watch --
today you might catch
not a fish, but a glimpse of a fox.

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

Reclamation and Exaltation

Creative Commons Photo by Mary Lee Hahn

RECLAMATION AND EXALTATION

The air is cool;
sun sits low behind the trees.

My tea is hot;
one last sip before I start.

The garden is large;
weeds are plentiful and vigorous.

* * *

I turn my head slowly;
two hummingbirds argue over coneflowers.

I sit back on my heels;
chickadees and bees ignore me.

I stand and stretch;
the air is hot, the tea is cold, the garden is weeded.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

High Plains in Summer

HIGH PLAINS IN SUMMER

Yesterday it rained.
Fifty-five hundredths
over a three-hour period.
High plains equivalent
of a good, soaking rain.

Today it's clear and hot.
Winds gusting to 39 out of the south.
At least the dirt's not blowing.

Forecast's calling
for high nineties
the next three days.

Tourists driving through on I-70
see flat, boring, brown fields.
They don't realize
those are their groceries
burning up.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations.23

"Bird songs recorded in the forest of Fontainebleau (France). You can especially hear some wrens." 

The author, barracuda1983, has released this work into the Public Domain. It can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

BIRDSONG

The leader of the early morning bird walk was a quiet-spoken angular man.

He led us across dew-soaked grass to the forest's edge.

Robins and Bluejays were spotted in the October sky;

Carolina Wrens sang way too loudly for their diminutive size.

Rarely were there surprises.

I remember mostly the comforting sameness of the walks.

Sassafras leaves, worm castings, 

and the sound of the woods waking up with a song in its heart.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

The theme of my 2013 National Poetry Month Project is 

"Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations." 

Each day in April, I will feature media from the Wikimedia Commons ("a database of 16,565,065 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute") along with bits and pieces of my brainstorming and both unfinished and finished poems.

I will be using the media to inspire my poetry, but I am going to invite my students to use my daily media picks to inspire any original creation: poems, stories, comics, music, videos, sculptures, drawings...anything!

Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations.19

Ocean Waves, by Luftrum via Wikimedia Commons

SWIMMING POOL MEMORY

I remember the day I learned to float on my back --
      lying in the middle of the pool's chlorine ocean
      listening to the sound of the water in my ears
      looking up at the blue blue Colorado sky
      feeling the cradle of the water rock me back and forth

I didn't hear them yelling at me to come out of the pool --
      lessons long over
      the other children wrapped in towels
      my own reverie broken
      feeling a loss when I climbed from water to land

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

The theme of my 2013 National Poetry Month Project is 

"Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations." 

Each day in April, I will feature media from the Wikimedia Commons ("a database of 16,565,065 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute") along with bits and pieces of my brainstorming and both unfinished and finished poems.

I will be using the media to inspire my poetry, but I am going to invite my students to use my daily media picks to inspire any original creation: poems, stories, comics, music, videos, sculptures, drawings...anything!

Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations.16

via Wikimedia Commons

FENCES

I've been climbing fences

(and being hurt by them)

since I was a kid.

Broke my arm on one.

Snagged my right knee on barbed wire.

I have the scar to show for it.

I don't much like fences.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

The theme of my 2013 National Poetry Month Project is 

"Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations." 

Each day in April, I will feature media from the Wikimedia Commons ("a database of 16,565,065 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute") along with bits and pieces of my brainstorming and both unfinished and finished poems.

I will be using the media to inspire my poetry, but I am going to invite my students to use my daily media picks to inspire any original creation: poems, stories, comics, music, videos, sculptures, drawings...anything!