It’s a sleep-late Sunday afternoon
and almost time for dinner,
with no pressing
debts and two hours free to spend.
I sit here figuring what to do.
I could translate Beowulf from Old English.
I could swim to Canada.
I could clean out my garage.
Tasks equally formidable.
I fumble around in options
while playing keep or toss
with a catch-all basket on my desk.
Overflowing.
In the basket, a couple bills — keep.
Advertisements — toss.
A lipstick, pens, a comb.
A sharp jab, I quick suck a dab of blood
from the assaulted finger,
poised then chin to thumb for remembering.
Other needles hugged by former fingers,
small and fumbly,
thimble always protecting the wrong tip.
It was my Granny who taught me
to sew,
to visualize the possibilities of gingham and corduroy
so much cheaper than wool.
My first lesson in economics.
To measure twice and cut once,
and since the future is sure to arrive undressed,
to save all the scraps.
Scraps to line pockets, patch knees
and for quilting.
Granny, who never sat at Sunday dinner,
too busy serving us,
never sat in the living room
where the men talked politics,
never earned a wage for work at home
or at the First Methodist Church,
the fixed fencing that encircled her days.
She took life like dictation
and hummed while she worked.
Granny always knew what to do
with a Sunday.
Fry it up early,
drain off the fat for later pans,
serve it, wash it,
dress it up in clothes stirred and pressed
into starched attention that past Tuesday.
Worship it, cook and serve it up big at noon.
Maybe join it for a nap, a supper, a walk
and bed it down by 8:30.
This afternoon my daughter sits,
one of Granny’s quilts
wrapped about her knees,
flipping through catalogs for
tomorrow’s laundry
sneakers propped
on an empty antique tool chest,
watching television,
channel selector in hand.
Click — a movie.
Click — a game.
Click — click,
her first response to boredom.
Click — click
and the infinite choices of a life
click
without
click
pre-constructed definitions.
Eating off a paper napkin,
drinking pop from disposable bottles.
Depositing today’s scraps into the trash
which I will later separate for recycling.
Playing keep — or toss.
©Sara Holbrook, Chicks Up Front, Cleveland State University Press, Cleveland, OH.
• Matthew 6:34
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things”
Cajoled
We were passed remote controls.
And channel flipped from citizens to
consumers with religious zeal.
We believed we were supporting neighbors,
Making jobs. We shopped.
Fueling the machine,
First with coal and trees,
petroleum and gas
Then species, one by one.
A tree frog from the Amazon.
Then polar bears. Baskets of birds.
We turned our headsets to fantasies.
We accumulated,
Made gods of the wealthy
Worshiping their stockpiles.
It was all so entertaining.
We built and blew things up.
We were promised happy endings.
©2023 Sara Holbrook, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
• Philippians 4:6-7
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God”
• Psalm 136:1: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever”
Safe Space
Exists
no safer space
than tucked beneath your arm,
rocked by steady breathing
comforted and warm.
Where words,
by definition,
no longer mean that much.
And trust is spoken
through
the poetry of touch.
© 1998 Sara Holbrook, Chicks Up Front, Cleveland State University Press, Cleveland, OH
Pout
No use
acting nice to me
when I’m stuck in a pout,
I can’t let
your niceness in
until my mad
wears out.
© 1997 Sara Holbrook, I Never Said I Wasn’t Difficult, Boyds Mills Press, Honesdale, PA
NOTHING’S THE END OF THE WORLD
Mother Nature is my mentor,
She tells me I’ll be back,
even when my brain gets bruised
and my heart takes forty whacks.
That when I kick up storms
and my wind and hail bring pain,
She shows me sun can shine
after hostile hurricanes.
That breathless, cliff-clinging highs
and pelican-plunging lows
crest and fall like waves
and I can surf in this natural flow.
That every stage
seems reasonable,
if I look at life
as seasonal.
That what slips and goes deep
finally rises.
That what’s dull
hop-toads with surprises.
That even strip mine wounds
can heal,
and the promise of spring
is real.
That sand in an oyster
may pearl,
and that NOTHING’S
the end of the world.
© 1996 Sara Holbrook, Nothing’s the End of the World, Boyds Mills Press, Honesdale, PA.
Psalm 121:1
A Song of Ascents. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?
One, Taken to Heart . . .
for Wendy
by Sara Holbrook
A book,
so much a part of our lives,
seems lost
somewhere,
out of place.
We drag about the house in heavy shoes,
examining the empty room.
We open the blinds, wash our eyes,
and search the shelf for answers.
Thinking . . . what could I have done with that book?
Where did I see it last?
Could a book just wander off like that?
Questions to throw at the moon,
while standing, rooted in the shadows,
remembering – the story.
The story.
Remember the time?
the page?
the chapter?
Remember the smile?
A book can get lost,
disappear,
or simply fall to pieces,
but a story stays forever once we’ve taken it to heart.
And for the rest of what each of us will know
of eternity,
whenever
we drag about the house
in heavy shoes,
wash our eyes,
and search the shelf for answers,
that story will remain
to coax us
back into the moonlight,
a sister, teaching us to dance.
© 1998, Chicks Up Front, Cleveland State University Press, Cleveland, OH
GOOD GRIEF
by Sara Holbrook
Grief gets worn out by grieving.
Pain’s a coat I must put on
and wear around the house
till it no longer feels so wrong.
I can’t leave it in the box
and claim it doesn’t fit.
I can’t bag it for the coat drive
or wait
till I grow into it.
Not a color of my choosing
and nothing to brag about.
The sooner
I try grief on,
the sooner grief
will get worn out.
© 1997 Sara Holbrook, I Never Said I Wasn’t Difficult, Boyds Mills Press, Honesdale, PA
Psalm 147:3: “He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds”
Permission to Let Go
By Sara Holbrook
A childhood spent
racing for the monkey bars,
laughing, the sun in her face.
Securing her place on the topmost rung
hollering,
Catch me if you can!
All that
before she learned
loud screams and winning races
were no way to catch a man.
She drew herself into
the social pattern.
It took a quarantine to set her free
from putting on a face every morning
to mask the twists of pain from
curling iron burns,
stinging mascara,
skinny jeans,
and toes pinched into points.
The outer door closed.
And inner door opened.
She let herself go.
© 2021 Sara Holbrook, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Luke 11:34-35
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.
33 “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. 35 Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. 36 If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”
THE LONELIEST
I’m not going steady.
I’m nobody’s best friend.
I guess I’m ’bout the loneliest
that anybody’s been.
There’s no one waiting at the door
at three for me to meet.
And if I’m late for lunch,
no one’s saving me a seat.
My love life’s not the topic
of hot homeroom conversation.
Like some old empty locker,
no one wants my combination.
This school’s made up of partners,
two halves to every whole,
‘cept me,
left on the outside,
like that clankin’ old flagpole.
© 1997 Sara Holbrook, I Never Said I Wasn’t Difficult, Boyds Mills Press, Honesdale, PA
What is Poetry for?
Poetry is for remembering.
It’s multicolored scraps of life –
The melting ice cream cone running down my hand.
A roaring lawnmower when I’m trying to sleep.
The smell of bacon.
Triangles and squares of my experience
pieced and quilted into a blanket
I can wrap around me when I’m cold.
Poetry is experience.
© 2022 Sara Holbrook, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CREATIVE GRADES
Creative does,
‘though not what’s told,
a student
who is not enrolled
in graduated, chaptered classes,
where mindful competition passes
for excellence.
It’s recompense
is not achieved
by others brandishing respect.
Creative
grades its own neglect.
© 1999 Sara Holbrook, Walking on the Boundaries of Change, Boyds Mills Press, Honesdale, PA
Oblivious?
The charred remains of one more bombed out bus.
A swat team storms, a hostage sits alone.
Another hidden camera shot of thugs.
Amber Alert! A child’s been snatched from home.
Some loner kid went postal up in Maine.
Explosive vests? Is everyone extreme?
Death threat! A woman’s clinic up in flames.
More bad news from the flat screen fear machine.
How many died from that last IED?
I can’t take more. I mean it. I am done.
The information age is killing me.
I leave to take a shower of pure sun.
Oblivious, some bird with open throat
starts up a symphony of joy and hope.
© 2016 Sara Holbrook, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Hope
Is the guest who’s welcomed back.
Can’t overstay.
Won’t unpack.
© 2004 Sara Holbrook, By Definition, Poems of Feelings, Boyds Mills Press, Honesdale, PA
Still Looking
I am looking for that place
beyond resign and cope,
where promise can ignite,
and wishing can find hope.
Where the downside
knows its place,
and desires don’t do without,
and happiness can’t hear
the whimpering of doubt.
© 1998 Sara Holbrook, Chicks Up Front, Cleveland State University Press, Cleveland, OH.
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