Occasions

Selected Poems

Marilyn McEntyre

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532652493
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Religious Poetry
• Index: Literature

These poems, written for occasions, remind us of those occasions that recur--celebrations, commemorations, rites of passage, and ordinary moments of being that linger in memory as turning points or extraordinary encounters or summonings. Tied as they are to particular times and places, readers will recognize in them echoes of their own beginnings, partings, and moments of awakening.

IV

MOMENTS OF BEING

Appa’s Note

It’s the deep one.

You pluck it,

and the sound

keeps coming.

The string goes still,

but the note stays

with you, and you

find yourself

listening for it

in the night. Owls

call and feral cats

cry into the dark.

By the bay shore

water laps and wind

plays among pines.

You yawn and sigh.

At bedtime you hum—

a bit of Bill Evans,

the last line of Sunday’s anthem,

a phrase from Verdi.

I listen in. I can hear

Appa’s note, the deep one.

I can follow it home.

❧

In the Borderlands

Afternoons when you walked in

with that look of contentment I loved,

I asked where you’d been

and you said (as though it ought to be

obvious) “At the cemetery.”

“Some guy was buried between two women.

They all had different names.

Same kind of gravestones, though.

There’s a story there.”

“I go there to think,” you said.

“I like being there with all those people.”

Mornings I would find you sitting up

while your sisters slept. Still seeing

a dreamscape, fast fading as dawn,

you’d recount the night’s journey.

There were fish in your dreams.

And long tunnels and underwater caves.

And people who glittered and places

where everything had its own color.

You were an edge-dweller, peering,

fearless, past the partitions that keep us

safe, tantalized by places you can get to only

by going deep into underground caves.

❧

What Martha Knew

Busy about many things, she knew how

to cope with others’ agendas

and take the days’ tradeoffs in stride.

She knew that, unlike her sister,

she was not likely to sit quietly

and listen before the work was done.

But she listened. She heard

his voice as she stirred

the pot, and paused, and wept.

She knew that if he had been there

her brother would not have died.

Even when he rebuked her, her heart

widened and her breath

slowed. So she was content

when he finally blessed the warm bread

and gave th...