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The Naked Ladies

For most of the years that I taught at Dordt, I walked or biked the 10 or 12 blocks between my home and the college.   At some point in my career I began looking for a poem on my way to Dordt.   The flowers that inspired this poem were planted in the narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road—what some of us call the terrace—about 4 blocks from Dordt.   Every year I looked for them, and every year they popped up—always naked as jaybirds. The Naked Ladies ( Amaryllis Belladonna )* Ten naked ladies dally on the terrace slender and supple in their pale pink skin. Arms raised to heaven they are nonchalantly naked as they dance in languid steps to the rhythm of the breeze. They have never toiled or spun only frolicked in the sun. Ten naked ladies shiver on the terrace blotched and wretched in their weather-wrinkled skin. By hot winds harassed they silently struggle to hold up each other as they bend to the curb. They have never spun o
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9/11, War, Nationalism and Living as Disciples of Christ

I once received a short letter from theologian Stanley Hauerwas in response to an article I had written in Perspectives Magazine .  It was a pretty extraordinary thing for me to get a written letter (this was a bit before email responses became easy) from anyone and especially the man whom  Time  called the best theologian in America. Since then I have read just one book by Hauerwas, his memoir  Hannah’s Child , and I can assure you it is a wonderful read.  I read it several years ago but went back to it recently because I remembered that he was concerned with what might be called today “Christian Nationalism.”  Here are a few sentences from a  Time  essay he wrote shortly after 9/11: G. K. Chesterton once observed that America is a nation with the soul of a church.  Bush’s use of religious rhetoric seems to confirm this view.  None of this is good news for Christians, however, because it tempts us to confuse Christianity with America.  As a result, Christians fail to be w
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Confusing Christianity with America

I once received a short letter from Stanley Hauerwas in response to an article I had written titled “The Vigor of Wild Virtue.”   It’s a pretty extraordinary thing to get a written letter (this was a bit before email responses became easy) from anyone and especially the man whom Time called the best theologian in America. I have read just one book by Hauerwas, his memoir Hannah’s Child , and I can assure you it is a wonderful read.   I read it several years ago but went back to it recently because I remembered that he was concerned with what might be called today “Christian Nationalism.”   Let me just tease you with a few sentences from a Time essay he wrote shortly after 9/11: G. K. Chesterton once observed that America is a nation with the soul of a church.   Bush’s use of religious rhetoric seems to confirm this view.   None of this is good news for Christians, however, because it tempts us to confuse Christianity with America.   As a result, Christians fail to be what God
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Crotchety, Brat, Curmudeon

A friend recently asked me to explain the roots of the word crotchety .  I am not sure why she wants to know the history of the word.  I hope it is not so that she can use it with more vigor as a descriptor of her husband or her boss.  Perhaps she, herself, feels crotchety. The word crotchet means “forked or hooked or bent or curved,” and it comes from the same root as crook , the hooked staff of a shepherd.  Those of us who remember grandmothers or aunts who crocheted (pronounced cro-shayed ) know what the crochet hook (a redundancy) looks like.  We can also understand that the robber we call a crook is someone with a bent moral sense.  And if we call our husband or wife or boss crotchety, what we are really saying is that he or she has a personality full of little hooks and forks. I know we usually think of crotchety as an adjective with negative connotations.  But think for a moment how boring life would be if people were not crotchety, if they were all as smooth and
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In Good Company

Suppose you were a pretty good high school baseball player in your day and have been for your whole life an avid major league baseball fan.   One ordinary spring day you go to your mail box and find a roster of this year’s All Star game.   You read it, and notice that your name is on it—along with old time players like Willie Mays and Rod Carew and current players like Mike Trout and Nelson Cruz. That’s a little bit how I felt when, a couple of days ago, I went to my mailbox and found a book of poems with the title Final Exam .   It was a book containing eighty-five poems written by sixty-five different poets, all of the poems about teachers and their students.   As I perused the index I saw names like Jane Kenyon, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Theodore Roethke, Carl Sandberg, William Stafford and many more, a Who’s Who of American Poetry over the last hundred years.   I saw some of my favorite poets and poems:   John Ciardi’s “On Flunking a Nice Boy out of School,” Howard Nemerov
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The Challenge: “Bee Still” and “Ascension”

Several weeks ago (May 8) I issued a challenge to readers to figure out the connection between my son Luke’s poem “Bee Still” and my poem “Ascension.”   Several of you responded and one of you, my boyhood friend John Rozeboom, got it mostly right.   If you read the last word of each line of my poem--in order--you will have Luke's poem.  This device--placing the words of another poet's poem (or just a line from the poem) at the end of each line of your poem--is called a Golden Shovel--invented by a friend of the great Afro-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks.  He asked friends and fellow poets to write a Golden Shovel poem to honor Brooks and got a whole book of Golden Shovel poems.  Here's another Golden Shovel poem I wrote using the words of just the last line of another of Luke's poems and placing each one, in order, at the end of each line of my poem. From "Where the Spokes Were Missing" . . . I saw this.  And some other night I'll see this  l
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The Maiden Lady Who Threw Herself at a Train in Sanborn, Iowa

There are no burning marks where her hands grabbed the railroad tracks No haunted smile hovers above the eerie grass in a nearby pasture After the train had passed, after the whistle’s crazy scream, the ditches grew demons for thistles, and she is merely a clotted pool a glistening stain tomorrow a weak reflection the blooming poppies the tiger lilies making ferocious summer love under the hottest sun in the wildest field The moon will dance a wan dance tonight in her unsweetened blood and the townspeople glad with gossip will shake their heads rattle her last rare words discover hidden virtues at last in a bottom drawer Death by a dumb locomotive, DEATH BY A DUMB LOCOMOTIVE the morning headlines read and stars fall down to worship the saddest death in years and in heaven angels kiss her broken soul and the gods repair her dangling bones oh and her fisheye stare is diamond oh and her sour gray hair is gold             
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