Not the way I learned to love the long dirt road that ran between our house and the soybean fields, farm and forest: you can't learn something you've always known, the love of a country sunset startling gold and green.
Nor the way I learned to love Detroit, sitting beside my father on the bus as the city rushed by out the windows, winding through Eastern Market to the sounds of a children's choir, the wild colors of African art painted by men in turbans and robes just as bright.
I did not learn to love Toledo as quickly as I learned to love Port Huron, walking the streets between classes to find the Coney. I did not learn to love Toledo at all, in fact, until late in the second year and I did not learn to love it in the way I have learned to love all my other homes,
but, rather,
in the skyline that reminds me of Detroit, the farmers market where I linger over bushels of onions and carrots and buy bread I don't need because I love the smell of rosemary. I love Toledo for the pillars and steps of the art museum, white and Grecian in the way of Washington,
for the sunlight glancing off the windows of the Fifth-Third building like the one in Port Huron. I love Toledo for the metropark that lets me escape the city within the city, green and wet and hilly and silent. I love Toledo for the books I've bought and the book I've written, for the price of a ticket at the cinema and the price of my first pair of Converse.
I love Toledo in a quiet way, not in memory but in future. In the way I imagine our apartment, set with the bookshelf and corner table my grandfather made, the buffet that belonged to my great-grandmother, the way I worry about how our children will smack into the table leg and break it or our cats will claw at the sofa.
The way I learned to love a young man with constellations of birthmarks on his back, the way babies learn to walk: the way I am still learning to love myself.
This is a list poem I was going to write a blog entry about and decided to use for NaPo instead.
Things That Make Me Feel Like a Grown-Up
Getting approved for a credit card that I was rejected for two years ago. One student loan payment, car insurance in a lump up front, and the phone bill each month: good credit.
Buying bathroom necessities instead of toys, junk food, and clothes I don't need. A new laundry hamper, a towel of my own, and two pillows not lumpy from years of use: responsible spending.
Cooking a meal for myself when I could just have a bowl of cereal for dinner. Baked tilapia and sweet potatoes, scrambled eggs on toast, or tacos that will last me for days: real food.
Cleaning the house when I'd rather scroll through the Internet all day. Fresh sheets, clean floors, and an empty dishwasher: time management.
Running a classroom, as opposed to wrapping meat at a grocery store. Giving out new books, teaching new concepts, and making snap decisions: real job.
Having a savings account because, for once, I have enough money to save some. Money for groceries, money for car insurance, and money for a wedding: not broke.
But there are some days when I still don't want to get out of bed. Stay in pajamas, marathon Supernatural, because being a responsible adult is just too hard.
It's the kind of day that needs stick-shift driving foot on clutch to rub away the itch that clings to the soul
classic rock blasting through the stereo Jethro Tull or "Born to Be Wild," Bob Seger, Kansas, and Metallica blasting until you can't hear
wind-blown hair in the open window snip cut curls shorn onto the floor the wind whips your hair back and the sunlight warms it
leather jackets and denim to keep you warm and oil-free while you change the headlight change the fluids change any kind of change that keeps the motor running.
Today is the kind of day that needs a change stick-shift music haircut oil anything anything that keeps the motor running
gawd. I love your poems so much, I can just read them over dozens of times.
Toledo is possibly my favorite one, I can just relate with it and just the picturesque way you paint each of these places all kind of snowball into that last line: Love Toledo the way I am still learning to love myself, I mean, what a fff-ing line. Yes!
And where Toledo is gold and happy and inspiring, 6 impossible things pangs and saddens, this is like every dreamer in the world, everyone who is longing. Both of these poems share in the sincerity of voice, it's the kind of reaction where you say to yourself: these are the things I always think about and I can never say it any better myself -- and that hits me with Grown Up as well, I feel like I'm going down a checklist and going yup, yup, yup, but also feeling guilty because I haven't cooked a dinner for myself in weeks! Poem 4 gives me the feeling of getting up and going out for a ride, it is very evocative!
In the evening the woods are blue with memory that weaves through the tree-trunks like mist and clings to the moss that grows in hidden places, in the cracks between rough bark and smooth skin.
Her name has never really belonged to her, or, perhaps, she has never really belonged to her name.
The confidence in the slant of the l, the husky beauty in the buzz of the z: not her.
She is more the quiet type, the hidden-in-her-bedroom type, the reading-Mary-Oliver type, the solitary-walk-in-the-forest type.
Not a queen, nor an actress, nor a fashion-designer.
But sometimes, just for a moment, she catches hold of her name by the tail of the h. Glimpses it and holds on because she knows it to mean her: when she sees it printed on a note, her; when she hears it roll off the tongue of a blue-eyed boy, her.
A bird-watcher, a book-reader.
Not actress, designer, or queen-- but sometimes she catches a glimpse and it's enough that she aspires to be herself.
It's a strange kind of faith, the religion of Trust. Our church is like God, everywhere at all times: when you let someone borrow your favorite pair of shoes, let them take you out on a date, let them hear your story.
All you can know about anyone is what they tell you, and everyone lies-- that's what the nonbelievers think, people so beat up by life and circumstance that they have no faith.
Does he love you? You can't know, you must believe. Is their marriage crumbling? You can't know--tabloids may claim it, they may deny it-- Is she pregnant and scared? You can't know, and the truth may not come out, so you must choose what to believe.
When every story we know is a case of he said, she said, the only truth you can know is your own.
A forest frozen in frost and silence Bird calls ringing crisp and clear across cold air But the rush of water and thunder Of falls is not stilled by wintery hues The smell of damp soil, the perfume The earth spritzes with every downpour Before she girds herself in green: Moss, bulbs, new leaves with snow Perched atop them like budding flowers
Gender:
Points: 91980
Reviews: 1735