Final
For the final exam on hope somebody
will write the answer with a fine stylus
on a beetle’s shiny red back. Another
will put her hope on a magnified grain
of rice. But that will not be me. I am
going to smudge and scrawl across page
after page, dumping the contents of
my mind like a purse. A cloud’s hope
is all wisp and rain. A clown’s is that
ridicule can turn into applause. Is it
hope when the dog’s belly clock calls
and he wags at the kitchen door?
Professor, I am already failing, flailing.
You elucidate page after page of text
while I watch the seminar table’s grain
swirl toward some invisible drain.
Did Freud have a theory? Did Simone
de Beauvoir tear it to shreds? What did
Martin Buber say to Martin Heidegger
as they walked through the woods, each
barely two inches over five feet, wanting
something the other could not quite give.
Repentance or forgiveness—which comes
first? I’m sorry. That’s not the question.
Do you have to survive to have hope,
or do you need hope in order to survive?
Buber might say we have to look at a beetle
and see more than a bug. He had hope
in Jerusalem when he kept paying rent
in secret to the exiled Arabs whose house
the government had seized. He must have
believed, Professor, we are all tenants
in a house belonging to somebody else.
Last night I poured rice into boiling water
and wondered, Professor, if you were
a grain of rice what would you hope?
Among the Ruins
Through the long end of the telescope
war is far away and just watching leaves
us unscathed and culpable, as cities burn
and bodies pile up in the rubble. But turn
the scope, and it could be my neighbor
torching his house, its frame engulfed,
roof plummeting in brilliant shards,
windows curtained in flames, our roof
beginning to smolder, while we stand
on the winter street in pajamas and coats.
How to weigh one house, one night
against a month or a seven-year siege?
Is there a box big enough for them all—
Actium, Aleppo, Mariupol, Saigon,
Leningrad, Hiroshima, Kandahar. I put in
my neighbor headed to jail, the arson
obvious and his life in ruins. I put in
my mother with her stroke-addled brain,
and the old man in Aleppo who stood
in a shattered room and picked up
his fiddle and bow. I put in the buttons
still being found in the fields where
Napoleon passed. I put in my beloved
and ask that the vacuum of his absence
be filled with the voices of others¾
the woman in Kharkiv with no door left
for her key, the man shoveling earth
over his wife and son, the soldier whose
comrade was beside him minutes ago
lighting a smoke and telling a dumb joke.
I put in my neighbor’s orange jumpsuit,
the voices calling out from their cells.
I ask to hear and remain silent in their midst,
for only the bereaved should tell stories.
After the wake, only they should be
allowed a dark laugh among the ruins.
Girl
Remember how you loved being a girl, loved
recording on a yellow pad your red shoes,
pet turtle, the ten things you might forget
if you ever became a grownup. You loved
dawdling on the way to school, the weather
always new, those bright October mornings
when the wind could almost whisk you away¾
first chill, puffy clouds scudding across the sky.
You could have been anyone then and the wind
would love you, even if your homework
wasn’t done and you botched your blue map
of Ohio, capital city Columbus.
Milk money in your pocket, cod liver oil
on your breath, you’d step out of your house
and the day would be waiting. The tall grass,
the cindery side of the road, the sky
flying its bright clouds¾they didn’t want
you skinnier than you were, or smarter
or better at kick ball. Wind in the yellow
trees and in your hair, sparrows in the branches,
everything alive! Without trying it seems,
without even paper or pencil or words,
you have recorded this, so it still exists
in the library of your soul, in the drawer
marked Happy. Beside it, the other drawer
you’ve opened many times where nightmares
are kept, and the dead birds your cat left
on the doorstep, the little prongs glaring up
from the sweater whose rhinestones you pried out
as your mother chatted with the salesclerk.
Reading Moby Dick at 35,000 Feet
I’m holding a storm in my lap, page
after page, American Lit. 201,
a good distraction for my flight.
Some chapters have been a slow growl,
but now on the runway the wind’s picked up,
rain’s small scatter shifts to bigger spillage,
then, turning one more page¾ a flash.
I count, don’t get past two. Still, we take off.
And is it words making all this racket?¾
windows shaking in their sockets,
the plane swamped by high seas, the boat
whale-rammed, the book both inside and out
rattling through turbulence, flying blind
into a thick spume of clouds.
Seat belt sign, tray tables up. On the ground,
my new love in his father’s car
may be stalled in traffic, asking if I’m the one.
Up here, it’s all heave and heel,
plane dip, stomach plunge, and Pip leaping
into fathoms of heartless immensity,
his mind undone. I’m reading fast now
to get to the last page, the coffin bobbing up
from shipwreck suction, small raft floating
in the vast expanse, reading this plane
into that sign of survival, safe landing,
gangplank walk past the pilot’s routine thanks,
into ordinary rain, Cleveland’s local time,
and I in my love’s arms once again.
Baby What You Want Me to Do
September, and beauty’s coming in for the kill
Season of cyclists bent over handlebars,
one pant leg rolled, yellow windbreakers
Yours gone to Goodwill
Jimmy Reed CD still in the player
I’m goin up down down up
Anyway you wanna let it roll
In my dresser now your wallet, your keys,
the credit card still in your name
And cherries gone bad before I can eat them,
Noises in the car and coming from the fridge
Baby why you wanna let go
Forget those big heroes pouring wine on dirt,
cutting up bulls with their vats of blood
till the dead come flickering, speaking inscrutable
You said Reed could be so drunk
his wife sat beside him on stage feeding lyrics
Enough with Orpheus making every tree
from trunk to breakable twig sob
But those three kisses you left on my phone
Your falsetto in the kitchen doing dishes¾
If I could just turn fast enough
Widow’s Prayer
I watched a dandelion shatter in wind,
scatter like spittle from a sneeze.
What is a seed but something that flies,
then falls, a little germ, dirt diver.
Let it dive into me. Don‘t leave me
stranded on the ground, rootless,
washed away by any trickle of rain.
I watched him close his eyes and go
so far inside hands could not reach.
I whispered his name, but he was
earless to that. He was a breath ready
to slip through the window’s mesh.
Lord, I watched wind take the shape
of a scarf, saw a small dervish of sand,
saw light catch in a sparrow’s fanned wing,
which folded like a bad hand of cards.
What held the dandelion together let loose.
He who was once radiant and bright
is now whatever comes next. Have mercy.
Vox Humana
I always think treble should name
a low sound, not high, and diapason
should be the bassoon, not the flute pipes,
though I see it also means, “the principal
foundation stop extending through
the organ’s complete range”¾
including those chest-rattling low notes
when the musician’s feet press the pedals
and her arms extend, fingers splayed,
half shaking as she holds down the keys
to make one enormous, shattering swell.
What a monstrous magical contraption,
more combine than tractor,
taking four limbs and how much
body torque to build that cathedral
of sound, meant to reach the highest ceiling
and flicker every flame on its wick.
Yes, there are treble stops, flutelike,
where a lone cry seems to tremble,
approaching the divine.
Then a great tuba voice might answer,
rumbling the rafters, shaking pigeons
from their roosts. Messiaen
filled his organ with birds, Bach
filled his with so much latticework
listeners still can rise up into
a bigger heart, more capacious mind.
Wah-wah pedal and feedback screech
are nothing new. Here the bellowing cow
has a voice as well as the vicar,
saint and sinner and finch, the woman in labor
and her child’s first cry––this instrument,
when it opens all its stops, its principal
foundation and range, proclaims the world
is holy, from the billowing clouds
down to the manure stuck on our boots.
Betsy Sholl’s tenth collection of poetry is As If a Song Could Save You (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). Her ninth collection of poetry is House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems (University of Wisconsin, 2019), winner of the Four Lakes Prize. Other awards include a Maine Book Award for Poetry, The Felix Pollak Prize, the AWP Prize for Poetry. She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts and served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011. She was awarded the 2020 Distinguished Achievement Award from Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance.