Month: January 2019

Monday poem

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

This is from an anthology I received as a Christmas gift, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time. This is my favorite so far from it:

Mercy

Like two wrestlers etched
around some ancient urn

we’d lace our hands,
then wrench

each other’s wrists back
until the muscles ached

and the tendons burned,
and one brother

or the other grunted Mercy —
a game we played

so many times
I finally taught my sons,

not knowing what it was,
until too late, I’d done:

when the oldest rose
like my brother’s ghost,

grappling the little
ghost I was at ten —

who cried out Mercy!
in my own voice Mercy!

as I watched from deep
inside my father’s skin.

Patrick Phillips

Diversity or Meritocracy?

Posted on by Meryl in Philosophical

Hard to believe that this ad is from 1965, but of course, the assumptions it makes are part of what the rebellion of the 1960’s was about.

The world I grew up in, the world of the 50s and 60s, was a white man’s world. Every position of power, doctor, lawyer, judge, politician, was held by allegedly straight white men.

There were a few exceptions, of course, but everywhere you looked, there were often mediocre white men in charge, despite the fact that there were smart

women and minorities around who could have done a better job. So it makes perfect sense that women and minorities protested. The feminist movement, the black power movement, the LGBT movement all rose out of that sense of unfair disenfranchisement.

But now it seems to me we have a reverse problem: to satisfy diversity requirements, those hiring might chose a mediocre person of color or with a disability or a non-mainstream gender orientation over a more qualified straight caucasian.

I totally get the importance of role models, of disparate voices, of the way networking and connections influence who you know and suggest for a position. But shouldn’t the best human available for a given job be our goal?

Sports teams seem to have representation based on pure ability. Surely this is a model that would benefit us all in the long run.

Mary Oliver 1935-2019

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

Thanks to Gina for sending me this:

Marengo

Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.

When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain–
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.

And I would like to have whatever little ceremony there might be
take place while the rain is shoveled and shoveled out of the sky,

and anyone who comes must travel, slowly and with thought,
as around the edges of the great swamp.

Mary Oliver

Rainy Day Poem

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

Rain in Northern California, where we always seem to be needing it, can be as delicious as this poem, which sounds contemporary though written a century ago.

Summer Rain

All night our room was outer-walled with rain.
Drops fell and flattened on the tin roof,
And rang like little disks of metal.
Ping!—Ping!—and there was not a pin-point of silence between
    them.
The rain rattled and clashed,
And the slats of the shutters danced and glittered.
But to me the darkness was red-gold and crocus-colored
With your brightness,
And the words you whispered to me
Sprang up and flamed—orange torches against the rain.
Torches against the wall of cool, silver rain!

Amy Lowell