Admittedly, An Odd Exercise of Poems

Substitute once upon a time if you like, but I'll start it this way:

 One day, I wrote a poem which seemed to me to have little to no promise to it.

I could have thrown it out, but I didn't.

Over several days I worked at it. 

And it was still lacking the kind of somethings that would make it worthwhile.

So, I began instead to play with it.

I created two poems.

Maybe there still is no point to either of them or both of them.

But I learned something.

What I learned is that the line breaks in a poem make a difference - in tone, in meaning.

And it was fun. 

And here  are those two poems, so you can see for yourself.

Poem One

there are so many

things I could be

doing right

now cleaning

the bathroom packing away

winter clothing vacuuming

something even reading

but I’m not thought

I’d study

light patterns shade on

birch tree

trunk but the wind changes

hot

to cool clouds

slipping in shadows

disappear

I sit on

the deck listening to breeze

rustling distant

mowers humming

waiting I will

see if shadow

 patterns shifting

return form

anew

or maybe something else  will

 

do!

                                Kate Lydon Varley

Poem Two 

there are so many things I could be doing right now

cleaning the bathroom

packing away winter clothing

vacuuming something

even reading

but I’m not

thought I’d study light patterns

shade on birch tree trunk

but the wind changes hot to cool

clouds slipping in

shadows disappear

I sit on the deck

listening to breeze rustling

distant mowers humming

waiting

I will see if shadow patterns shifting return

form  anew

or maybe something else will do 

                            Kate Lydon Varley

This November Day

This November Day 

The leaves move softly in the breeze

falling in gentle twirls to the ground

silent and then the sturdy tone –

a Canada goose

the loud honk of its sound

then silence again

as branches reach and bend

releasing slips of yellow, red and brown

to muffle the green of the grass

as it becomes

an undercurrent

this November Day

 

Kate Lydon Varley

 

Return of a Beloved Rodent

 

It’s been years, Mickey –

I’d say well more than  fifty

and suddenly you turn up

in a box from family

I receive in the mail.

You’re a bit worse for wear,

but don’t give it a thought!

Aren’t we all?

In any case,

the moment I saw your beaming face,

I didn’t care about the ravages of time

because you are here with me in my very own home.

 

I know you belong to my brother,

not me,

 but from the moment I saw you again

I was captivated

I was charmed

I swore I’d help you get yourself together.

 

Where have you been all this time?

In a basement or attic,

or stuffed in a drawer

for years

when no one sought you,

hugged you,

loved you.

No one even washed your face!

In the fabric of your body,

a tear reveals

a hint of ancient stuffing.

And your black mouse ears

and your shoes and pants and hands

– all gone.

 

You were my brother Johnny’s special friend.

I close my eyes and see the two of you again,

him holding you tight.

 

He lives continents away just now,

but don’t despair!

I’ll take care of you until he comes to get you.

I’ll put you back together.

You may remember, I know how to sew.

I’ll make new hands and gloves for you,

And shoes and skin and clothes

and I’ll keep an eye on you. ‘til he comes back.

 

You and I, Mickey,

it’s true, we may be aging,

but we’ll age with joy together, dearest mouse!

 

                                    Kate Lydon Varley

Undercurrent

 

The litany of my day is very simple:

it’s okay

it’s okay

If I say it a million times

I guess I need to

it’s okay

it’s okay

If I can’t fall asleep at bedtime, it’s okay

It’s okay if I’m sleeping  late to compensate

or if I’m tired from a night of wakeful worry

it’s okay

it’s okay

I soothe, I excuse

from dawn to dark, and then some

I look for the joys to be found in little things

and they are there

things for which I can’t help being grateful

sharing a poem, day lilies in bloom

birch trees with quiet leaves that rustle gentle

eating my breakfast oatmeal on the deck,

watching a house wren splashing in the bird bath

but as I enjoy, there’s still that steady whisper

it’s okay

it’s okay

I limit exposure to news of the pandemic,

search out the science, leave out most of the rest.

I’d bargain with God for a host of promising outcomes,

but I’m not a believer, so it wouldn’t help

I sing, I bike, I read poems by the bushel

make wonderful meals, day by day by day

serve stories to any with that kind of hunger

but the drumbeat still continues night and day

it’s okay

it’s okay

It’s okay to leave the dishes until later.

It’s okay if the sewing machine declines to work.

It’s okay if the dog barks at a passing neighbor

It’s okay

It’s okay

It’s okay to be nervous, frightened, angry

Okay to be wishful, wistful, wild or sad

It’s okay to push away what I can’t handle

And when all else fails, yes, it’s okay to cry.

It’s okay

It’s okay 

                                    ~ Kate Lydon Varley

Thanks to a suggestion from my friend Valerie, I have posted this poem of mine. 

Evensong

 

Evensong

 

A mass of gray cloud

dashes past sunset

west to east

blotting out remnants of blue

as little birds chirp

their twilight rites

in joy

in friendship

in concert.

Good night.

Sleep well.

Playing Ball

 

Playing Ball

 

            Daddy loved to play ball. He loved baseball and football and basketball, rolling a ball, bouncing a ball, pitching it, hitting it, throwing it, catching it, kicking it, bouncing it off a nickel balanced on a line of a sidewalk and turning the nickel over from the way he hit that nickel with the ball. Daddy could play any kind of ball game, and he taught all of us how to play ball, but he taught me first, because I was born first. 

            Daddy and I played catch at home in the back yard, and that was fun. And when I got better at it, Daddy taught me how to bat. For batting, you need more room, so no one hits the ball through the window by accident. So Daddy took me to the stadium down the street to teach me how to bat.  He showed me how he batted, and he could throw the ball up in the air for himself, and then hit it! Daddy told me you have to keep your eye on the ball, and when you swing, you swing fast, and there’s a place on the bat that’s a perfect place to hit that ball and send it back out. Probably I wouldn’t find it the first day when I was learning about it, but I’d find it sometime. But before I could hit the ball, Daddy showed me how to swing, and where to swing.

            That part was a surprise for Daddy. When I took the bat and swung it back and forth like he showed me, Daddy said, “Gee, you’re batting leftie. You’re right-handed, and you’re batting leftie.”

            I asked Daddy if I should turn the other way. “No,” he said. “You should bat whatever way feels right to you. Some people bat right-handed, some bat left-handed, and some are switch hitters.  ”

            That was the way that felt good to me, so that’s what I did.

            Daddy said, “It’s good to bat leftie. The other team will be scared of you.”

            So after I got the hang of it a little more, Daddy told me more about batting. “When you bat, keep your eye on the ball,” he said. “Don’t look at me, don’t look at the bat, don’t look at anything else. You’re gonna swing that bat, just like you’ve been doing, but swing it at the ball. Okay? Let’s try.”

Daddy could throw a ball very fast when he wanted to, but he didn’t throw it very fast to me. The first time, I swung the bat, but I didn’t hit the ball.

“That’s okay,” Daddy said. “You swung that bat hard, and that’s a good thing. Just keep your eye on the ball, and you’re gonna hit it. Might not be next time, or the time after, but it’s gonna be soon.”

Daddy was right. It took a little while, but I did hit that ball. It didn’t go very far, but I hit it.

And Daddy kept teaching me, and I got better.

                                                        Kate Lydon Varley

Mrs. Bell's Doughnut Shop

 

Mrs. Bell’s Doughnut Shop

 

Daddy worked in Malden Square at Mrs. Bell's Doughnut Shop. I don't know who Mrs. Bell was. The doughnut shop was owned by Al, and that’s what I called him.  I liked him a lot. He was skinny, and a little bald, but he had some red hair and a red mustache. Like everyone else at Mrs. Bell's, Al was always glad to see me when I came in. He'd say, "Well, look who's here! It's Kay!"  I'd always tell him  he was wrong, and then I'd tell him who I was that day. Sometimes I was Polkadottie, sometimes Princess Summerfallwinterspring, or some kind of good fairy. And sometimes I was even just myself. Whenever I came to the store, Al would call me whoever I was the last time I came in, but no matter what he guessed, he was always wrong.

 When Mummy took me to the doughnut shop, she would take me around to say hello to everyone. I knew Esther Rose, who washed dishes, and Tommy Ray, who cleaned the store. I knew all the waitresses, but my favorite was Prissy. She and Mummy were friends, and sometimes Prissy came to birthday parties at our house.

But the best thing was watching Daddy make doughnuts. He stood behind a window real near where people sat at the counters, so they could watch him too. All those people had to stay on the restaurant side of the window, though, but I could walk right back and watch Daddy close up. He would mix the dough with his hands in a giant silver-colored mixing bowl. And when it was mixed enough, he’d flop it onto the cloth on his work bench, and he’d scrape the dough off his hands with his fingers. I liked the way he sprinkled the dough with flour before he kneaded it, and then rolled the dough out. I would watch his hands move so fast with the doughnut cutter. Sometimes he would set cooking racks of doughnuts into the bubbling hot grease of the fryolator. He’d use two long sticks to turn the doughnuts over in the hot grease, and he’d do it so fast, his hands would almost fly.

Sometimes Daddy took me with him to the back room, where the raise dough was proofing. And sometimes I went with him to the jelly pump so he could fill the jelly doughnuts. And I liked to watch him dip already fried raise doughnuts into the honey dip glaze. I got to see everything.

I loved Mrs. Bell's. I loved the small white tiles of the floor, the big round top on the mirrors on the wall for every booth. I liked the way the counter turned a corner, and I loved the cases for the doughnuts and all the other things Daddy made. I could look through the glass of the case at biscuits, lemon squares, apple squares, and muffins, and I could see the trays of doughnuts in the tall cases against the wall. My Daddy made all of them. He was a very good baker. He made the best doughnuts in the whole wide world.

                                                        Kate Lydon Varley

 

Daddy and Me

 

 

When I was two years old, my father would lift me up and stand me on top of the refrigerator. Of course, refrigerators were smaller in those days, but, still, my feet were at the level of his chest.

"Jump!" he'd say, holding his hands out to catch me. I had no fear. I remember the triumphant joy of soaring through the air as if I were flying, and landing, giggling and safe in his arms.

Daddy loved to joke. Sometimes he would put me high on that refrigerator, and then fold his arms over his chest. "Jump!" he'd say. I knew he wouldn't let me get hurt, so I would jump. He always caught me, and I knew he always would.

*          *          *

 

I loved Rootie Kazootie! I knew him from the Golden Books my father read to me. Daddy would go to Woolworth's all the time to see if there were any new Rootie books, and he bought me every single one that he could find. We both loved them, which was lucky, because I asked for Daddy to read them to me over and over and over again. Rootie was like Daddy. They were both very good baseball players and they wore baseball caps a lot. But Rootie had something else special. He had a magic kazootie, a sort of magic kazoo which could help him out of all kinds of scrapes. Along with his spotted dog, Gala Poochie Pup,  his girl friend, PolkaDottie, who was famous in her own right for making Polka Dot Pineapple Pies, and a helpful gentleman named Mr. Deetle Dootle,  Rootie could do almost anything, and escape all kinds of dangerous stuff that  the bad guy, Poison Zoomac, caused. Sometimes I would call Daddy Rootie, and I would be PolkaDottie. I called Daddy Rootie so much that even Mummy started calling him Rootie.

 When we went to the A&P to buy food, I was always very interested in the pineapple pies they sold, which were not made by PolkaDottie, but instead by a lady named Ann Page whose picture was on every one of their red pie boxes. Once in a while, we'd buy an Ann Page pineapple pie, but I knew that they were not half as good as the PolkaDot Pineapple Pies that I made when I was PolkaDottie.

Early Memories

 

My first memories are from  when I was  two. They are just little snatches of experience. I remember being in the walk-in pantry at Nana’s (my father's mother) while she sang to me: “Once upon a time, a goose drank wine and a monkey chewed tobacco on a trolley line. The trolley broke, and the monkey choked, and they all went to heaven on a billy goat.” 

When I was little, Nana would clear everything breakable out of my reach when we came to visit, so that she would not have to tell me No, don’t touch. Nana was also a good cook. I remember sitting on telephone books on the seat of a cane chair at her kitchen table, and the wonderful smell of her roasted chicken. She had a big black cast iron stove, with burner covers that were lifted with a tool, and she always wore an apron when she cooked or washed dishes. 

I remember visiting Nana on the third floor of a three decker house in Everett in which they lived. We went up two flights of stairs to their apartment, which was on the right side of the building. There was both a front porch, which we didn’t go on, and a back porch, which we did use when I was a little older. The front room was their parlor with windows that opened onto the front porch, but the room I liked best was the kitchen, which had windows opening onto the back porch, and which always smelled good. I’m not sure, but I think that there were only two bedrooms. The apartment had wooden door moldings, some pocket doors, baseboards and chair rails which all were stained a rich brown. 

 I also remember my grandfather (my father's father), whom I called Joe, drawing a picture for me in that same little pantry where Nana sang to me. Dad always told me that his father was a good artist. He was called  Johnny,  and his nieces and nephews called him Uncle Johnny. But Nana and some of his friends called him Babe, because he looked like Babe Ruth. My mother (his daughter-in-law) called him Joe. I don’t know why. I picked up calling him Joe because that’s what my Mummy called him. He always carried pictures of me in his wallet, and showed them to everyone he met, telling them stories about his  little granddaughter. 

Joe had been a carpenter, and he built me a little chair. The base of the chair consisted of a wooden box, open to the floor. On top of the box was the seat, and a back was affixed to that base. I loved that chair, and sometimes would carry it into the kitchen and turn it upside down. I had imaginary rabbits which I kept inside the bottom of the chair Joe made for me. 

I remember visiting my grandfather Joe in the hospital. I was two and a half then. He was in a large room with several beds and a number of other men, and everyone was very happy to see me. One nice man gave me a stick of chewing gum. Everyone was smiling and laughing, and Daddy was there with me. I sat on Joe’s bed with him, and we had lots of fun. 

I never saw Joe again. He died in the hospital after lung cancer surgery. I did not go to the funeral, and I don’t know what anyone told me about what had happened to my grandfather. But thereafter, throughout my childhood, I believed that Joe was sitting in a rocking chair on top of a cloud keeping watch over me from heaven. 

                                           - Kate Lydon Varley