"Grandma's Grave"/"To Daffodils"--WOW Poems by Freya Manfred and Robert Herrick-Life is Short

Grandma's Grave by Freya Manfred Mother and I brush long drifts of snow from the gravestones of my great grandfather and grandmother, great uncle and aunt, two of mother's brothers, each less than a year old, and her last-born brother, George Shorba, dead at sixteen: 1925-1942 A Mastermind. My Beloved Son. But we can't find the grave of Grandma, who buried all the rest. Mother stands dark-browed and musing, under the pines, and I imagine her as a child, wondering why her mother left home so often to tend the sick, the dying, the dead. Borrowing a shovel, she digs, until she uncovers: 1889-1962 Mary Shorba Mother almost never cries, but she does now. She stares at this stone as if it were the answer to all the hidden things. "Grandma's Grave" by Freya Manfred from Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission.

To Daffodils by Robert Herrick Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attain'd his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song; And, having pray'd together, we Will go with you along. We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything. We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer's rain; Or as the pearls of morning's dew, Ne'er to be found again. "To Daffodils" by Robert Herrick. Public Domain.

WOW!"What I Learned From My Mother"Poem by Julia Kasdorf-Offer Healing and Blessing

5 / 11 / 2014

Poem of the Day: What I Learned From My Mother BY JULIA KASDORF I learned from my mother how to love the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole grieving household, to cube home-canned pears and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point. I learned to attend viewings even if I didn't know the deceased, to press the moist hands of the living, to look in their eyes and offer sympathy, as though I understood loss even then. I learned that whatever we say means nothing, what anyone will remember is that we came. I learned to believe I had the power to ease awful pains materially like an angel. Like a doctor, I learned to create from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once you know how to do this, you can never refuse. To every house you enter, you must offer healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself, the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch. Reprinted from Sleeping Preacher, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992, by permission of the publisher. First printed in West Branch, Vol. 30, 1992. Copyright © 1992 by Julia Kasdorf. Source: Sleeping Preacher (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992) JULIA KASDORF Biography  More poems by this author