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In Extremis
John Updike American (1932-)
I saw my toes the other day.
I hadn't looked at them for months.
Indeed, they might have passed away.
And yet they were my best friends once.
When I was small, I knew them well.
I counted on them up to ten
And put them in my mouth to tell
The larger from the lesser. Then
I loved them better than my ears,
My elbows, adenoids, and heart.
But with the swelling of the years
We drifted, toes and I, apart.
Now, gnarled and pale, each said, j'accuse!-
I hid them quickly in my shoes.
I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.
Nor had I time to love; but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.
Emily Dickinson
Disappearing Fathers
by Faith Shearin
Sometime after I turned forty the fathers from my childhood
began disappearing; they had heart attacks
during business dinners or while digging their shovels
into a late April snow. Some fathers began forgetting things:
their phone numbers, which neighborhoods belonged
to them, which houses. They had a shortness of breath,
the world’s air suddenly too thin, as if it came
from some other altitude. They were gone:
the fathers I had seen dissecting cars
in garages, the fathers with suits
and briefcases, the fathers who slipped down
rivers on fishing boats and the ones
who drank television and beer. Most of my friends
still had mothers but the fathers
were endangered, then extinct.
I was surprised, though I had always known
the ladies lasted longer; the fathers fooled me
with their toughness; I had been duped
by their jogging and heavy lifting, misled
by their strength when they slapped
me on the back or shook my hand. I kept imagining
I would see them again: out walking their dogs
on the roads near my childhood house,
lighting cigars on their porches, waving to me
from their canoes while I waited on shore.
"Disappearing Fathers" by Faith Shearin from Telling the Bees. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2015.
One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc.
Men are not like that.
We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say of one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is wicked and foolish.
And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is untrue.
Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm.
It is the same with men.
Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man ...
Leo Tolstoy
Hippos on Holiday
by Billy Collins
is not really the title of a movie
but if it were I would be sure to see it.
I love their short legs and big heads,
the whole hippo look.
Hundreds of them would frolic
in the mud of a wide, slow-moving river,
and I would eat my popcorn
in the dark of a neighborhood theatre.
When they opened their enormous mouths
lined with big stubby teeth
I would drink my enormous Coke.
I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing with the hippos,
which is the way it is
with a truly great movie.
Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?
"Hippos on Holiday" by Billy Collins from Aimless Love. © Random House, 2013.
Elegy for J.F.K.
— W. H. Auden
When a just man dies,
Lamentation and praise,
Sorrow and joy, are one.
Why then, why there,
Why thus, we cry, did he die?
The heavens are silent.
What he was, he was:
What he is fated to become
Depends on us
Remembering his death,
How we choose to live
Will decide its meaning.
When a just man dies,
Lamentation and praise,
Sorrow and joy, are one.
It's Not Just Trains
by Lawrence Raab
The ticket office was closing
when we arrived and were informed
our train had departed ahead of schedule.
"What do you mean?” I asked. "Trains
leave on time, or late, but never early."
"Such things happen," the agent replied,
"more often than you would think."
"Look around," he added,
"and pay attention. It’s not just trains."
When I told my family of this unexpected
predicament, I was taken aback
by their lack of surprise. "Let’s wander
a while through this pretty little town,”
my wife proposed, “and see what happens."
"Or else,” said my son, "let’s head off
into that dark woods beyond the tracks,
each alone and without our baggage,
and try to find our way out
before nightfall.” He smiled, I thought,
at me in particular, as if he’d known
all along that would be the plan.
"It's Not Just Trains" by Lawrence Raab from Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts. © Tupelo Press, 2015.
