Week 2 - Poetry class introductions

for Snezana

Snow White.  My little Golden Book's trademark-
protected leaves turned when you said your name.
I thought, Snow White?  Your hair and eyes are dark,
so I named you for the girl who looks the same
as you - Rose Red.  You rose out of fairy tale
fantasy, romantic country.  My juvenile wits
were concealed by solid shoes, as your pale
face and punkish clothes hid where you fit,
Snow White, Rose Red.  Amid castle ruins and bear tracks
I had you reckoning syllables and writing cinquains,
you a character in a forgotten story, a throwback
to my childhood.  The fact is a modern Serbian
you were, so my flight to that other place
ran false.  That said, my dreams I won't erase.

Week 3 - Are we related?

Brief
pop-up
messages
sail into sight
on my new desktop,
from cousins I didn’t
know I had but would like to
meet some day over dinner of
Wurst and Kartoffeln at a German
restaurant in a middle Atlantic state,

where we girls will get to know each other,
recounting life’s stories of husbands
and children, of hopes and dreams,
imagining the playmates
we’d have been if only
our families had not
wandered apart
but sustained
ties through
time.

Week 4- Herb

You didn’t look like a Herb.
That’s why I called you Jeff
when we dated.

What does a Herb look like?
A Herb is a big-bellied man
wearing suspenders and homburg,
driving a ’47 Ford pick-up.
In ’72 you wore jeans and poor
boy shirts and sneakers
and drove a gold Tempest.
I called you Craig.

And you called me Mary.
I kept telling you that
wasn’t my name. You even
have an aunt named Mary Fran
but you didn’t double my name.
I had to straighten you out.
I wanted you
to know me.

No, you didn’t look like a Herb,
but I’d never met a Herb
before I met you. Now
you are my Herb and
I am more than Mary.
You look the same as you did
when I called you Jeff:
tall and handsome and hazel-eyed,
your hair even prettier now,
a little silver
behind your ears.

Week 5 - Shadow

Shadow

April Fool grandson, you came of icy
Michigan midnight, Detroit daffodils
spinning in winter beds, spying

weeks more sleep, yet you slept on,
a sleep of life to mine of death:
for three days I waited above

and you waited below until your
mother rose from her bed, spilling
my tears on your cheek when she met

you face-to-face: my family's name
was given you, my height, my build,
my hands, my five o’clock shadow

I see in your mirror, and you grew
to a child awake beyond your years,
far-sighted like an old man's

glance back: when you met my
Shenango River town, you saw time
replaced, streets repaved, the Knapp

hotel, my father's haberdashery,
dashed, smashed by wrecking ball,
car dealership in their place,

Aunt Gert's drugstore a parking lot:
still, there sits the rock I told
your mom I toted down the tracks

for the park's monument, and she
believed me, mythical, mystical me:
eight grandchildren I have, and you

alone commit, like me, to en-why-see,
Wall Street, Penn Station, Times Square,
places where my eyes shadow

you, my grey-blues to your dark browns,
places where there’s even now the ghost
of me: so know your past, grandson,

and think of me when you see
your shadow on the sidewalks
of New York.