Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 10,000 daily visitors and over 9,000 archived posts.
Lisa Zimmerman: Thinking About Dean Young and the Anthropocene & Another Country
Thinking About Dean Young and the Anthropocene
Nobody’s walking on air here. We’re all bound
by the concrete between coffee and the car.
I have my personal cup. The barista has hair as blue
as the Caribbean Sea in August, her nose ring a silver beacon
and her smile too. Laptops nod to each other at separate tables
as the steamer steams milk into the saddest froth on the planet.
I ask for oat milk and the almonds in California are relieved.
They work hard and nobody is talking about bees today.
I leave a five dollar bill in the tip jar. Five, in numerology,
is the number for curiosity and change. I like to think
I’m doing my best, balancing hope on the head of a pin,
following those other steadfast travelers exiting the shop, holding
their buzzing phones, their many cups of Joe.
~~~
Another Country
My neighbor knocks because the doorbell
isn’t broken but so faint it’s like a soft bell
in another country. She offers heart-shaped
cookies on a white platter for Valentine’s Day
and my dog doesn’t bark but looks beyond her
to see if her dog has come too.
I ask about her mother, 104 years old and one
of my favorite people because she read books,
dozens and dozens of them until her eyes said no.
Now she listens to stories spoken into air around her head.
She says it’s not the same. We both love how images
blaze in the imagination when we read.
She tells me she misses her sisters most—
their voices, their knowing, their hands
braiding her hair when she was small.
Who can now remember with her the days on the farm
in Oklahoma? Running across the pasture, picking stickers
from bare feet, catching crawdads and newts, laughing
in the creek’s cold splash, her own mother’s hands
shaping bread into loaves to cool on the windowsill,
the secret she knew to bring them all home.
~~~~
Lisa Zimmerman is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Northern Colorado. Her many poetry collections include Sainted (Main Street Rag, 2021).
Copyright 2925 Lisa Zimmerman
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
enjoy !
LikeLike
“I’m doing my best, balancing hope on the head of a pin”
Oh, Lisa.
xo
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love how this poet’s multi-sensory images blaze in my imagination! A bemused yet compassionate observer of the precious, persevering human beings who share her everyday world.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Two fine poems, Lisa. It’s hard not to think of the LA fires and friends in LA as I sip my coffee and read the first poem, and then to love your friend, who lived when my father’s family was moving between Texas and Oklahoma, growing and picking cotton. Miss you, poet.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I miss seeing you at the yearly FLAC conference, Marty. Such happy times!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I miss seeing you at the yearly FLAC conference, Marty. Happy times.
LikeLike
Glad to have you in this community, Marty. I’ve read your poems in Plume and elsewhere.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you, Michael, for your kind words and all you do here. I’m loving your Texas poems right now, by the way.
LikeLike
Thanks, Marty.
>
LikeLike
Thanks for reminding me of the better days. As a kid, I was always excited about starting back to school in September, excepting for one thing, putting on shoes after 3 months of running barefoot through broom-sage, briar and snake infested fields, pine-needled woods, my neighbors yards and up and down graveled roads and even hot concrete sidewalks if mama made me go into the store with her on Saturdays. They hurt my stone bruise feet for days. Do kids still go barefoot? Probably not; much too dangerous!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Growing up in Texas, I ran barefoot all summer. Putting on shoes in the fall felt strange.
>
LikeLiked by 4 people
Lovely, lovely imagery and intent. The almond trees’ gratitude and your own attention. Thanks so much.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you, Kathleen.
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have Dean Young’s book of poetics. In it he writes: Our poems are what the gods couldn’t make without going through us. Thanks for letting them go through you, Lisa Z.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Such evocative and image-rich poems — what a kind way to start the day. Thank you, Lisa!
LikeLiked by 5 people
Exactly, a kind way to start the day. Now I have read too long so will stay in bed to meditate while envisioning myself scurrying to the zendo.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you, Laure-Anne❤️
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh, I love the Dean Young….poem. The images of you putting five dollars in the tip jar, the nodding lap tops, the carrying of coffee, the grounding of cement….what an evocative poem, the questions of almond milk and all its problems of water, the bees! I love it. Thank you.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Thanks, Lynn!
LikeLiked by 2 people
The unexpected effects poems have, like these two on me:
the aroma of cups of coffee, the aroma of mother’s bread. The poems remind me of breakfast, but I’m still in bed.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Your comment is a lovely epigram, Jim. Thank you.
>
LikeLiked by 3 people
I too, still in bed, back to childhood in a different place before.
LikeLiked by 2 people
good, crawdad is my childhood memory, I call them little red fire trucks, after they are baked.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Yes, I grew up on the Gulf Coast catching and eating crawdaddies, as we called them. They are like small lobsters.
>
LikeLiked by 4 people
We had a few crawdads in the stream that ran in the canyon that held the jet propulsion lab and for a second I remembered the way it was, before the burned horror it may be now
LikeLiked by 2 people
Growing up in Houston, there was a ditch at the end of the block where my best friend Bubba and I would take glass jars with strings and catch crawdads, admire them in our jars, and throw them back for next time. They were a fun part of Cajun cuisine too. Fun, that is, except for the crawdads
LikeLiked by 3 people
“little red fire trucks”! Yes!
LikeLiked by 1 person