Vox Populi
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Robert Cording: Broken
The latch on the kitchen cabinet.
At least a half-dozen day lilies
after last night’s storm.
The leaning grey birch above the garden
that cracked and went down as my wife and I ran off.
And there’s my ankle,
which, even with surgery, never healed
after I tore a ligament from the bone.
And my too short left leg, a spiral fracture
that broke both shin bones clean through
the skin in eighth grade.
Now, my brother’s fifty-year marriage
broken off as if their past was
an imposter that had been discovered.
And my best friend’s wife can’t find
the name for husband,
though he sits next to her.
Just moments ago, a favorite mug
I bought in Cornwall and used for forty years
shattered. I’m on the floor listening
to the past speaking in the clatter
of broom, metal dustpan,
and tumbled pottery pieces
that have fallen under
an old pine chest where we’d arranged
a little clay church, a candle,
and a photograph
to keep our dead son near.
The past is telling its one story
about what comes and goes,
but in no order, a stuttering sequence
of unsolvable riddles. I’m moaning
and laughing at myself down here
on the floor,
enacting the old cliché once again
of picking up the pieces.
~~~~~
Robert Cording is professor emeritus at College of the Holy Cross where he taught for 38 years and served as the Barrett Chair of English and Creative Writing. After his retirement, he worked for five years as a poetry mentor in the Seattle Pacific University low residency MFA program. His many books include Heavy Grace (Alice James, 2022) and In the Unwalled City (Slant, 2022).
Poem copyright 2025 Robert Cording
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“The past is telling its one story
about what comes and goes”–
Lovely, poignant poem.
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This wondrous poem reminds me of the Buddhist teaching on impermanence that the glass is already broken, something I try to remember when my favourite cup or bowl inevitably breaks. Now I can reread Robert’s poem as I’m picking up the pieces.
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Thanks everyone for taking the time to write. I am always quite moved by people’s considered and gracious comments.
Bob
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Here is one of those poetic voices received and seasoned in whole life you ever so rarely come into contact with. I have almost finished “In the Unwalled City,” and come to realize who this Robert Cording is and what he has to make of his time and place in this world. Don’t let yourself miss a further minute of this poet if like me he has come late into your life.
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Yes
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I wish to correct my last sentence to say (lest there be any confusion) —“if like mine, he has come late into your life…”
Thankyou
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That ‘stuttering sequence’ makes poems grow. A wonderful poem where I felt at home.
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Bob’s voice feels so authentic, it’s like one of my brothers speaking to me.
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In my front yard, not quite under, but beside the bird feeders is my bone yard—remains of treasured cups like the blue pottery shards of the one from Macy’s Coffee House in Flagstaff that my toddler grandson, now a teen, dropped as he admired it when we still had Christmas at my house. And more recently, pieces of the tiny signed Native American pot, memory of a trip to my beloved New Mexico, that crashed when I opened the china cabinet to extract the red clay teabag holder. I sit with Tashi on her broken stuffed chair, covered with a blanket, to stare for hours at the finches, hummingbirds , wrens, the rabbits and squirrels that come to the feeders and birdbath among the manzanita, white and purple sage, Baja Fairy Duster. I’m still in bed after reading today’s poem on my phone. Damn I love Vox Populi! Now I will get up and start my breakfast if I am not waylaid by a soft old pup on a broken chair
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Robert Cording’s poem here has inspired you to write lyrically. It’s a gift of his to prompt your response, isn’t it? And then you pass on your own gift to us through your lively description. Life offers much in its cornucopia of numinous moments. Thanks for a glimpse of some of them. I treasure both yours, and those Cording offers as his breaking news. And the blossoms others post here. love between the lines.
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What a beautiful paragraph, Barb. Thank you!
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Such a beautiful and wise poem by Bob Cording. I especially adore “The past is telling its one story
about what comes and goes,
but in no order, a stuttering sequence
of unsolvable riddles.”
And the ending literally gave me goosebumps!
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Thanks, Meg. Me too.
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Painful, powerful, perfect.
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Yea
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Broken, and eventually bewildered at our own limits of understanding– Yet we send forth our stories to shore up life. A little clay church, a candle, and a photograph/to keep our dead son near.
Robert, is that the church of the trickster god? Robert Cording always brings spirituality into my reading. As I immerse in his details, I rise, saddened but lit by his language and journey; he shows me his attentiveness to the reality of the world, even as the broom rakes, the shards clatter, the mystery at the back of the kitchen cabinet awaits its fate.
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Is that the church of the trickster god?
What a great question. Thank you, Jim.
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Fine poem, and the opening strategy so smart.
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Yes, very subtle.
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One of the nation’s best snd most humane poets, is Bob Cording!Sent from my iPhone
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I agree, Syd!
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So painful and powerful – The past is telling its one story
about what comes and goes,
but in no order, a stuttering sequence…
Thank you for posting this Michael!
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Thanks, Noelle. I agree. It’s a stunning catalogue of brokenness.
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