Black
and White at the Family Reunion
The
day is ending as we gather on the
farmhouse porch,
candles, poems, and hymn books in hand,
our family rituals familiar and easy as
the years go by.
We begin with the poems, each choice
haunted by an afternoon quarrel
that tastes bitter even now after ice
cream
in the sweet June Virginia dusk.
We cradle in our aging bones the angst
of childhood. The grandchildren marvel,
the in-laws set their teeth.
Will there ever be a morning? cries
Emily;
The quality of mercy is never
strained;
Something there is that doesn’t love
a wall.
Poem follows poem in mixed voices.
When eight-year-old Ben tunes his guitar,
we sing "Down in the Valley"
in careful time to his tender pluckings.
A white cow comes to the fence at the
sound of singing.
She stares, rapt and motionless, through
the hymns:
"The Lord Is My Shepherd,"
"Blest Be the Tie That Binds."
Is she curious, amused, devout?
Who can resist the impulse of laughter?
Once, when I was Ben’s age,
I stood at our farmhouse window
and shouted at my family,
"I only love Blacky (a cow) and
Jesus!"
Black and white,
Icon and bovine,The
holy cow.
—Barbara Esch Shisler
Family
Photo
This couple, the ones with the gray hair
and lines in their smiles,
were once alone. Remember their
wedding photo, such smooth cheeks
too young to know what they did.
Now they have grown to many, their
children already showing signs of wear,
and the grandchildren making faces
to tease the cool photographer.
This clustering in families,
how does it come, circles moving out
from a dropped stone, going on
to infinity and starting again. There
must be an answer in this particular
family, but all the expressions,
in spite of their dear demeanor,
keep the secret behind converged eyes.
—Barbara Esch Shisler
Hanging
On
Decrepit
and indomitable
they totter from walker to chair
in a clutter of medicine and
equipment for keeping alive.
I carry the scene home
and sleepless at 3 A.M. get a drink
and sit up in bed to listen
to the mockingbird.
Distant but clear, continuous
the notes flow through the night
like a glad, immortal stream.
People kill them for just such singing.
I am 62. I can sit up in bed
all night, drinking tea and listening,
thinking about decrepitude
and indomitability. I can be
what I choose. I can live
like a mockingbird and die
hanging on to every note I’ve got.
—Barbara Esch Shisler
Old
Women
Everywhere
I go these days I see old women.
A tiny one with mouse eyes
cradling a banana
exiting the dining room
at the retirement center;
A peevish one helping her teetering mate
edge his cane down the concrete steps
of the Glad Welcome Community church.
Everywhere I go these days I watch
old women. Watch thin legs inch
along the sidewalk, making it home
with a bag of groceries and a clutched
key.
Forgive my watching. I am
seeing myself. I cannot know
how it will be but everywhere I go
these days I am trying to find out.
An old woman is busy at the desk at the
Y.
She has her body. She has her mind.
She has her means. I’ll be her!
No doling out dollars at the drug
counter,
hair in clumps, dress on backward
like a prescription for depression.
I’ll keep everything needful until
the light strikes.
Please. Please?
—Barbara
Esch Shisler, Telford, Pennsylvania, is
on the pastoral team at Perkasie (Pa.)
Mennonite Church, anticipating retirement
in fall 2003. She wonders about this next
transition but imagines more of the good
gifts that have come her way . . . one of
which is poetry.
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