This week walking with tears in my eyes
the world is an impressionist rendering
of pink dogwood blooms, bursts of lime,
purple, fire, gun smoke rising. Some days
without obligation toward optimism
my heart is at odds with my name.
My names travel barefoot generations
from biblelands to biblebeltways, suggest oaths
I cannot keep, grace I cannot inhabit.
Still they leave me sturdy on long
feet, crossing a ford, then planted
for shelter, not so much, wandering
-as waiting to welcome what’s next.
Englishmen, Vikings, Arabs, French
Servants and Exiles, Whalers, Coalmen,
Farmers, Teachers, Abolitionist Bigots,
Music Makers, Cabinet Makers, Builders,
Breakers, Poets, Senators, Queens and Tinkers
If my names were small boats on the rivers
I seek the origins of still they’d bob and toss
but land upright on the pages of storybooks
and baby books, rosey-cheeked with golden curls.
My names are shoehorns, slide rules, paintbrush,
ink, they’re slippers, and chalkdust, muslin, mink
I pause to mark a sacred vigil of days,
having walked three years on now with
sturdy feet from the bedside of Mr. Lodge,
whose name I keep, who
taught me to open the door
and pull up a chair, who
listened for dream signs, and cried out
against cruelty and repented his own.
His hand on my shoulder as we look out the
window together today reminds me of all
the places we make for ourselves in the world,
havens for our own hungry hearts, that welcome
the stranger, greet us whichever way
we’ve wandered in, that feed us and
tuck us in.
Anne (favor or Grace –Hebrew)
Elizabeth (God is my Oath)
Lodge (English origin meaning shelter)
Rigal ( French/Arabic, meaning foot)
Early Morning Poems 