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[with 3 poems by Ralph Earle]
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The Body’s Small Purposes
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His lungs like exhausted fishermen
drew in their glittering catch
of oxygen and his heart
called to the receding tides of the blood.
His bony fingers curled around mine.
I read from Mary Oliver
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how the soul may be hard, necessary,
yet almost nothing, how we all know
the sand is golden under the cold waves
though our hands can never touch it.
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The hearing goes last, the doctor said.
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There are not words for this communion,
this hope that his eyes, turned from
the sunny branches outside, could summon
a vision of loved ones long gone,
wife of fifty years, sister dead in childbirth,
souls knowing already this passage
and awaiting him in whatever form of glory
the living can conjure: my brothers, me,
our children, all the others
still casting the nets of our breath,
still sifting the golden sands.
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Once in his search for love after my mother died
he told me it never ends. But it does.
On a broken day the breath stops
and the cells gently fall asleep
and the soul, perhaps puzzled
by this coming to rest
of all the body’s small purposes
rises and looks on the silence.
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Ralph Earle
from Everything You Love is New, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press, Hickory NC; © 2024
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After I sit through lunch in the nursing home dining room with him and his friend, Dad and I roll back to his room to hang out for an hour or two. Maybe he tells me about the birds that have discovered the feeders I set up outside his window – he can name most of them. He always offers me something from his overflowing snack drawer – it began as his sock drawer but over three months the socks have all had to find new digs. If I prompt him he’ll recall talking to his sister on the phone last Sunday, or he’ll show me a card someone sent. This is his home now.
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When Dad returned to his townhouse from the hospital after his fall in July, we called Hospice. For a week he barely ate, barely knew us. We set up dual hospital beds so he and Mom could continue to share a bedroom like they had for just shy of 74 years. She would sit and hold his hand for hours, couldn’t bear to have him out of sight, but once told us, “There’s a man in a coma in my bedroom.” He was home only three weeks before she died, but during their last days together he certainly knew her. They ate a few bites together. Watched the news. When she was gone, although the house was never empty it was completely empty.
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“Good as new,” just what does that mean? Six months after Dad’s fall he can get himself out of bed by himself, putter himself down the hall in his wheelchair using his feet like Fred Flintstone, polish off his lunch. He wins quarters at bingo. Today he and I play our weekly Rummikub, exercise for the little gray cells. Last week he beat me for the first time. Right now we’re each down to just two tiles remaining until I draw the winning combo – for a second I consider feigning a bad draw to give him a couple more chances for victory, but nah, I win.
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And at this very moment the activities coordinator sticks her head around the door to remind Dad – a local church has arrived to share a worship service this weekday afternoon. Dad, I’ll pack up the game if you want to attend. We hug, he rolls himself away. I dump the tiles into their case, stash it on his dresser, put on my jacket, and by the time I walk down the hall Dad is out of sight.
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The Cormorants Arrive
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Like a gang of legislators
+++ dressed in grey
+++ +++ from somewhere
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outside of town,
+++ the cormorants loiter
+++ +++ on the lake’s little float
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strutting a step or two,
+++ dropping
+++ +++ into the water
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for a fish.
+++ The represent
+++ +++ some constituency
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I don’t recognize,
+++ shuffling around
+++ +++ their little island.
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They disturb me,
+++ they embody my fear
+++ +++ of narrow minds,
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of self-assured
+++ self-inflated strangers,
+++ +++ fear of my own silence.
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Still, when I approach
+++ they dwindle
+++ +++ into a smattering
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of awkward fishing birds,
+++ all angle and tackle, waiting
+++ +++ their moment of excitement,
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the shadow of small prey
+++ out of reach
+++ +++ in the darkening water.
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Ralph Earle
from Everything You Love is New, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press, Hickory NC; © 2024
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❦ ❦ ❦
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They are here. They are gone. Does Ralph Earle mean the birds, flock of black specks flapping, or does he mean the curses his wife calls to herself? Is nothing permanent, not grief, not joy? Everything You Love is New – perhaps it is your love that makes something new, or seem new in that moment of loving, that wonderful fleeting moment when you know you can’t hold something forever and yet you are able to rest in not having to.
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So delicate — Ralph Earle’s poems touch ever lightly all the heavy things we encounter as human creatures. How we do all hurt each other after all, sometimes careless but sometimes intentional. How the things we imagine will bring us joy fall to dust. How apt we are sometimes to turn away rather than reach out. Yes . . . but. These are not poems of despair but of awareness, of acceptance, and sometimes of bright heart-swelling discovery and joy. Reading a poem requires a pause, a brief silence. The mind as it embraces that silence creates an opportunity to fill it with love.
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A damselfly, so delicate, hovers above the mirror of pond. Her abdomen curls to touch the water’s surface so lightly there is no ripple, yet she leaves behind an egg that may become a new damselfly. Perhaps everything you love makes you new.
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Ralph Earle’s new full-length collection Everything You Love is New is available from Redhawk Publications.
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Read an additional poem by Ralph Earle at last week’s post, Tenacity.
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Birthday Ending in Zero
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No rain for days, and on the pollen-dusted porch
a vase of flowers arrived from nowhere:
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yellow roses, lilies, carnations, tulips with orange tips
and stems of electric-blue buds like paper lanterns.
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We were happy in that second Covid spring, gathering
our loved ones on Zoom, cooking fish with asparagus,
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ate our apple pie and still it didn’t rain. In the pollen
on the back deck, small animals left yellow footprints.
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That week, after so long alone, you let go
into the space we had begun to share.
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You stood the flowers on the kitchen table
surrounded with gifts and letters from my friends.
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Our hearts opened like small animals looking around.
We slept skin to skin, your presence rippling like a lake.
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That week the huge heads of the roses unfolded
in radiance even as the water started to cloud,
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even as carnations drooped and tulip petals dropped.
When the rain began I found a ravine where no one goes
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and under the trees, scatted the globes of the roses,
tulips with their falling petals, lilies and lanterns.
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Ralph Earle
from Everything You Love is New, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press, Hickory NC; © 2024
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