SCHOOL KITCHEN MATRONS IN WINTER
Up before sunrise, morning chores finished,
past chattering students who huddle outside,
they’ve entered early today’s waiting work.
Unwrapping themselves, their red cheeks remain,
amid boiling pots and a line of deep-fryers
that soon whip a haze of grease-smoke and steam.
Marshalling mountains of rolls and potatoes,
artfully sorting chill greens on the trays,
they craft midday meals to nourish the young.
Young women and men of their own leaving home,
—facing their own turn at life and its chances—
these sturdy mothers have found further labor.
Knowing companions are they who’ve accepted
a destiny altered by time and by love,
content to be doing things true and good.
La BELLE DAME SANS CHAUSSURE
O what can ail thee, knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
—Keats
I met a lady in the meads,
She wondering what to do;
One sandal on, her two brows knit,
In search of her other shoe.
Knight that I am, I helped her look,
Earnestly peered each way;
But as she led, I saw her hair
That led my search astray.
Her ambling gait, one shoe bereft,
That foot did too disarm,
And as we talked of matters small,
Each knew would come no harm.
But yet her eyes with wisdom wild,
Still spoke unearthly power;
Its spell endured as we took rest
Within a sheltered bower.
She told me tales of love undone,
And I to her of mine,
How seeming gold could turn to clay
When tested full by time.
And once we’d shared these solemn truths,
My heart and eye did tear,
And though it seemed she kissed my cheek,
My sense had grown unclear.
And I awoke to find her gone,
Her sandal in my hand.
The one we’d sought, or that she’d worn?
That memory writ in sand.
So that is why I tarry here,
Uncertain what is she;
Wondering do I want to know,
Or keep the mystery?
Yet still I linger till I learn,
On watch for her to stay;
For I’d forgo the days to come
To know our yesterday.
James Patrick is a retired English teacher, now an adjunct college instructor of speech communication and film. He has been writing poetry, journals, and criticism, including a critical article on Camus offered to the journal of the ALSCW in 1999, mostly as a private avocation. This is his first season of submitting poetry.
Grand Little Things 