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In the Valley

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What was teaching in that first Pennsylvania winter but listening to directions and learning how to drive on icy two-lane roads from Easton to Bethlehem? You were tested by a deer standing starkly on the yellow line and a dead opossum freezing in the gravel and the radio playing spirituals about going home on a lonesome highway. The sun skidded to a halt in the smokestacks over the river and I can still see you climbing the snowy hills and coasting past the empty factories and abandoned warehouses to a Catholic school on the edge of town. You were a skeptic in the Valley of the Lord who carried “Pied Beauty” in your jacket pocket and drank scalding coffee in the teacher’s lounge with two old priests and a lanky young nun who played pickup basketball and noticed all things counter, original, spare, strange. What was teaching but quieting a classroom and learning how to stand at a blackboard with an open book and praise the unfathomable mystery of being to children writing poems or praye
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Raksha Bandhan

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For my sisters, Julie and Elen. For brother John, who is no longer with us. Tradition bids me tie a ribbon on your wrist  To say that you and I are related, And it will always be No matter what What husband, what wife,  what daughter, what son, What lover, what friend, May kisses, caresses Abound. May wounds be few. No matter, There will be love. What prizes and honors won,  Include the ones you lost, What joy, what laughter,  what grief, what loss, What trouble, what pain,  what fear, what tear, what discovery,  Embrace it freely. In this moment You are my world. We are blood and yet so different It makes no difference What barrier, what fence What wall, what boundary. Cross, venture, explore, A postcard now and then might be nice. Calls are also cheap these days, But neither is required. I know there are only so many  Seconds, minutes, years granted to us. Use them as best you can. As best we can. I will try. Make mistakes, I will join you. We are forgiven in advance. You are encoura
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“If This Is a Man”

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You who live safe  In your warm houses,  You who find on returning in the evening,  Hot food and friendly faces:  Consider if this is a man  Who works in the mud  Who does not know peace  Who fights for a scrap of bread  Who dies because of a yes or a no.  Consider if this is a woman,  Without hair and without name  With no more strength to remember,  Her eyes empty and her womb cold  Like a frog in winter.  Meditate that this came about:  I commend these words to you.  Carve them in your hearts  At home, in the street,  Going to bed, rising;  Repeat them to your children,  Or may your house fall apart,  May illness impede you,  May your children turn their faces from you.  — Primo Levi  Translated by Stuart Woolf
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This World is No Match for Your Love

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This world is no match for your Love Being away from you Is death aiming to take my soul away My heart, so precious I won’t trade for a hundred thousand souls Your one smile, takes it for free Hafiz, it may be that you’ve just poured a toast that will wash love clean of all its pictures. ~ Hafiz
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"WHEN YOU ARE OLD"

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by William Butler Yeats When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. (One of the last poems that W.B. Yeats wrote. Born 13 June 1865 –  Died 28 January 1939)
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Early December in Croton-on-Hudson

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BY LOUISE GLÜCK Spiked sun. The Hudson’s Whittled down by ice. I hear the bone dice Of blown gravel clicking. Bone- pale, the recent snow Fastens like fur to the river. Standstill. We were leaving to deliver Christmas presents when the tire blew Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared Down by a storm stood, limbs bared . . . I want you. "Early December in Croton-on-Hudson" from The First Four Books of Poems by Louise Gluck. Copyright © 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1985, 1995 by Louise Glück. Source: The First Four Books of Poems (The Ecco Press, 1995)
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BCR Case 30

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  Ken’s verse Issan wove a tale about a secret recipe  For chocolate chip cookies. He would share it if you helped in the kitchen. Of course I helped. We all helped. It was like a promise. Everyone did.  How could you say no to Issan? After we’d put on our aprons After all the ingredients had been found Dry stuff from the pantry Butter from the refrigerator Lots of it Sugar from the top shelf Neat brown bags with chocolate  And chocolate chips Carried in from the back seat of the car The oven was preheating. He was a stickler about the temperature The cookie sheets laid with parchment paper. We each had our bowl and task assigned None was burdensome Though some were more fun than others. When the time came we each took  What we had and Issan directed us Towards a big mixing bowl And we folded them together Not rushed or with a lot of jerky motion Big globs of butter stood out  From bits of Hershey Putting them on the sheet with the correct spacing Because he was always generous with th
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