Two Poems
By Carl Atiya Swanson
Carl is a writer, theatermaker, and advocate for mental health and recovery in creativity. His writing on arts and culture has appeared in InStudio Magazine, Crooked Arrow Press, Trouble Child Magazine, Americans for the Arts, mnartists.org, SPIN, and other outlets. Based in Minneapolis, MN, he writes poems to spark little fires in the middle of winter.
For a moment there, it seemed like we were all bakers. Everyone was starting a quarantine sourdough, everyone was sharing photos of their first passes at boules, their Jim Lahey no-kneads, their Tartine attempts, their homemade challahs. Growing up Lutheran, I regularly prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and for a moment in the midst of this crisis, we were providing for ourselves, a small bit of grace.
As a writer and a poet, I’m often looking for the interruption of rhythm, for the quietness and the half-hidden in the midst of clanging loudness. It’s a process that mirrors nurturing a sourdough, it feels like baking. You mix simple things and wait. See what rises, see what bubbles. Maybe staying at home will help us all do more of that quiet observance. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking through the worst case scenarios.
We’re all running through the gamut of poetic stances – ironic fatalism, wry resignation, impassioned earnestness, mournful separation. I get up in the morning and pass through a dozen veils before getting to pour my sons their Honey Nut Cheerios. Little touchstones of constancy that have some form of grounding in the midst of all this. The sense of normalcy is welcome, even as it feels like everything is changed, and part of that change is not knowing how far or how deep it will go.
It’s all a reminder of how much labor – around food, around the home, around children – goes unvalued and unmentioned in our economy. Will we find ways to pay teachers more when we can get back together? Will we be willing to spend more so that the restaurant industry is less precarious? Will we extend safety nets and supports to independent contractors and creative workers who are just trying to live by stringing gigs together? Will we move healthcare away from employment? Because we’re living through a moment where unbelievably hypothetical scenarios are playing out in real time.
So much of this feels like trying to explain a loaf of bread on a grocery store shelf through examining a stalk of wheat. But it has to start somewhere. We have to start somewhere. Here is a pair of poems about cooking, growing things, and maybe what it means to be alive. It’s how I start somewhere, it’s what I hope for your daily bread, for a little grace.
FOCACCIA (FOR OPHELIA)
Rosemary dies quick in the cold. Curls
like a spent match turning ash black,
giving up its green promise.
In warmth with fresh cuttings I pick
at the long stem. Barefoot in the kitchen
separating each leaf with care,
yearning for the fullness
of growing wild
in an unweeded garden,
running fingers over
the rooted bush with scent
careening into the wind.
Pray you, love, remember – pled Ophelia,
passing out rosemary and pansies. A man in love
with flowers, I place these little boats
onto the ocean of saltwater and dimpled dough,
full of faith that flour and time will fill us.
Laying out prayers –
one for family rising,
one for mothers and
one for sons,
one for learning
how to stay alive and
how to feel fed.
Place it in the heat of the oven, burners flared
like all the candles lit in churches and temples
along the way, little fires, signs of life.
Savoring in this herb the wildness
and the order, knowing everything must die,
but first, everything must grow.
SMALL, EVER-GROWING
His small, ever-growing hands pluck up the weedy grass,
you know the one, it looks like a caterpillar on a single stilt,
a green stalk of false wheat. I don't know its name but
I should probably look it up to be ready for the inevitable question.
My little soft thing, he declares as he runs the tender bristles over
his forearm, delighting himself with free-growing nature.
This is not a poem about knowing the taxonomy of plants, or
understanding why we call a green thing that succeeds, against
its circumstance, against the concrete of the sidewalk, against
self-doubt and lack of sun, why we would call that a weed,
when it brings delight. He curls his hand into mine, softly.
We walk in the garden, finding comfort in the summer sun
and each other. Weeds, all of us, and finding a way, but the bright day
invites us to forget the work of growing and marvel at abundance
for one clear moment. Still, I know it is easier to pick a cherry tomato
and pop it between my teeth than it is to press my fingers to glass and
call a therapist, or hold crying children, to find the sun to grow towards.
But he clutches that thing we call a weed and loves it, and I see
radiance coming, and coming to me, and how many ways can I water,
can I tend, can I let that shine clear through? Green Foxtail is the plant,
the tall-standing burst of softness. I learned that between then and now.
He laughs when I tell him, like so many small children he loves foxes
and being alive,
my little soft thing.