Tag Archives: poems

Poem: The Neighbors

The neighbors

It was hard to learn again
To trust the neighbors
She spent the war years
Walking softly
Being quiet
Smiling, but not often
Meeting the neighbors’ eyes

She still cleans the room
Every week,
Dusting the small shelf
With the books
Of poetry
And the vase
She tried to keep full of flowers
In the summertime.
Sweeping the floor,
Keeping the bed linens fresh;
Although no one has slept
Behind this hidden door
In seventy years.

She remembers the stories
Shared in the dark
Evenings during the blackout
About Mme. Broussard
And how she whispered to her brother
In the gendarme
About the people in the neighborhood
That she didn’t like
And no one saw those neighbors again.
And M. Cloet, the school teacher
Who would ask his students
To tell him what their parents spoke
About the Vichy government
At home.

It was hard to learn again
To trust the neighbors
She spent the war years
Walking softly
Being quiet
Smiling, but not often
Meeting the neighbors’ eyes.

Jazz in Words

Jazz

That dance of disparate instruments,

Finding their way into rhythm

And sense

And music.

How unapologetic they are, their loudness

Their peacock beauty.

How they strut forward and say

“Here I am”

And the play begins,

Sometimes raucous, sometimes smooth

As the surface of an old late,

What it means to let yourself show up

Exactly as you are,

Hold you big hands out to the world,

And sing.

-Maya Stein

 

Jazz

There is music in your fingers

And I know this because I played the piano for a while

When I was in fourth grand

And when I quit it was because my teacher

Didn’t seem to understand that I could feel it.

I could feel it in my chest like the wings of a hummingbird,

Like the throaty sound of the mocking bird who sat on our roof the other night

Under a storm cloud,

Singing as if his very life depended on it,

Singing every song he’d ever heard.

  • Amy Tingle Williamson