American Life in Poetry: Column 236

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006


Cecilia Woloch teaches in California, and when she’s not with her students she’s off to the Carpathian Mountains of Poland, to help with the farm work. But somehow she resisted her wanderlust just long enough to make this telling snapshot of her father at work.



The Pick

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence,
just watching him.
My father’s body glistened with sweat,
his arms flew like dark wings over his head.
He was turning the backyard into terraces,
breaking the hill into two flat plains.
I took for granted the power of him,
though it frightened me, too.
I watched as he swung the pick into the air
and brought it down hard
and changed the shape of the world,
and changed the shape of the world again.



American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from When She Named Fire, ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009, by permission of Cecilia Woloch and the publisher. The poem first appeared in Sacrifice by Cecilia Woloch, Tebot Bach, 1997. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry: Column 228

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I don't often mention literary forms, but of this lovely poem
by Cecilia Woloch I want to suggest that the form, a
villanelle, which uses a pattern of repetition, adds to the
enchantment I feel in reading it. It has a kind of layering,
like memory itself. Woloch lives and teaches in southern
California.


My Mother's Pillow

My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow.

For years her hands were quick with thread and needle.
She used to sew all night when we were little;
now she sleeps with the Bible on her pillow

and believes that Jesus understands her sorrow:
her children grown, their father frail and brittle;
she stitches in her heart, her breathing shallow.

Once she "even slept fast," rushed tomorrow,
mornings full of sunlight, sons and daughters.
Now she sleeps alone with the Bible on her pillow

and wakes alone and feels the house is hollow,
though my father in his blue room stirs and mutters;
she listens to him breathe: each breath is shallow.

I flutter down the darkened hallway, shadow
between their dreams, my mother and my father,
asleep in rooms I pass, my breathing shallow.
I leave the Bible open on her pillow.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation, publisher of Poetry
magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at
the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2003 by
Cecilia Woloch, whose most recent book of poetry is "Narcissus,"
Tupelo Press, 2008. Reprinted from "Late," by Cecilia Woloch,
published by BOA Editions, Rochester, NY, 2003, by permission
of Cecilia Woloch. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry
Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as
United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library
of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited
manuscripts.