Where I’m From
I’m from clotheslines off back porches,
from pickle brine and cook cheese
from a mother who made us kids sniff horseradish
at the first sign of a cold.
I’m from shape notes, knitting needles and pickling corn,
ink stains and silver typeset
Dad’s Heidelberg press forever snorting
like a stallion in the old chicken coop.
From neighbor kids flooding the backyard for hockey
imagining ourselves as Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr.
From a giant white Bible on a coffee table
with a picture of Solomon about to split a baby in two.
I’m from home-sewn bathing suits, accordion lessons,
breaking curfew and smoking Players,
Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and Farrah Fawcett hair.
From a mother who had two dates in one night,
a father who snuck out of the parsonage
to see South Pacific at that verboten
movie house.
From a grandfather who refused to go to war,
sent west to fight forest fires instead
while his wife gave birth on a poultry farm.
I’m from recycled ancestors—
the ones I can’t name
and don’t understand, but who somehow
survive in my bones, grounding me here,
to this place where I’m from.
Brother Lawrence and the Sheep
Eight a.m. I stumble to the barn
in my old high school stoner jacket
with the missing black buttons.
The weeds no one ever seems to pull
or hoe or mind sway in the grass,
wild as my boss in a temper tantrum.
In the warming sunlight, fat borer bees
begin to chew holes in the rafters,
like the board members who took away
Good Friday as a holiday. I swat
them with that tennis racquet
that lies on the hay bale, feel the satisfying thud,
watch the stunned bodies in the dirt winding down.
I sweep manure from mangers,
clatter the feed can and the flock flows into the barn.
They rise, plant their front feet in the troughs,
throw their heads heavenward,
a bleating hungry choir.
I tap my metal scoop, raise it like a baton
and sing my old Sunday School song about patience.
As choir director, I should commit to the words.
It’s been years since I sat inside the barn
waiting for a lamb to sniff my legs,
cock his head, one ear drooping with the weight
of a yellow ear tag —
waiting for the ewes to take me in,
to plop down almost near and chew their cuds.
It’s just chores now.
I imagine Brother Lawrence hanging his head
as he creaks through the weathered walls,
Practice the presence of God, he chants,
If I could doing dishes, you can tending sheep.
But I’m no monk, I retort.
Unlike you I have a real job, and my boss,
he doesn’t give a shit about poetry,
or barns, let alone my soul, and I’m late.
I hurry back to the house, Larry one step
behind, reciting a homily on holy habits.
I plug my ears, change jeans, gulp coffee.
Larry shakes his head as I zoom down the lane,
God is everywhere, he heralds over the fence,
It’d make the day easier if you’d start
by saying hello.
Where I’m From, and Brother Lawrence and the Sheep, are from Cheryl Denise’s poetry collection, Fences, forthcoming publication Dec. 2022 from Cascadia Publishing House, DreamSeeker poetry series, Telford, PA.