A Short History of the World

It is said
in the village marketplaces in Africa
and in the piazzas of Italy,
at farmer’s markets in New England,
on the edges of fields in China,
even on Wall Street in the din of bells and whistles
that everything must change.

In this perennial fall of closed minds
and hearts boarded up
like failed shops and abandoned homes
where the cooks at the neighborhood diner
can only scorch or freeze ideas
and toss them on a plate
like fighting words—
what has happened to the American hero
hunting down the selfish wolf
left to feed hungrily
on the dreaming of Yes?

Have we learned nothing
watching American girls and boys
fall victim to hateful words
and disrespect for anything holy
in the name of someone else’s God?

Have we learned nothing from the suffering—
repeat after me,
repeat after me,
repeat after me, my friends,
that comes from staying the course?

Let us not ask
what others will do for us anymore
in our illusion of youth and beauty.
It is time for us to grow up
and ask what we will do for others—
for the sake of the future,
for the promise of peace,
for the inevitable grace
that must change in this short human history
of the world.

Memoir

My family was normal
by all accounts,
Midwestern Minnesotans
who smiled often
where children never listened
to bickering parents,
where raised voices were considered
a sin – worse than chewing with a mouth open
and full of sea food on Sundays.

My family was normal.
My father was a Navy man from North Dakota
wanting to get off the farm
for adventures in foreign lands.
My mother a quiet Lutheran girl
from a small college town
went to nursing school to avoid becoming a wife,
to use her brain and kindness away from the daydreams
at an ironing board.

When they met
normally they might not have clicked—
sparked with that flame that ignites romance.
It was too nice,
too predictable for two people
who just wanted to get out
to get into this ark of our family
to weather the storm of the 60’s.
My parents weren’t free love kind of people,
or civil rights activists.
They weren’t sure what a feminist was,
and they didn’t inhale or pop pills.
Instead they crawled into each other
and followed the commandment to be fruitful
and multiply two by two
boys and girls
in love.

My family was normal.
After the Navy, my father took up his hammer,
the carpenter built things sturdy as oak.
My mother dug her small hands deep
in the soil and rising dough.
Back on the farm my father wanted out of
my parents built our foundation on normal.

I was 12
and in my still little girl body
and my ancient mind began planning
her escape into silent words
that didn’t fit in,
didn’t accept plain talk
that hid all the truth of change
like a deep scar.
My flat chest
and pure freckled skin
covered all the tracks
of my inner journeys
my family couldn’t know.

The freedom train of possibility
traveled in my blood.
The trail of tears
wore away my bones
like an escaping prisoner
doing time.

My family was normal
and on the farm it was right and good
for a girl to wander into the fields at night
and lay her body down in the deep grasses
and watch the brilliant night unfold herself
from the cloak of twilight—
each star reminding her
that it was possible to hope
for something
more.