The Pull Toy :: A.E. Stallings

The Pull Toy

by A. E. Stallings

You squeezed its leash in your fist,
It followed where you led:
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
Nodding its wooden head.

Wagging a tail on a spring,
Its wheels gearing lackety-clack,
Dogging your heels the length of the house,
Though you seldom glanced back.

It didn’t mind being dragged
When it toppled on its side
Scraping its coat of primary colors:
Love has no pride.

But now that you run and climb
And leap, it has no hope
Of keeping up, so it sits, hunched
At the end of its short rope

And dreams of a rummage sale
Where it’s snapped up for a song,
And of somebody—somebody just like you—
Stringing it along.

via American Life in Poetry 437, http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/

State of the Union in Poetry

I've been reading through Walter Brueggemann's Prayers for a Privileged People (one of many pointers I have taken from Mark Perkins, most without his knowledge), and this was the next poem up the day after President Obama's annual speech. Brueggemann has rather more social justice concerns than my inner economist likes, but his prayer-poems are generally worthwhile (what a ringing endorsement). Two selections.

"State of the Union," Prayers for a Privileged People

We will listen to hear that the union is in good shape:

the war is being won;
the economy is coming back;
migrants are facing new rigors;
unemployment is down.

There will be much applause—

and we will be glad for such political performance. 

...
Our Lord is so weak and so foolish and so poor,

and yet he is our Savior.

We are pulled apart by our double awareness

of self-satisfaction and dis-ease.

We submit to your goodness our vexed lives

that we cannot resolve.

Give us honesty and openness that we may become aware

of the true state of our union. 

October, in verse

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

-- Robert Frost, via The Poetry Foundation