When the river rose that year, we were beside it
and ourselves with fear; not that it would do anything
to us, mind you—our hopes were much too high for that—
but there was always that remote, unacknowledged possibility
that we had thrown one stone too many, by the handful,
and that by some force of nature, as they called it,
it might rain and rain for days, as it had been,
with nothing to hold it and the structure back,
and with everything to blame, including children
on into late summer and all the years ahead,
when it would be ours to bear, to do much more with
than remember and let it go at that—some mud,
some driftwood, some space of sky as a reminder
before getting on with the world again;
no, the balance was ours to share, and responsibility
for rivers had as much to do with anything
as rain on the roof and sweet fish for supper,
as forests and trembling and berries at sunrise;
thus it was, then, that we kept our watch,
that we kept our wits about us and all the respect
we could muster, sitting in silence,
sleeping in shifts, and when the fire died,
everyone was there to keep it alive;
somehow, though, in the middle of the night,
despite our vigils, our dreams, our admonitions,
our structure, our people, and all our belongings
broke free with a shudder and went drifting away—
past the landing, the swing, the anchored cages,
down through the haunted rapids, never to be found;
when we awoke that morning, the sun was back,
the river had receded under our measuring stick,
and everything had been astonishingly replaced,
including people and pets, the structure intact,
but in the solitude of all our faces as we ate,
the knowledge was there, of what we all had done,
and that everything would never be the same.
Poet Laureate Poem Prompts
A poet prompt may take you in many directions, depending upon what draws your eye or hooks you--is it a line or phrase, a story, a particular form, a feeling? Everyone will have a response unique to his/her own life experiences and attention to craft. Be yourself!
After the poet laureate bio and poem prompts on these pages, you will sometimes find the editor's response. You can see how her mind works around and into a mentor poem and what she has taken away from the experience to bring to her own work.
Sometimes We Think We Are Gods–Rachel Barton
sometimes we think we are gods
that we know everything
that in our wakeful moments
we are creating universes
even when the desert sun
visits the Northwest for days on end
we think if we keep our wits about us
the rains will return on schedule
meanwhile my husband shields the glass
of every window with shades or tarps
monitors the garden’s irrigation
fills the jugs with water
we huddle indoors
doing our inner work
until the cop shows up on the stoop
brandishing a colorful bouquet
she wears dark navy with heavy boots
belt of cop business weighting her hips
her hair in a tight red knot
she tarries in the garden
says a perp confessed to stealing flowers
on our corner–the Russian sage a likely match
to the purple in her hand
gods that we are we don’t press charges
I wonder for whom he gathers
flowers from others–
in my universe I’d plunder the blueberries
Rachel Barton: Inada’s poem felt really Big. I felt that the child’s perspective of holding his universe together through his vigilance was also an adult perspective. We each have our ideas of what we can control or manifest. This brought me to my local experience of climate change and the various “insurances” we enact against it. But then the outer world intervened and took over the poem. Happy surprise!
About Summer 2017 Featured Poet Laureate: Peter Sears
Peter Sears, a graduate of Yale and the Iowa Writers Workshop, has taught at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and has served as Dean of Students at Bard College. He was the community services coordinator for the Oregon Arts Commission and director of the Oregon Literary Coalition. He also taught in the Pacific University low-residency MFA program in Portland, Oregon. He has most recently served as Oregon’s poet laureate, 2014-2016.
Sears’ work has appeared in several national magazines and newspapers such as Saturday Review, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, and Rolling Stone, as well as in literary magazines such as Field, New Letters, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and Seneca Review.
Peter Sears is the author of four full-length poetry collections; Small Talk, Tour: New and Selected Poems, The Brink, and Green Diver. He has also published a number of poetry chapbooks, and books on teaching writing, including Secret Writing and I’m Gonna Bake Me a Rainbow Poem.
More information is available at PeterSears.com. (Photo credit–Helen Caswell.)
Just a Third Grader–Peter Sears
During the war, I wanted to be a fighter pilot,
but I would probably have crashed and be captured
and tortured. All I could do was pull my wagon
around from house to house, collecting newspapers
for the newspaper drive, and in a basement room
at school, Janitor Wesley weighed my papers, gave me
a slip of paper with my name, date, and weight—
then tied my papers into bundles and neatly stacked
them against the wall. I kept his notes at home.
Paper-clipped, in a box in my chest under my bed.
I liked to take them out and thumb through them.
Each day the pile of papers at school climbed higher
up the wall. Then one day a delivery door
opened and light poured in. The truck backed up
to the door and a guy got out and threw
the bundles of papers in the truck,
closed the door and drove off. The room
was so empty it felt like a torture room.
College Prof vs. Parochial School, Grade 4 – Rachel Barton
Sister Arnoldine lent me her book for a science project
said keep it as long as you like
–the mechanics of an auger’s spiral had cast a spell on me–
but when I got off the school bus the next morning
empty-handed
she said in a voice cold as stone
I want my book you must go back
she thrust upon me Debbie’s bike with the missing pedal
which I cranked in a fever through town and neighborhoods
to the bare blacktop of the county road
beyond the college to cornfields then gravel pit
closing the distance to the woods and home
maybe half mile before the trees
broad nose of a Buick approached–my dad
leaned out his window to hear my tale of woe
–flushed cheeks a smear of tears–
take your time listen to the birds he said
then continued to classrom and laboratory
end of school day book and bike
restored to their rightful owners
I cleaned the blackboard clapped erasers
didn’t falter when Dad walked in
spoke to the sister his low tones icy as needles
don’t you know she could have been dehydrated?
shame of the morning lifted like a cloud of chalk dust
Rachel Barton: I focused first on the voice of the young boy in Peter’s poem which took me back to my own elementary school and ultimately to a memory of my dad. We lived in a community of faculty families near the college and distant from the town. This separation created a bit of a power struggle between the nuns who taught at the parochial school and my father who taught at the college.
I had to sit with this poem a while to come up with the last line, the emotional truth of my experience. I was amazed at how clearly I could remember my father’s words.