More Obama Odes

The AP has sponsored this and selected 10 American poets to write poems inspired by the new president. I particularly like the ones from Julia Alvarez, David Lehman, Gary Soto, and Alice Walker. Enjoy!

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/campaign_plus/obama_poets/

Caught Looking

You ask me why I’m staring.
What am I to say?
That I was searching the squareness of your jaw
For the softness of my baby’s face?
That at times your silhouette startles me
And cuts my breathing into ribbons?
That in my dreams I still hold you
And smell the newness of your downy head?
That your shoulders seem impossible to me?
That when you stride your long limbs across the room
I long for your wobbly, chubby legs?
Should I even try to tell you
That for a mother
There is no embracing without pulling
No rejoicing without grieving?
That to look at you now is to know
That your birth was the beginning
Of your leaving?

Poems for the first 100 days

Here is a nifty blog I found. Each day of Obama's first 100 days, a well-known poet posts a poem about him and/or his new administration on this blog. Enjoy!

http://www.100dayspoems.blogspot.com/

Aaaarrrgh! Frustrated Catholics Unite

Are you kidding me?...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/world/europe/25pope.html

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iadWj6AbGb7whmCtQ5SLwBtCRTkg

http://madamearcati.blogspot.com/2009/01/pope-reinstates-holocaust-denier-bishop.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/24/bishop-richard-williamson_n_160598.html


The vatican does not make it easy for me to hang in there with the church. I am an Irish Catholic. I don't want to be anything else, but my church is not one that encourages suggestions from its people. The pope is not taking my calls! But I will use my little blog from time to time to scream at Rome when I see fit. I just hope Rome doesn't blacklist me. Tee-hee

Fresh air

Yesterday the air changed
As we stood shoulders touching
At the edge of a clearing
Not to hold our breath
But to finally let it out
And find some relief
For years our air has been too thin
So we gulped it in greedily
And left our sisters to their shallow gasping
We belched out our anger
Like a cannon ball across the skies
And left our brothers to wheeze in our smoke
But a crisp breeze broke through
And unlocked our jaws
And unclenched our teeth
Bent our grim lips into smiles
Softened our elbows into embraces
Opened wide our squint eyes
So we could see once more
A path to a country
Where we can breathe deeply
And make room for others
Without fear of losing
What we think to be ours

Liam, my nephew whom I adore, is turning four!

Today is my favorite nephew's birthday. He always makes me smile, and today he makes me want to rhyme! I am not at all good at regular rhythm and rhyme, but all of the love in the poem still works! Happy Birthday, Liam. You are the coolest four-year-old on the planet. Don't worry: this poem is not your only present. There is a real gift for you to open on its way to you!

You don’t remember
But on your very first birthday
I watched you being born
First there was no Liam
And then there was
And right away
I fell in love
with nephew love...

I knew I would love you
But I didn’t know
That my brother’s boy
Would tug at me so
You bring with you
Good times and great fun
Hugs end in a tackle
And start out with a run.

I love the glint
In your impish eyes
The way your brown sparkles
When I give you a surprise
I love how you growl
The word pancakes with passion
And dance on the couch
With your parents gone and me there laughing.

You wore your Angels hat

To the airport to meet me
You said your favorite team
When you reached up to greet me
And I loved when you settled
Your sweaty curly head
And used my happy shoulder

Instead of a bed.

And now you have come
To the new age of four
A talented dancer
With a wild thing roar
When you swing your big bat
With your baseball mitt hands
You should know
That Aunt Erin
Is your biggest fan!

Anticipating the Inauguration

When I was a teenager, Ronald Reagan was president, and America was riding high on a hot air balloon of patriotism and materialism. Many of us had 1960s generation parents, but we lived during a time when our president told us he was saving us from the moral excesses of that generation, so we watched Dallas and Dynasty and dreamed of becoming a Ewing or a Carrington. My generation grew up with a movie star cowboy president. It was “morning in America,” but the air was pretty thin and smoggy.

I was known as a left-wing weirdo at my high school. Many of the boys, if they cared about politics at all, were young conservatives, Alex P. Keaton clones. Some of the girls in my senior class, when they found out I wanted to be a teacher, would scoff and tell me that I was “too smart for that,” or remind me that I would “never make any real money that way.” “Major in business!” they said as they shook their heads. In spite of this, I enjoyed being a lone liberal; it appealed to my adolescent sense of drama.

I took it for granted--and maybe took some pride in the idea-- that no candidate of my choosing would ever actually win, and Michael Dukakis confirmed that for me in 1988.
George H. W. Bush’s victory indicated to me that the 1980s would never really be over. I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, and I was thrilled and shocked that he actually won. My husband and I were young, struggling parents at that time, and I had hope that the world our son was born into would be a less cynical and more hopeful world than the one I had come of age in.

The 1990s did not exactly pan out like I had envisioned, and then the election of 2000 felt like a kick in the teeth. The re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 truly made me despair for the world we were leaving our children. My oldest son has been going through his adolescence at a time of unnecessary and immoral war, government-sponsored torture, tax cuts for the rich, environmental pillaging, and corporate piracy. It would be much easier for him if he were the kind of kid who didn’t notice or care what was going on in the world around him, but he’s not. He is smart, he cares, and he pays attention. This makes me proud, but it also makes me want to protect him from disappointment.

When the 2008 election season came around, the political junky in me came out as I watched every debate and every bit of election coverage I could. This time, though, it was different. I was seeing the election through my son’s eyes. This time, I did something I had never done before: I got involved. My son and I volunteered at our local Obama campaign office. He was motivated by his frustration that he would not be 18 in time to vote, and I was motivated by the desire that this time, maybe things could change. Maybe I could show my kids that we could make a difference. I went from arm chair liberal critic to campaign volunteer. I decided to walk the walk, so that my kids would feel like it was possible to love one’s country by working to change it.

On the night of the election, my oldest son and co-Barack Obama Campaign for Change volunteer went to watch the results at an election-night party at his high school, so I didn’t get to see the look on his face when the words “President-elect Barack Obama” were uttered on television for the first time. When he came home an hour and a half later, he ran down the stairs to the family room with his arms stretched out wide. “WE DID IT!” he shouted, and he grabbed me and hugged me.

WE DID IT. It is especially for that one word, WE, that I am so grateful to Barack Obama. My son deserves a leader he can look up to and he deserves a sense of ownership in the political process that I never, ever felt at his age. I know President-Elect Obama is human. I know he is a politician. I know that he will disappoint me, and I plan on speaking up loudly when he does. But for now, I can only thank him for proving to me that “hope” is not just a political slogan. It is real and tangible, and I saw it written all over my son’s face on election night.