A Poem for Sunday

Thank you again to all readers and subscribers! Thrilled to be connecting with you and new folks can subsribe here:

Many years ago, a friend recommended I read the poet Jim Daniels. They knew I’d like his work—narrative driven, crisp, imagery that stays with you like memories, and a slice of real life and meaning captured with the brevity that great poets master.

I’ve taught Daniels’s poem, “Anthem,” many times over the years. I often recommend it to others. It still feels relevant to me, as well as my students, many of whom come from smaller towns and rural settings.

I think I hold on to this poem because, at least for now, it still stands as a bulwark against all that is changing. Sometimes it is okay to maintain. To remember. To have the technology you hold in your hand be as simple as a cup or an umbrella—things we would never refer to as a “technology” anymore. Yet, many things endure, and they are all around us to see. So I consider this poem an anthem to such things as well.

Anthem

by Jim Daniels

Two months after retirement
my father is here, to get away
from 6 A.M. and his cup
of empty destination.

At a football game we huddle
under his umbrella
talking about the obvious.
He brings me coffee
to hold warm between my hands,
a gift of no occasion.

When we rise for the anthem
I hear the rusty crack of his voice
for the first time maybe ever.

Thirty-three years of coughing
thick factory air, of drifting to sleep
through the heavy ring of machinery,
of twelve-hour days. In my sleep
I felt the cold bump of his late-night kiss.

I shiver in the rain
as my father sings me
what now I hear as
a children's song. I lean into him,
the umbrella and rain my excuse,
my shoulder against his,
and I imagine my mother
falling in love.

Midjourney rendition of “Anthem”

Enjoy your Sunday.