Holy Blues

Holy Blues

    “My roots are in the blues,

      the holy blues.”  - Alvin Ailey

Mama -- got the blues,

The holy blues;

The singin’, dancin’, drummin’

Holy blues.

My skin is dark and shinin’.

My heart is big and brave.

And tho’ my life is one long hell

I’ll take down to my grave,

I’ll dance and swing

The whole night through

‘Til birds begin to sing;

And when I die,

Just let me lie

While the saints blow holy blues.

              © Peg Latham, 2010

B. B. King, Live in Hamburg, November, 1971
Photo by Heinrich Klaffs
from Wikimedia Commons

Martha and Mary

Martha in the kitchen...

The practical one.

Mary more the maid of thought,

The contemplative,

Maybe the lazier of the two.

But nevertheless,

Her mind was on matters

Other than pots and pans,

Food and drink,

The necessary things of life.

It would be nice to be Mary,

Seated on the cool floor,

Away from the kitchen's heat,

The bubbling pots,

Listening to the teacher,

Who had come to visit,

That once in a lifetime chance

To hear and sense

The mystery of the rabbi

Claiming to have come from God.

© Peggy Latham, 2014

Johannes Vermeer's "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary"
at the Scottish National Gallery
from Wikimedia Commons

Thoughts on Mary's Mother

Where was Mary's mother

In all this birthing?

Was there only cousin Elizabeth,

Old and inexperienced,

To give comfort and advice?

Was there no Jewish mother

To make chicken soup,

Check how the baby lay,

As if she felt Jesus

Moving in the womb?

Was there gossip

In the neighborhood?

Did her mother

Want Mary and her bulging belly

Out of sight?

         In all this birthing.

         Where was Mary's mother?

© Peggy Latham, 2013

Detail of a pregnant Mary in a Provencal creche
Photo by Guillaume Piolle
from Wikimedia Commons

Small Town

My childhood self

still walks the streets of the village

where I loved to visit

a grandmother, dead long ago.

Her aged friends

are still vivid in my mind.

One had a parrot that nipped my nose

and a goldfish pond

where the brilliant fish

eluded my childish grasp.

Another came to tea

and was given elderberry wine

because “the doctor ordered it.”

A glowering distant cousin 

with a crippled foot who came to visit

preferred to sleep on a feather bed,

so in the heat of summer

I dragged the dusty thing from the attic,

grumbling and resentful of that gloomy relative.

A box of demi-tasse cups

was given me by one of those women.

“Don’t wait too long to marry,”

was her advice.  -- ”I did.”

I sensed the sorrow of her life.

Unmarried women of uncertain age

seemed prevalent.

Why did they never wed?

Did the young men leave

for livelier towns?

Or did their beaux

go off to war and die?

Their locked trunks in the attic

were seldom opened,

holding treasures (I supposed)

for which they had no room

in the straitened circumstances

to which they had come.

Now aging as well,

I return to find

old houses remain,

still beautiful and cared for,

and the county courthouse

with the Civil War cannonball

still lodged in its pillar

looks solid and unchanged.

But busy stores

that then sold thread

and shoes and ice cream

now stand empty and forlorn,

and the ghosts of my childhood friends

walk the silent streets.

© Peggy Latham, 2012

County Courthouse; photo by Tony Russell

Reasons for Not Writing

A dream once told me,

“Clear out the clutter,” but

I continue to accumulate.

First, I must clean up this room.

Papers, papers everywhere...

pencils need sharpening,

files need straightening;

there are lists of things I should do each day,

lists of things I should do this year,

lists of things I should do before I die--

and do I do them?

No.

I continue to accumulate, mountains of clutter.

Even my bed gets crowded,

not with bodies

but with piles of papers.

Then there are clippings

thought to be of interest to some friend.

Quotations (oh how I love those).

I have even made a collection of quotations I like 

on 3 X 5 cards

which I keep in a box in my closet--

also full of clutter.

Clothes are the least of it.

I am thinking of ridding myself

of clothes I have not worn for five years,

but so far, they still reside

in my closet, taking up room I could use

for my files:

more quotations, more papers.

It is as though I am afraid my brain

cannot hold all those comments

by authors unknown to me.

I sometimes wonder--

did they suffer from clutter too?

I am sure, like me, they do not allow their spouses

to go into a frenzy of cleaning

in their sacred place.

That would be cause for divorce.

I think about putting up more shelves.

The ones I have are crowded to overflowing,

and I need more space.

But would that solve my problem?

Probably not....  I would just use more shelves

as an excuse to collect.

Is there help for one like me?

Others have tried.

Someone once gave me two thick pads of lined paper.

At the top of each page was the phrase

“Things to do today.”

Their instinct was kindly,

but of no earthly use to me.

I dream of an empty room,

painted white, even the floor.

It contains one chair, a small table,

an empty notebook,

and a lavender pen with a fine point.

© Peggy Latham, 2012

Two officials of the New York City Tenement House Department
inspect a cluttered basement living room, ca. 1900 ~
NARA photo, Wikimedia Commons

TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED

For women, the end of the twentieth century

is no big deal.

After Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem

we had hoped for better things,

but where has all that consciousness raising gotten us?

We are stretched thin,

trying to fill the shoes of our mothers

while pushing our way

into the world of our fathers.

Meantime, we are blamed

for the problems of our children.

Some harsh master or mistress expects us to be all things,

including

having an ageless body,

incredible orgasms on demand,

and the calm nature of a Zen master.

We try for a little spiritual sustenance,

only to be bombarded by articles in women’s magazines

blithering about decorating the perfect house

in the 1950’s style.

At the same time

we are expected to whip up

a gourmet meal in twenty minutes,

not forgetting our aim

of losing twenty pounds

in ten days.

Men are discovering their inner feminine nature

as we go off to offices

dressed in tailored navy slack suits,

leaving the children in the hands of tired workers

at the local day care center.

Some call this “the sandwich generation.”

Often we must care for aging parents

while trying to cope with rebellious teenagers.  

We wonder what the new century will bring.

We begin to long for the dull world of our mothers,

who stayed at home to suckle their babies

and be there with milk and cookies

when the kindergartners came home from school.

We are told that now we can have it all.

I can’t help wondering

what “all” is.

© Peggy Latham, 2012

Gloria Steinem, 1972: Photo from
Wikimedia Commons