Poems

Here in the hotel lounge,
Truth wanders among quiet conversations,
listening, smiling, feeling at home
amid unguarded talk about anxiety
and regret.

Here in the grocery store,
Beauty walks softly
around the little girl and her grandfather
who are examining the pears
and mangoes.

Here in the alley,
Love pauses
to watch the teenager,
his fat belly straining the buttons on his jacket,
as he resets his neighbor’s fallen garbage can
and scoops up the trash.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Summer Poetry Section
(June 16, 2016, p. B12)

Standing in line at the hotel registration desk,
I watch a man on the muted television over the bar,
gesturing at a map.

This being North Carolina,
he is focused on the mid-Atlantic region.
I think he is reassuring us
that the states here are stable,
still fitting together in their puzzle-pieces way.

He’s more concerned, though,
about Pennsylvania and New York,
which, it seems, might be loose in their sockets
and in danger of slipping out of place.
Florida and Georgia are apparently
also showing signs of drift.

I hope that my Minnesota is still securely snuggled up
against Wisconsin and the rest.
I wouldn’t want the pilot on the flight home
to have to figure out where it had popped to.

I’m writing about the map, instead of you,
because I can’t arrange into words
my astonishment
that you have stepped into my life.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Fall Poetry Section
(September 21, 2017; p.B13)

Finalist in the Love Poems: The Second Annual
Common Good Books Poetry Contest
and presented at the Contest poetry reading
at the Weyerhaeuser Chapel, Macalester College, April 27, 2014

There are plenty of autumn poems –
melancholic, wistful, regretful –
and bucketsful of spring verse
expressing the usual surprise at love and jonquils.

We have more than we need
of winter poetry, heavy with contemplation
and barren snowlands
and the self.

But summer:
who wants to write poems
when there’s watermelon in the big yellow bowl
and fireflies go tumbling in the moonlight?

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Summer Poetry Section
(June 29, 2017; p.B7)

Angels are forever going around
saying the same thing – “Do not be afraid” –
but they don’t always sound the same.

Some are tender and reassuring,
like a mother bending over a toddler’s bed in the night.
Others are jocular and upbeat,
like a leader summoning courage from his motley band,
undaunted by the odds,
Some are calm and steady,
like an instructor at your back,
who knows you can do what you think you can’t.

One angelic being shows up in heavy boots and a work coat,
driving a big truck down the snow-packed freeway.
He slows to a stop on the shoulder and backs the rig up.
Before you realize what’s actually going on,
he has wrapped a chain around your trailer hitch,
and his vehicle is heaving you and your sorry car
out of the snowbank where you were trapped.

Before he drives off, he leans out the cab window
and yells, “Hey! It’s OK. Yer gonna be fine.”

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Winter Poetry Section
(December 15, 2016; p.B12)

The early snowfall
was stunning to those
unfamiliar with snow’s ways:
crystalline clusters as large as peonies,
twirling down and collapsing into dew.
It was nothing.

Now as I cross the campus
on the evening before Thanksgiving,
a member of the advance guard,
flying solo, slams into my chest
at 10 degrees from the horizontal.
Others, with less precise aim
or other targets, streak past on both sides.

The few students left on campus,
most from distant and warmer regions,
register no alarm.

I send them mental alerts,
as I brace myself against the wind:
Go home now.
Dig out your mittens
and your boots and heavy socks.
Make soup.
This is it.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Winter Poetry Section
(December 3, 2015, p. B16)

The young bagger has packed most of my groceries.
Next in line, two sweet girls about his age wait patiently.

He picks up my packet of bay leaves,
hesitates,
and then leans toward the girls
to ask if it’s theirs.

No, it seems they are not buying bay leaves
to go with their chocolate doughnuts.
Still, it’s good that he checked, just in case.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Winter Poetry Section
(December 13, 2017; p.B12)

I like to tune in to the airwaves when I’m on a walk.
The dominant station is, of course, all-talk THEM,
which features women talking loudly
about yoga, Tom, the cabin, the wedding, and so on.

I prefer the music station BIRD.
I love to hear Oriole belting it out –
man, can he sing!
I like The Chickadees’ sweet love songs,
and sometimes I catch Cardinal
singing, This Land Is My Land.

Once in awhile, by accident,
I turn to reality station LIFE,
whose deejay is obsessed with heavy metal –
lawn mowers, ambulances, airplanes.

My favorite, though, is non-commercial LAKE.
Their signal is not very strong,
so they don’t have a wide broadcast area,
but they play the loveliest silence,
broken only rarely by a loon’s call.
Sometimes it’s so beautiful
that I just have to sit down and listen.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Winter Poetry Section
(July 9, 2020; p.B7)

All summer, every day,
the trees showed up for work
in their green uniforms,
putting in long hours
on the Chlorophyll Project.

Now, one by one,
they are signing out for the season,
and changing into T-shirts and draw-string pants
in their favorite colors –
red, yellow, tan, orange, brown.

When they get tired,
they will toss their clothes onto the ground
and settle down, naked and happy,
under their snowy white blankets.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Sitting in the car on a summer night,
with rain pounding on the windshield,

I watch the refracted lamppost over there
jutting out this, and that, and that part
of its slender frame

like a jazz dancer reveling in the wet rhythm
of the steamy night.

by Melissa S. Anderson

The white-feathered tops of the prairie grasses
toss and flutter in the wind.

A tall, slender woman passes by,
the breeze playing with her white hair.

So is revealed
the Maker’s pleasure at having hit on a form
too good to use only once.

by Melissa S. Anderson

The newspaper he’s reading hides his face.
I smile and shift my gaze to the window.

He rustles the paper,
and I sense that he is looking at me.

When I look back,
the corner of the paper is bent over between his fingers,
and I can see that he has resumed reading
about chaos and wickedness,
with a grin on his face.

by Melissa S. Anderson

The sun was not aware that I saw it this morning
as it peeked out from behind the caramel-colored curtain,
anxiously checking the audience for today’s performance.

You wouldn’t think the sun would give it a thought,
having risen to the occasion so many times before.
And yet, there it was.
There’s no mistaking that famous profile.

It’s nice to know that sometimes
even big stars have stage fright.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Speeding by on his powerful bike,
his large, muscular frame accented
by a full beard and he-man shades –
black shoes, black pants,
black T-shirt scrawled with the name
of a heavy-metal band –
talking loudly into his headset,
he says,
“Did you get that recipe I sent you
for cherry sorbet?”

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Fall Poetry Section
(October 29, 2020; p.A15)

We are in love.
He’s over three-hundred years old
and I’m not,
but the age difference doesn’t bother us.

We usually – well, always –
meet at his place.
I can see him waving happily to me
from two blocks away.

When I get there,
he whispers sweet nothings to me,
especially when there’s a wind,
which seems to inspire him.

He’s very well grounded,
and he’s always there for me.
I can lean on him
whenever I need some support.

He’s so kind to the little animals in the neighborhood,
letting them climb all over him.
I’ve never heard him complain
about anything.

Yes, we are in love,
and my husband doesn’t mind at all.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Summer Poetry Section
(June 13, 2019; p.A18)

I take my book and breakfast
to a table outside the cafe.
The air is cool, the leaves brilliant,
and I am content.

A couple takes the table next to mine.
He says:
tax implications, mortgage, upscale,
notarized will, IRA, brokerage fees,
safe deposit box, retirement income,
health-care-reimbursement account,
early-withdrawal penalty, financial security,
social security, investment yield,
supplementary employment, expense profile
and some other words.

She murmurs from time to time,
and he keeps on talking.
Frankly, I don’t think he can help himself.

I focus on my book, as best I can,
but a truck rumbling by catches my attention
with its big, blue sign: Natural Gas.

by Melissa S. Anderson

Published in the Southwest Journal Fall Poetry Section
(September 19, 2019; p.B13)