Issue 9
December 2001
Harding Stedler
Five years ago, I retired from teaching at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, OH, after 34 years in the classroom. Today, I work at a local publishing house, designing Language Arts materials for elementary-school youngsters. And, this is my third and final term as secretary of the Poets' Roundtable of Arkansas.
As Professor of English at Shawnee State, where I spent my final seventeen years of teaching, I was a charter member of the South Central Ohio chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, housed at SSU. I also founded and advised The Phoenix Writers, a fraternity of poets at the University. I continue to conduct their fall writers' conference held at Murphin Ridge Inn, in September, in Amish country of Southern Ohio.
THE DAY THE APPLES BLUSHED
In mid-July,
two ripe bananas
stalked their way
from coast to coast
through apple orchards.
In merciless heat,
they peeled
to the crimson blush
of tree-ripe fruit.
They took brief refuge
in apple shade
beneath arching boughs
to await the sun's retreat.
Missouri was but a half-way point.
They longed for a Maryland breeze
in late October
so they could suit up again
in their leathery yellows.
Today, they would settle
for a dip of ice cream
huddled against their back
and a squirt or two
of whipped cream
in their face.
REMEMBERING HOW
A healing breeze
remembers aching hearts
in the wake of late September,
hearts needing somehow
to grow strong again.
Thirty-three years ago,
we took you home
to sleep among welcoming hills.
An October sun appeared
and blessed the hillsides
draped in rainbows
as we bid you our final farewell.
Today, the hurt returns
as we remember,
beneath a different sun.
In this faster, more dangerous world
than the one you lived in,
we make our way
in uncertainty and fear.
Ours is a world without guarantee.
But as long as we shall live,
there will be remembering
of how it used to be
and how we thought
you would be ours forever.
ONLY REMINDERS
September belongs to terror
at the Towers.
When hijackers
stormed the cockpits
and commandeered the planes,
insanity came of age.
The world's largest funeral pyre
still smolders
three weeks beyond explosion.
Flesh still burns
on Indian holy ground.
Parentless children
pray in ashes of their fathers,
wanting to turn back time
to gatherings around the fireplace...
and home.
But there is no home for many,
only reminders
in photographs and fingerprints
contained between walls
of silent space.
I visit the site of the massacre daily
and settle its dust with tears.
In my memory, the horror is etched forever:
the explosions, the screams,
the collapse, the stench of decaying flesh.
In an unmarked grave,
dreams and hopes for tomorrow wait.