have handouts for everyone and i thought well my goodness chosen these poems with such care that they deserve to be written and this one is by robert frost and it was written in  until we found out that it was ourselves we were holding from our land of living and forced with us found salvation in surrender such as we gave ourselves my name is marcia reese and i live in jericho and i'm a proud owner of two new replacement knees within the last eight weeks so that's my company here and part of what happened is i love to be in this poetry workshop and the first two meetings were when i was still confined to home and i could have cheated on the come over but i stayed home until i got permission to leave but the first thing i did the first time i left the house was to go to this poetry class thank you and as a consequence what i've discovered is that much of my creative energy this particular poetry month has gone into healing so i'm actually reading some things that i have written other times and the reason i've chosen this one and i chose it when i was visiting mary jane is because the setting for this is the building which is next door to mary chain which is the community center and this is called owed to my great great great aunt sarah's are as leaves fly in the wind and gray light hovers i cradle the bundle tied with age yellowed string attached is a label quilt and sarah written in my great grandmother's hand crossing the threshold of the community center and generations i am welcomed into the space of worn wooden floors attends ceiling and cider smells removing the musty mouse chewed sheet i am fold my package adam and sarah's treasure to the pile of quilts each now numbered lined up to be measured pinned with a hanging sleeve waiting to be see double wedding rings laying next to grandmother's flower garden dress and plates and log cabins line up behind maids puzzle and hole in the barn door velvet and satin crazy quilt flaunt their improvisations on tradition in order of arrival and sarah's piece is taken backstage oyston by volunteers suspended in the spotlight for experts to appraise skilled eyes appreciative eyes taken hundreds of colored shapes hand sewn together needle and thread outlines of triangles untold numbers of piercing tracing fans a cream colored sky wild goose chase one woman suggests perhaps hovering hawks offers another no no came the first voice from the man directing the photography birds in flight find you don't work elaborate fans beautiful bindings words of praise meant for a woman now half a century dead do you know the maker my great great great aunt sarah youngest sister of helen augusta two times married childless twice surrounding a fashionable dressmaker dress maker says one appraiser that would explain the fine stitching and the eighty year span of fabrics as another  geometric prints from the 's and brick pieces from the eighteenth fifties remarkable so large so bold so fine i listen to word who would want to read voice was soft as her name though i don't recall the last one should straighten tear curved under her tears thing harms a pink tongue when she spoke to thank my mother for lunch she would bring her own sandwich carefully but my mother would insist she ate with us at the awful formica table one noon moselle lifted her head told us of great pride in her cousin the reverend jesse jackson in the early sixty's cities were beginning to burn far south western when i taught race class and gender in one nine hundred eighty seven a student came in with white guilt over a black nanny how little he knew of the woman's life thick behind her bus stop her church her children loyalties she could not dare to name the time at the time reverend jesse jackson was shaping the rainbow coalition my own monochrome childhood renewed like being a teacher could begin to repair back at the kitchen table i remembered how my mother showed her cleaning lady the clothes she'd gone through and stuffed into black plastic bags like them to be sitting next to me and not know about such a man as jesse jackson when i was when i was thirteen my blue and white china was placed next to the stiff paper plate my mother before i've had a wonderful opportunity to be part of women's seder for many many many years now and when we start to talk to freedom and liberation the seder was happening at the same time as this wonderful poetry workshop and so it had to be named it's called dipping parsley and tears for joy as  of the back of the hill seventeen women tipped branches of parsley and salted water on a passover night for twenty seven years we've gathered to joy and her granddaughter covering tables with cross stitch like this parsley we now swish in salty water and eat better to remember tears we've shed in our confinement i am not a jew but have been at this table since five of us first sat down i was in despair at the time despair about lovers work family ties all gone awry women were liberating around me thanks to joy i came to read these words in my dream rich is the dream of a common language i have never seen my own forces so taken up and shared and given back and this in her home to andre the lord until we find each other we are alone from these women i learned oppression is ignorance self hatred learned at the mirrors of our mothers and girlfriends they in turn from magazines from home or from fathers and teachers and priests i learned to look beyond the flat back side of the glass to take in the year question this year it is difficult to retell in this story many of us grieve the killings first soldiers buried by the red sea folding back on some i may just be the second generation living in the luxury of ordinary days with nothing more pressing than the in the absence of a lover as i sniff for any and fifty three no one keeps track when your folks are under siege today all i need are the song tree clouds the late morning grass still so and my lift every voice from the title of james weldon johnson's poem lift ev'ry voice and sing at one town meeting an elderly farmer in his red shirt his face weather and shoulders student took his place in the back room chair set in front of bleachers and earlier marge when i sat next to him we had exchanged pleasantries he caring for his wife heard trying to hang on to his cows and lay and his with a distant look as he said he was there to speak out against tax increases following the school board's presentation on how to create more classroom space a suggestion from the floor to try more classrooms and the school chairs response mobile classrooms would not provide a quality learning environment for students his body stiffening a farmer raised his hand waited to be recognised learn its words fell into a momentary citizen the silence without a word from moderator nor school board chair even the soft voices at the refreshment table paused in the silence i wondered what about his wife still alive in the care of others i envisioned his pasture likely pocked with piles of rocks pushed out of the way near a few trees from an earlier forest scruby cedars ledge outcroppings father encouraged by cows keeping the small trees down at this time of year likely being fed and milked in an old barn needing daily cleaning in the dark mornings and late afternoon questions and responses went on until the last had been answered someone called the question on the move to a paper ballot the usual strategy after contentious debate was seconded and passed by a two thirds majority on paper voters marked their ballots waited to be called the letter k was called the farmer walked to the box dropped his folded paper in the slot and returned to his seat taking half a sandwich from his pocket to jack to his feet and quietly left town meeting early afternoon on that first tuesday in march just actually i'm not making this up really were just in my pocket and so i don't know if they're here for tonight but it was a few week and when i found them in my pocket the next day oh you're supposed to have a home in your pocket to explain one little thing it makes a reference to a tree that you may have heard of that was destroyed during nine eleven and then was discovered again and brought back to life and it was recently we planted trees are better than building chains are better than the buildings not just this wind kingly companion leaning sinking back into the ground trees are better even the ordinary ones in the distance power over rows of square one story houses they're the only things that seem real enough just to just go on kindly giants their muscular legs grow wider and reach down deeper each year strengthening their hold upon the trees are better because their leaves are a million mirrors they reflect the sky turned silver before storms drawing down their because while standing watch in their appointed places they pass the voice of the wind from hand to hand as it rides the hills and valleys and fills the lungs of all that because they're patient standing guard single file along city blocks they bless the letter and the parade of balloons passing by and there is a flattering shopping bag stronger in their branches like flags of the nations a leaf devouring of insects the nest builders and hold weller's because in dignity they carry their graffiti scars their wasted see ground to dust because they do outlive us once a solitary city parent tree harbored a phoenix in a cage of roots below the ash the only tree left surrendered to the tender ministr nurserymen and trust of us all just enough to bear the leaves of another spring trees are better than us and i'd like to read one sort of silly  of an early spring gardening it's called this morning in the garden i can tell you this much it was early morning and early spring i was out gently teasing out the old brown leaves snipping away the husks of all stocks exposing tender little fingers of green every spring this startling new green dazzles me only none of these words were there they were either no words are words came out of nowhere they were adrift just floating by and would catch hold for no reason but the sounds that they made in my mind as they arrived like lost packages empty boxes containing parcels of sound hunting for an object to claim them for instance the mysterious phrase liner notes popped up and then the flow asli a person's name followed marvelously by loblolly and then jack of all trades which spawned a little group small fry vernal pool and sorry i don't like cody and i just don't like podiums i've never been here before so i wasn't aware that there was a topic so  the home i wrote a long time ago when things were kind of her to deal with and i rewrote it not changing very much whole window some days i look outside through shining glass not noticing the street and the scratches time and herself with those who care but there are other days the glass is fractured spread with and snaring spiderwebs distorting vision altering hopes that i retreat from too much light and draw the curtains closed this is the poem that is also going to be at a workshop and i brought the wrong one so it's not the revised version my mother died two years ago her name was siding and my dad died nine hundred eighty five and his name is alan and i was the caregiver for because she was actually as they say dying twice she had also timers so there was a six year period of watching her deteriorate and eventually forget who i was and then her final task we spent a lot of time in the emergency room this was a very special moment that we had and i call it three quarter ton of plastic carrier was causing more pain when two paramedics called her first name eileen where shifting your onto the bed and the nurse will be coming soon her white hair lay flat no curls to soften her face fingers bent the angles just lie in and spelt on a moan list october night from under an enveloping comforter orion's belt snatches me into the vaulted dome reminding me one life time is too short to know all the mysteries all birds and stars and drama sucks my imagination beyond the birth of stars to the shimmering lake of new dividing embryonic cells about a line on vertical center stem cells form the essence of organs before the incipient b reaches out from its cent know enough about the birth of everything laughing thought fractal patterns cosmic or guess on how will i know why the flock of bohemian wax we use comes each year to get drunk stripping frostbitten crab apples from the tree by the my front door have you ever stopped to consider underwear in the abstract when you're really into some shocking problems or raised underwear is something we all have to deal with everyone wears some kind of underwear even indians were underwear even cubans where underwear the pope wears underwear underwear is worn by negroes the governor of louisiana wears underwear i saw him on t v he you have seen the three color pictures with crutches and circle to show the areas of extra strength and three way stretch promising full freedom of action don't seem to see it's all based on the two party system which doesn't allow much freedom of choice the way things are set up america in its underwear struggles through the night underwear controls everything in the end take foundation garments for instance they are really freshest forms of underground government  making people believe something but the truth can't you think you can what you can or can't do did you ever try to get around a good perhaps nonviolent action is the only answer to was that why macbeth murdered sleep and that's hot she was always really was really in her underwear modern anglo saxon ladies must have huge guilt complex as always washing and washing and washing out damn spock row don't underwear with spots very suspicious underwear with old shoes very shocking underwear on clotheslines a great flag of freedom someone has escaped his own nowhere maybe naked somewhere but don't worry everybody's still hung up in it there won't be no real revolution and poetry still the underwear of the soul and underwear morgans to reach full maturity only after they stop holding them back if i were you i'd keep aside an oversized pair of winter underwear do not go naked into that good night and in the mean time and keep warm and  dry no use to string ourselves up prematurely over nothing move forward with dignity and invest don't get emotional and shall have no dominion there's plenty of time  are we not still young and easy and i have much more to do i'm sure and any time i read something it really becomes apparent need to do in a season first right political scene with heated debate about which democrat should from which this may have a mark you leave me with a problem regard for citizenship as a