Carolyn Martin – Three Poems

Sonder
––The profound realization that everyone, including strangers
you pass on the street, has a life as complex as your own.

Just off the I-205 at Sunnyside Road,
cars try to beat the amber light to avoid
the Homeless/Need Help sign.
Too late, I’m stuck.
A woman and her ratty mutt trudge
up and down the ramp without guilt or embarrassment.
There’s dignity in her step and in her exhausted red scarf.
There’s caring in the way she rubs her dog’s head,
and soothes him with something like a melody.
What are the odds her parents kicked out?
Perhaps she had kids, tried to make a family work.
Perhaps she was a beauty queen, a lawyer,
MBA, or owner of a grocery store.
Perhaps she is my parallel in a universe
where lives play out simultaneously.
No matter the where or why,
I roll my window down and touch rough skin.
Without a look, she crumbles my five-dollar bill
into her stained raincoat and mumbles
something that sounds like, God bless.
Humming a few disconnected notes,
she pats her dog and struts the ramp.

For Bob, an Airport Express Parking Lot Bus Driver

Something endeared. His breathy hello
as the sun pondered a rise. His corny jokes
when we’re half-awake and stressed. (Forecasts claim
snow threatens O’Hare. Expected delays.)
Did you hear the one about…? What happens when…?
Diversions earn our groans. He pockets them
like lost coins or scraps of notes left behind.
Every stop: If you boarded here, please write
the station (number) in the (color) zone.
Parental: no lost cars when we come home.
After a week of lonely hotel rooms,
non-stop meetings with mediocre food—
we’re back. It’s night. No Bob. But station three,
blue zone is scribbled on a sales receipt.

With Apologies to My Creative Writing Student
––Camden Catholic High School, NJ, 1970

What arrogance to pontificate
in class about your unpoetic skills!
I rebelled when your loosely flowing lines
led me down paths–– diverging, converging,
re-emerging–– in ways a poem shouldn’t go.
How was I to know, amateur teacher
with a new degree, that your voice––free
outrageous, curious–– was destined
for accolades while mine would float for years
over dusty lecterns and fading notes
on how to tame sonnets and villanelles.
Young Whitman that you were, you shot me
a sigh when I shot you down. Yet,
wiser than I, you claimed your craft,
soared your songs, left my insults behind.
Perhaps a footnote in your first memoir?

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her poems have appeared in more than 175 journals throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. Her website is: www.carolynmartinpoet.com.