POETIC RESULTS

 

The family room was a mess on inauguration day.

 My two boys, still in their pajamas, were sprawled out half-watching the ceremonies on the TV. They were off from school, not because of the events in Washington, DC, but in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. My oldest was on the couch designing a project for school on his computer. My youngest was on the carpet floor trying to turn a block of wood into a winning race car for next week’s Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.

The room was scattered with unfolded laundry, abandoned sports equipment, unread newspapers and stacks of video games.

“How can y’all think in this chaos?” I asked, stepping over shoes on my way to the kitchen. “Shouldn’t y’all volunteer and straighten up the room?”

“We don’t have time,” my youngest son answered.

I began to wash dishes in the next room, but I could hear the commentators and speeches well enough to rinse my soapy hands and dry them quickly if something interested me. I could move closer to the television in a flash. Dirty breakfast plates and juice glasses could wait.

I wanted to see President Barrack Obama take the oath of office on two Bibles – one that belonged to King and another that belonged to President Abraham Lincoln. I wanted to see what the First Lady Michelle Obama and her children were wearing. I wanted to see the gleam of flags and military uniforms and the sea of people on the National Mall as Kelly Clarkson, James Taylor and Beyonce provided patriotic background music. I wanted to be inspired.

I only allowed myself a few glimpses of the festivities. The rest of the time, my soapy hands did their monotonous work. I admired the blue skies over the backyards of the neighborhood outside my window. A pet dog escaped through its doggie door to bask in the sunshine. Steam flowed from someone’s vent as she did laundry. A plane rumbled overhead. I heard a car start. Perhaps another mom was running to the grocery store.

Then Richard Blanco began to recite his inaugural poem.

“Whoever is closest to the TV clicker, turn up the volume,” I shouted to my sons in the adjacent room.

Weeks earlier, while I was also washing dishes, I had listened to a story broadcast on the radio about the inaugural poet. As I wiped spoons and soup bowls clean, I had thought about what an honor it would be to read a poem at such an occasion.

As a society, we listen to sermons, speeches, songs and advertisements. But after moving past childhood nursery rhymes and Dr. Seuss, people rarely hear poetry read aloud.

The void does us a disservice.

Not all poetry is difficult to understand, as many of us believe after studying abstract or classical poems in middle school.

Billy Collins makes me laugh out loud when he reads “The Lanyard,” a humorous poem he wrote about a young boy who is making a gift for his mother at camp. And I can hear the music of a girl playing her flute by the North Carolina marsh when I read Peter Makuck’s “Fog Lifter.” King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech also is poetic.

Words are extraordinary. Expressing oneself through poetry is a gift. Poets can lead men and women to action.

While Blanco started to recite “One Today,” all fell quiet. My oldest son quit pecking on his keyboard. My younger son stopped filing his block of wood. I, too, stepped away from my sink. We were “one” with millions of other people worldwide listening to a poet who wrote down his thoughts and presented his ideas quietly and eloquently, not with shouts or shock value. He didn’t make noise. He didn’t use crude language. He didn’t scold or blame.

He spoke poetically.

My worries about the messy house disappeared. My son’s school project deadline didn’t loom. My other son’s desire to win a race went idle.

For a moment, we paused and listened.

Halfway through the poem, my sons went back to their projects. But I listened until the last word was said, “together.”

My inspiration had come – not in the abbreviated form of a tweet, not in gossipy gloating or a snarky remark on Facebook, not in a pundit’s “got to fill every silence with something” chatter – but in the form of a poem.

Starting in the family room, I picked up a pair of shoes and took them to the closet. I put the unread newspapers in the magazine basket. I folded some of the laundry.

I asked my youngest son to put away the sports equipment and my oldest son to put away the video games.

Working together, we started to make the room look better.

“I thank you for your help today; the room’s now clean, let’s keep it that way,” I said and laughed at my rhyme.

“You’re very poetic,” my youngest son answered.

 --cawk