Ms. Marcus says that an occasional poem is a poem
written about something
important
or special
that’s gonna happen
or already did.
Think of a specific occasion, she says—and write about it.
Like what?! Lamont asks.
He’s all slouched down in his seat.
I don’t feel like writing about no occasion.
How about your birthday? Ms. Marcus says.
What about it? Just a birthday. Comes in June and it ain’t
June, Lamont says. As a matter of fact,
he says, it’s January and it’s snowing.
Then his voice gets real low and he says
And when it’s January and all cold like this
feels like June’s a long, long ways away.
The whole class looks at Ms. Marcus.
Some of the kids are nodding.
Outside the sky looks like it’s made out of metal
and the cold, cold air is rattling the windowpanes
and coming underneath them too.
Then write about January, Ms. Marcus says, that’s
an occasion.
But she looks a little bit sad when she says it
Like she’s sorry she ever brought the whole
occasional poem thing up.
I was gonna write about Mama’s funeral
but Lamont and Ms. Marcus going back and forth
zapped all the ideas from my head.
I guess them arguing
on a Tuesday in January’s an occasion
So I guess this is an occasional poem.
~Jacqueline Woodson from “Occasional Poem”
I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.
– Bill Watterson in Calvin and Hobbes
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
~Robert Frost “Dust of Snow”
Now one year later after the occasion of an inauguration,
most of us wish things could be different than they are~
nothing feels right, rights feel like nothing,
we’re more than out of sorts, grumpy, in a bad mood –
we’re all sadly angry and angrily sad.
And we thought the pandemic was bad.
But moral decay at the highest level
is doing more damage than any virus did.
We’ve allowed politics to sow and reproduce
discord, distrust, discouragement
into our very beings.
There is no vaccine
for this aching of the heart.
An infection of the spirit
will far outlast any pandemic virus
by spreading to future generations,
eroding trust as we allow justice to decay,
as human bonds break,
withering our faith and our hope
that our country can survive anything.
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