Gael Stuart

The Silver Sage

Are you ready? Come on along and read some homespun poetry as well as a jot and tittle regarding distinguished poets and their works. Gael offers a positive balance of her own nostalgia notes and poetic meanderings with those of others. [Editor's note: Gael no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]


Posted 05/18/2009

Knock-Knock!

Stickiness is a good sign

By Gael Stuart

If stickiness (memorability) is the sign of a good poem, is it also the sign of a good joke?

I recently heard an adult tell a knock-knock joke that left everyone in the room trying desperately to hold back a silly grin. I was suddenly a little girl again, leaning against my mother and waiting for her reaction to this:

Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Lettuce.
Lettuce who?
Lettuce in, it’s cold out here!

And I grinned despite myself.

Anyone following this blog knows that the Silver Sage‘s undulating brain waves sail the seas of many thoughts, anchoring who-knows-where. Thus, thinking of a sticky knock-knock joke and my dear departed mother, on a day close to Mother’s Day, made my heart happy-sad.

It is not an unpleasant thing to be interrupted by bittersweet thoughts, and the poem offered today is a memorable one, selected because it moves me.

Departures
(Linda Pastan, 1932–)

They seemed to all take off
at once: Aunt Grace
whose kidneys closed shop;
Cousin Rose who fed sugar
to diabetes;
my grandmother’s friend
who postponed going so long
we thought she’d stay.

It was like the summer years ago
when they all set out on trains
and ships, wearing hats with veils
and the proper gloves,
because everybody was going
someplace that year,
and they didn’t want
to be left behind.

Linda Pastan was born in New York City in 1932. She graduated from Radcliffe College and received an MA from Brandeis University. A resident of Maryland, she was poet laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1995 and has published 12 volumes of poetry to date.

By Gael Stuart
The Silver Sage Blog

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