Five Poems by Sandra Frye

 

After the Divorce  

 

I never saw the farm 

crying with winter’s ice. 

On humid summer morns 

my mother headed south 

as far as Illinois. 

 

We kids knew we’d arrived  

when apples red as blood 

reached out from leafy boughs  

like father’s unseen arms. 

 

The ancient house rose up 

its peeling boards beside  

a crumbling dying barn. 

A crooked creek-bed wound 

 

round willows weeping tears 

whose steadfast roots removed  

my sorrows and my fears. 

I bent my ears to hear 

 

“it’s time to eat peach pie,” 

my grandma’s voice like wind 

through rusty farmhouse screens. 

With soaking barefoot feet 

 

we ran beyond the chicks 

who clucked at us; we passed 

the shed that kept things hid  

a broken bike, some junk, 

 

old tools and tractor wheels. 

That farm provided me  

a million mysteries. 

Once uncle used his axe—  

 

chopped off a chicken’s head. 

We never told our mom 

how days at grandpa’s farm 

taught us cruelty as well 

 

as love, beauty as well  

as gloom, and love cut short. 

I never saw the farm 

covered in snow, but ice 

 

and cold were lurking there. 

 

 

 

Softball, 1936 

 

My mother’s  

gone 

                who used to 

                 hurl softballs  

    

from first base  

in onetwothree

seconds  

 

all the while  

the umpire  

                    shouted “Out!” 

 

but she never 

took a bow 

                     to thunderous applause  

 

                                      and what I want to know is 

if there’s a ball field 

where she is now because  

 

I know  

                      she’s still wearing those 

                      baggy jeans and loose 

 

blouses  

                

still has her right foot firmly  

               glued to the ground  

 

 

The Art of Losing  

 

Mom liked any kind of game, 

you name it. Football, Diving, 

 

Baseball, Dominoes. She was a 

great swimmer and first base player. 

 

Sometimes she practiced the skill of losing, 

and she pioneered a trail into the future, to 

inventions that really matter to women. 

 

She invented perseverance. 

She didn’t take out a patent, but it’s  

obvious she discovered it on those  

 

lonely winter nights in Wisconsin  

without a husband by her side. 

 

Women invented many items that  

men wouldn’t, like the dishwasher.  

 

Or a globe of the world—Ellen Fitz, 

1875. And I owe thanks to Mary Walton 

 

who in 1881 figured out how to reduce 

noise in New York City’s railways by 

 

lining the tracks with sand. That’s likely 

why I barely registered my Dad's departure  

 

in 1951 as he rumbled away, out of town. 

A silent leaving, more or less. Besides, 

 

Mom kept the radio loud, tuned to sports 

on Saturdays and Sundays when we might 

 

have been preoccupied with waiting for Dad. 

 

Later, we tuned the television set to watch 

games—Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee 

Brewers. Every weekend we cheered the teams 

 

to victory. Winning was everything. 

 

The year my dad took off, the Brewers 

ended the season with 94 wins and 57 

losses. 

 

My family had lots of time to witness 

perseverance, and when the team lost, 

 

Mom reminded us, “That’s the real Art.”

 

 

 

Ruminations  

 

I read once that 

the universe will 

 

upon our death 

 

generously split 

in two, 

 

and in one we 

are alive. 

 

I keep thinking 

my mother and  

 

my four sons 

and even my ex-husband  

 

the guru of laughing  

 

may some day 

be found again. 

 

All my sons at ten 

played the piano 

intensely 

 

different 

songs but still  

 

piano keys bobbed  

like black and white 

 

chess pieces dancing. 

 

Like snow swirling on 

broken tree branches  

 

fallen on the ground. 

 

I wonder in which  

universe we will all 

 

one day, be playing 

a piano and in which 

 

one we’ll be laughing.

 

 

 

Metaphor

 

 

books sit inside bookcases  

so religiously upright, stuffed 

with words and knowledge— 

 

that small crackling sound 

when I open one…a priest 

clearing his throat

Sandra Frye - once read somewhere that writers probably have two or three events that shape them in childhood, and everything they write is about those few things. That’s true in her case: everything can be traced back to her stalwart mother and absent father.

Frye has written three memoirs, “African Dreams,” about serving with the Peace Corps in Africa from 1969 to 1971; “Fatherless,” the story of her unique childhood in the 1950s; and “The Weight of Dreams,” which chronicles her marriage and teaching career. She has two self- published books of poetry titled “Leaving Lessons” and Interior Spaces.” 

Frye rarely submits her poems, but has had several published in The Ekphrastic Review, Eucalyptus and Rose, The Thinking Pen, and The Blue Mountain Review. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, a retired high school English teacher, and mother to four grown sons.