What to do with Grandmother’s poems?
More than 25 years ago I inherited a cardboard box of my Grandmother Ethyl’s poems and essays. Some were published. Most were not. Most were written from the 1930s to the late 1950s. I had them re-typed and assembled into a chap book that is around 200 pages. I then had 25 copies made and gave them to relatives. They are, in my estimation, too good to languish unread. So I am turning to all of you for thoughts on how best to share them with the world.
Below are two examples of unpublished poems that are perhaps relevant during these times of trouble. The first, a Villanelle, since I think that format so hard to master and the subject timeless and appropriate now:
Villanelle For Tomorrow
The weaver of our destiny
Plies shuttle at her threaded loom:
She weaves a fragile dream for me.
Its fabric hints of prophecy;
Clairvoyant, she sees through our gloom—
The weaver of our destiny—
A world in which no jealousy
Nor greed nor power may yet find room;
She weaves a fragile dream for me.
She visions larger history
Where nuclear fission spells no doom—
The weaver of our destiny.
Among mankind with probity
The flower of racial love will bloom—
She weaves a fragile dream for me.
With plausible identity
Throughout the dream there moves a Form;
The weaver of our destiny
She weaves a fragile dream foe me.
Next, an untitled Christmas poem, that I share, with all the best wishes for the holiday seasons.
Were I there in Judea too
That night and saw the star
I might, in curiosity
Have walked perhaps as far
As others trudging to the Inn
To lodge the night, if able,
But doubt when all is said and done
I would have sought the stable.
For signs and wonders should not point
To simple happenings;
How could I know God would anoint
A child born in a manger?
Yet now I sense what Mary knew
When she came on her hour
What the soft-eyed cattle and the few
Wise men felt---that power
Of the then unspoken Word
To me and the world, a stranger.