“I believe, in my better moments, that there is a plan and things go not the way we want them to but the way they should.” Ann Patchett
Lori Hoevener, Ph.D., grew up in Seymour, Indiana. For many years, she taught English at Bloomington H.S. North. Much of her poetry centers on these two aspects of her life: growing up in rural Indiana and working with high school students. Her poem “Writing” recently appeared in The Ryder magazine.
Welcome to the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Lori, what poems have you brought for us today?
Risk
I was always trying to save you from yourself,
But teetering on the edge of existence
Was all part of the fun.
Driving us over the clattering railroad tracks
Swerving around the line of waiting cars
Temporarily blocked by another driver
We barely missed the oncoming train.
Drinking yourself empty while the TV blared
A sad blankness reflected across your face
Clumsily removing your heavy jewelry,
A glittering pile next to the recliner.
Hiding packs of cigarettes in the bathroom drawer
“Those are my friend’s!” you shouted.
Which friend? I wondered anxiously.
I stopped throwing them away.
Sipping old-fashioneds amid chemo treatments
A soft inquiry from a friend:
“Should you be drinking that?”
No one’s words mattered.
But surely you must be safe now, mom,
Somehow sequestered
In a different world
Where risk is no longer the reason behind
Your existence.
A Bracelet of Memories
Tightly holding onto my hand on that first day of school…
You ushered me gently toward the office.
Bending down to kiss me the morning of your car accident…
You were wearing your favorite yellow dress.
Your voice trembling with fear when my fever went too high….
The shaky realization that you could lose me.
Smiling bravely when I insisted on taking your picture…
The scars from your accident brutally apparent.
Waving goodbye until my car disappeared…
Then suddenly you were too weak to see me off.
Calling me when you began to fall….
That rarely heard cry in your voice.
Coming back into your body the final time…
Those last few familiar words.
Fancy lunches, shopping trips, all over too fast.
Seven years of suffering seemed like seventy-seven.
Such thick grief I suppressed for so long.
The firm clasp of your love still encircles me.
Family Pictures
I almost can’t say what that did to me.
I assumed everyone would be included
Even me, the child of the dead sister.
A thirty-two year old stray cat, alert to the call of the family gathering
Rubbing up against those remaining aunts, uncles, and cousins
Encouraged to scoot in on the very edge of the picture
I thought I’d found a new place,
When suddenly I was handed the camera
And told that I would be taking the official Christmas photo.
The one that did not include me.
Two of my cousins confronted my aunt,
“Why can’t Lori be in this picture?”
“Because it’s just our family,” she bluntly replied.
How silly of me to consider myself one of that number.
Desperate for comfort in a brave new world
After seven years of watching my mother die,
That Christmas chill is still with me, even today.
You've been listening to the poetry of Lori Hoevener on the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.
