A native of Vandalia, Illinois, Paul Stroble has a long career as adjunct faculty in history, philosophy, and religion. He has written books, essays, curricular materials, and poetry. Finishing Line Press has published eight of his poetry collections, most recently Four Mile, Galapagos Joy, and East Rock. He joins us remotely from his home.
Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Paul, what poems have you brought for us today?
County Seat
Bicycle tires,
small town birds
singing in neighbors’ trees,
the clang of some inexplicable bell.
Beneath the phone poles,
lined in matched order down Washington Street,
the oak and maple are still
full green shade.
Riding, the boy sees the way
the sidewalks have raised
as neighbors’ trees grew beneath
and pushed upward,
and as he pauses from his hot ride
through undulating streets
he likes the coleus and moss rose
that line the walk of 263 Sixth.
He pedals to the outskirts
where the expired line crosses
St. Louis Street, and he stands in blue
to gaze down the bright right of way.
At the cemetery, folks
have already decorated: kin needful
of flowers, flags. His grandparents
are the lane’s turn have forget-me-nots.
He remembered this as a bored day,
no one around, nothing to do,
when his place became for him always
as the shadow of God’s wings.
----------
Stereoscope
Aunt Friede got eye strain,
the viewer pressed against her face
so often, each image to each eye
and then blending,
that addictive
illusion of depth and dimension.
It’s not that she didn’t love the farm,
plowed by her own father
who died on the front forty,
nor did she long for more of the world
than what she’d seen
and what would have saved to see.
But she fancied traveling the globe
as a stereographer, visiting place after place
from Lincoln’s home
to the Taj Mahal to the Cliffs of Dover
and any place or sight worthy
of a dream’s double image.
---------
Transistor Radio
no music
no Ferlin Huskey
no Patsy or Johnny
or Faron or Buck
just whiteness
in the dark
the boy too worried
to sleep till daylight
turns on his
transistor radio
which he found
under his folks’ car
when they returned
from a day at the zoo
and it became
his, ready with music
in the day and
something to do
when he awoke
too early, listening
for the sign on,
Good morning
and welcome
to WMYB,
home of
country hits
and all the news,
the day’s first
and possibly only
cheerful voice.
---------
Psalm in Snow
Deep snowfall, ten degrees.
Our pastor isn’t sure
whether to cancel church or not.
We’re not sure, either,
no one is, but our neighbor lady
lives for the House of the Lord.
Snow stacks upon the fields of those
who have walked through valleys of shadows,
and Pastor shepherds them.
She perfects her sermon
on goodness and mercy, watches, prays,
makes a snowman with the youth.
Afternoon turns to evening,
the early moonlight is a voice
that is not heard but heard everywhere,
like the calm of the stars,
the timber of the county, hills
and ravines arrayed more than Solomon.
God asks, have you visited
the storehouses of snow,
can you loosen the cords of Orion?
We make angels in white, loved by the one
from whom comes the hoar-frost of heaven,
channels of snow, Christ in cold.
Folks and Pastor phone: let’s try to meet.
You know Miss Audie will come anyway,
and what is snow but still waters?
You've been listening to the poems of Paul Stroble on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.
