Anticipation

By Marguerite Thoburn Watkins

Anticipation is a book of poetry which, while touching on Marguerite Watkins upbringing in India, for the most part is inspired by her life as an adult in America and by her mothers family stories. Her first book of poetry, Patterns in Henna, contained poems about her memories as the daughter of missionary parents in India and she has also written a memoir, Two Taproots, Growing Up in the Forties in India and America. The poems in this book deal with the next part of her life.

The author has arranged her poetry into five sections. Section I deals with attitudes towards possessions things that are more than things. II is about family, especially her mothers New England relatives since Patterns in Henna has poems inspired by her fathers life. In III we hear other voices and see other places, including the authors impressions when traveling. IV describes the circle of the Virginia seasons and includes several poems about hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The poetry in V is more contemplative. The author is older now, more mellow, and comes full circle in her thoughts about life.

Instead of describing them the author has chosen to share a sample poem from each of the five sections.

Section I

The Owl in the Christmas Tree

As I crept down the stairs
to plug in the Christmas lights
before the children came down,
two wide topaz eyes stared out
from the tip of the cedar,
a small owl barred brown and white
with talons gripping the star.

I woke the children, Look,
I breathed, .look,
he must have come down the chimney.
See the flakes of soot on the hearth.
We opened the door
and nudged him with a rake
until reluctantly he flew into an oak.

These are the things you live for --
not designer-wrapped gifts,
the year-end bonus, the red velvet dress,
but a moment of wonder,
of surfeit
rose-breasted grosbeaks eating holly berries,
wind rich with the spice of wild azaleas,
full moon through river mist --
the owl in the Christmas tree.

Section II
Aisle Eight, Cat Food

My father stands by the cat food display
each Monday.
Carefully dressed in suit and tie,
he brightens when shoppers stop their carts,
gravely gives tips to serious ones
who spend a long time reading labels,
pondering choices,
sardine or shrimp, whitefish or chicken,
flaked or smothered in gravy,
a difficult choice, the menu
for a true patrician.

I had a cat, he shyly offers, Premi;
it means beloved one.
He slept at the foot of my bed,
and sat on the table to drink the milk
out of my cereal bowl.
No cats at the retirement home, the lady said,
but Premi died beforehand.
He was old too, you know,
and lame. Premi was a great hunter in his prime,
stalking a squirrel or chipmunk like a cheetah.
He was that fast!
His favorites were the Nine Lives tuna
and Whiskas chicken in sauce.

Three aisles over, Mother
selects Campbell's tomato soup for his lunch,
cornmeal muffins, sliced Velveeta, applesauce.
Where's the old gentleman,
the stock boy asks.

He'll be waiting in pet food, aisle eight,
hoping for someone to come by
who likes to talk about cats.

Section III

Camelopard

Giraffe, you regard existence
through your fringed Cleopatra eyes.
With Modigliani neck neither stretched nor strained,
your velvet lips select
new growth at the top of an acacia tree,
leaf buds tight and tender as fiddle-heads,
a connoisseur, the gourmand
samp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465335609

Marguerite Thoburn Watkins

Marguerite Thoburn Watkins was born and attended boarding school in the Uttarkund foothills of the Himalayas. She spent her childhood in the mountains and in Jabalpur in Central India, except for a time during World War II in the United States. She has lived most of her adult life in Lynchburg, Virginia, near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her prose and poetry have appeared in anthologies and journals and she has two other books published by Xlibris: a memoir, Two Taproots, Growing Up in the Forties in India and America and a book of India poetry, Patterns in Henna.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Marguerite Thoburn Watkins.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4653-3559-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-3560-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Sleeping Porch

I Things That Are More Than Things

Friend

Things That Are More Than Things

The Carved Kashmiri Table

Precisely You—My Portrait in the Great Room

Collections

The Stirring Spoon

The Quarter Plate

Scrapbook Cookbook

A Perfect Recipe

Throwing Away Coffee Grounds

The Flowered China Teapot

The Ice Cream Bowl

A Tinker’s Dam

The Crocheted Spread

The Maple Bedstead

The Red Shawl

My Flannel Bathrobe

Boxes

The Owl in the Christmas Tree

II Sense Of Touch

Beech Leaves

Maiden Names

Goiter

The Green Chair

Hartford Summer 1942

Tasting Summer at the Farm

Recipes for Late Summer

Greenwood Cemetery

Good Luck Clover

Aisle Eight, Cat Food

Sense of Touch

The White Pine

Churchyard Oak

Because

The woman who saved string

Empty Nest

Pick Your Own

Nobody Likes a Complainer

Corners (My Mother-in-law Talks About Summers In the Valley)

III The Clock On The Pavement

Camelopard

Ceilings

The Clock on the Pavement

Gondolas in the Late Afternoon

Under an Awning on the Isle of Murano, Looking Out at the Bay, Venice

First Snow

A Branch of Apple Blossoms

Eve in Eden

Jezebel

Flying

Fog on the Outer Banks

Hazelnuts

Drought at Prettyboy Reservoir

Pear Trees

Limone

Emerald Isle

Emerald Isle II.

Kelp Covered Rocks—

Woman with Cat

Shrovely

The Recession

Too Much

Quarrel

IV Locust Spring

Snowstorm

January Sunrise

Bobblet to Bearwallow, Appalachian Trail

Snowbound

Late February Morning

Courtship

Out of Season

April Moon

Locust Spring

Black Snake Under the Porch

A Golden Spring

Showy Orchis

A Summer Study in Yellow—

Bee Piping

Bambi

Imagine

Young Buck

Sitting by a Mountain Stream on a Hot Summer Morning

Apple Orchard Falls

Once Again I Missed the Eclipse

Sheppe Pond

Waking at Seven on a Chilly October Morning

Hickory Leaves

Naming Names

Horse Pasture

Rainy November Morning on Fox Hill Road

Harkening Hill

Long Night Moon

Metaphor

Watching Moonlight as I Sleep

V House Of Air

Roots

Wakefulness

The Best Time

Toadshade Trillium

Negative Space

Mao in Heaven

Gideon and the Angel

House of Air

Bitter Berries

Words, Words

These Days

Anticipation

I Find a Card for our Fifty-third Anniversary

Red Umbrella in the Rain

Almost Rain

If it were not for . . .

In Bad Light

For

Gordon,

my husband of fifty-six years

and

our children,

Carol, Stanley, Kathryn, and Gordon

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my husband for his photography, but more than that, his encouragement, to Judith Minty, my poetry mentor, and to writing friends Naomi Caldwell, Judy Gager, and Kay Gantt who have steadfastly critiqued my writing through the years.

Thank you to the editors of the following publications in which poems have previously appeared: Smartish Pace, The Reach of Song, Waterworks Poems Inspired by the Water Marks Exhibition at the Maier Museum of Art, the MPS Mini-Festival Journal, The Anthology of New England Poets 2000 and Pegasus.

I also acknowledge the recognition and awards given to many of these poems by the Poetry Society of Virginia, the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, Poets and Patrons, The Massachusetts State Poetry Society, Kentucky State Poetry Society, Green River Writers, the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, Ohio Poetry Day, Helen Street Memorial, The Georgia Poetry Society and Life Press.

While many of these poems are memoir, in others I have taken poetic license, expanding on ideas and embarking on flights of fancy. Therefore I have usually changed names except for those of family members

I appreciate the NFSPS judge’s comments about Quarrel—"!st Prize—This is a powerful, well-crafted poem that uses unique language, prosody, and evocative, fresh imagery to tell the story. Sensory data and tension of opposites (air not white with hail/petals gently spiraling) work beautifully to create epiphany. Emotion is understated, imbedded in the images and the music of the language—a marvel. Good writing.

Preface

Sleeping Porch

Safe in a chrysalis of blankets

I listened to the drum of rain on the tin roof

of the sleeping porch in the mountains

and tried to pray as the preacher said I should,

but gave it up for they were his words, not mine,

immersing myself instead in percussion thunder

and the flashes that back-lighted silver oaks

and swaying red vines.

Nights on the sleeping porch

those wild late summer storms composed my stanzas

punctuated by soughing gusts of wind

that blew fine mist through the screen,

glazing tendrils of hair,

until I bored down

deep into the cave of covers.

The calico cat crawled under too

and, purring like a boiling teakettle,

she warmed me and I warmed her.

It was long before I put words on paper,

before I froze feelings into language,

when they were fresh and real instead of

second hand.

I

Things That Are More

Than Things

Friend

A good woman, says the good book,

is more precious than rubies.

A friend is more precious than a ruby.

The friend of the road is an opal

changing in the light,

persisting perhaps for decades

to crack suddenly at a wayward blow,

to chip like my fire opal.

The ruby on my right ring finger

never scars,

impervious to misadventures of the years.

The stone has outlasted several settings,

as has our affection,

its foundation bedrock,

a mutual engagement of the heart.

Things That Are More Than Things

I look at my possessions,

things that are more than things,