The Color of Truth

By Susan Meehan

Who wrote these poemsand why? Poetry has always been in Susans writings, filled with emotion, diversity, intensity, and whimsy. It reflects her searches for both her Irish and Jewish heritages, her Quaker involvement, and her love of Washington, DC, where she has lived for more than fifty years. A poli sci major at Wellesley, she edited a book on Irish politics in Boston when in grad school at Boston University. Eventually, she came to DC as an international affairs management interna program at which she met her husband on the first day.

After the riots in DC that followed Rev. Martin Luther Kings death, she stayed in DC, and began to work on black-white relations. At Mayor Marion Barrys request, she became the citys first patient advocate for all DC residents seeking help with their substance abuse problems.

As an urban pioneer, with a husband and two children, she worked with and wrote poetry with some of DCs best poets, including Sterling Brown, Gaston Neal, and Nap Turner. Mayor Barry asked her to write and read one of her poems to over three thousand people at his third inaugural. Poetry helped her become an easily accepted person on both sides of the Anacostia River. At seventy-eight, she remains an enthusiast for DC statehood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524592790

Susan Meehan

Susan Meehan is a New Englander transplanted to the District of Columbia where she became involved in city politics, working in the Mayor’s office. She’s an activist and a writer; and “The Color of Truth” is her debut book of poems. She writes piercing poems about Washington D.C. In this book she also presents a family album of her Irish ancestors; and other poems of observation and introspection. Many writers find out who they are from writing. These poems are a portrait of a woman now in her eighth decade, who knows who she is and shares the fullness of life with her readers.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Susan Meehan.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2017904265

ISBN:                   Hardcover                  978-1-5245-9278-3

                          Softcover                   978-1-5245-9880-8

                         eBook                         978-1-5245-9279-0

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/13/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

755252

Contents

I Family Album

She Could Not Speak in Class at Harvard

Massachusetts Politics was a Closed Door to Me

Great Aunt Nora: Dining with Charles Lindberg

Great Aunt Nora and the Treasure Chest

Minsk Labor Camp: Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog)

One Left - One Stayed

Not Dead

Quelled

1830: Questions of My Great, Great Grandparents, Who Were Horse-thieves

What I Don’t Know

(A Quaker on Long Island’s North Shore grows up cheated.)

Bad Examples, Well-Taught

Ceremonies that Seemed Eternal as a Child and Are No More

Fifty Six Years Together

Who We Are

A Nineteenth Century Man: For My Father’s 100th Birthday

Shields Hardware Store

Greenfields Pharmacy: Summer Childhood Was the Flavor

Main Street Market

Armistice Day: My Father Marched – Age 101

Beauty Itself

Part II Irish Voices

How Could They Let Them Rot?

Alchemy

Civil Wars

Lost in Clare

Seisiun

Divining over an Irish Ordnace Map

Cashel: Irish High Fortress - Cathedral Massacre

Famine

Famine Wall

How Could It Be?

Rosetta Stones

Our Mothers’ Songs

Irish Secrets – From Ourselves Alone

Tir Na n’ Ög

Echoes, Gazing Across Irish Hills

Passing

Upon Seeing a Showing of 19th C. English Cartoons of the Irish

I Wish I Had Known James Michael

Part III DC Blues

The Package

In memory of my friend, Sterling Brown, Poet

Friends – Remembered Grand Finale for My Friend Nap Turner, Bluesman

Red Cap

for my friend Gaston Neal, Poet

Blues Muse Explainin An’ Leavin’ Blues

I’ve Been to Jail

The Last to See His Face: at the DC Morgue

Cleanin’ Up

Done An’ Finished Blues

Candlelight Vigil at a Christmastime Murder 6 pm, 25 Degrees Fahrenheit, Wind 25 m.p.h.

Fuchsia, Brilliant in Ireland, Shrivels in DC

Trash

Part IV Transitions

The Last Page of a Dictionary Terrifies Me

I Think I Might Be Well Equipped to Save the World

Serenity Arrives When It Will

Dissolution

A Half an Hour Can Take Forever

Sometimes Passing a Construction Site

The Queen of Hearts Still Dreams

On the Loss of Your Beloved

Not So Long or Far Away

Skyboat

Metamorphosis in a Time of Trouble

Dream Journey

Nothing but a Shadow

I Could Delay No Longer

In Katrina’s Wake

Coffin Ships

Foul Night Deep within the Hurricane Season

Senior Moment: Alumnae Reunion

London Bombings, July 2005

Newly Engaged – Utterly Alone

Vietnam Memorial Visited Late at Night

Part V The Color of Truth

The Color of Truth

I Need Time to Slide into Quiet

Forever

On Heaven’s Boundaries

Dementia Dreamed: The Unfairness of It All

To Bob

A Craftsman Knows How

As We Are Aging

Baking in Shorthand

Teaching Myself

Quaker Meeting: The Arithmetic Art of Avoidance

A Poem in Praise and Appreciation of Those Whose Hard Work Will Never Be Known

Talisman for Miko

On Knowing the Current Darling

Vetiver Has Power to Save My Flowered Deck, I Am Told

Goddess Day

Envy

What Do the Neighbors Think

Flashing - Poems Break OutAfter They Were Banned

M y father stopped me from writing poems.

I was ready to take the creative writing class

become the poet

but he said he’d take me out of college

for wasting his hard-earned money

if I did,

and so I didn’t write poems for thirty years

until they started bursting through.

Nothing I could do stopped them

and, finding nothing left to fear,

the words