Sample Poems by Sybil Pittman Estess
Pretending You Were Joseph
for Sue Collier Daniel, 1941-2005
You could consider your seven fat losses.
You could ponder the long lean years left.
You could count the rest of your exiled life
not double-crossed but an Egyptian-style feast
to be ceremoniously eaten. Too soon past.
You could discover that in any parched season
siblings, nearly forgotten and foreign, might knock
for the food of forgiveness. You could ask:
“In a famine of mercy must everyone fast?”
The Anointment
“Who anointed you?”
psychology books say. “Who
bestowed on you power to do
what you do?” Was it father,
mother, brother, aunt, friend?
Who planted the idea in your head
for you to be you rather than not?
Whoever said it, you are fulfilling
his or her dream. Perhaps anointing
came late—a scout leader, teacher,
another student who took vows with you
to become, someday, a painter or poet.
Maybe a bum you met at a crossroads,
who said something significant.
A builder of houses who chuckled,
“You nail those nails very well!”
You grew into a house constructor.
Or your mom said your cookies seemed
tasty. You beamed, took up cooking
full-time. Now it’s today, closer
to the end of life. Have you ever
once chosen the one you yourself would
choose for your anointment? Which model
would you follow past middle age? Please
remember. Develop a moving screen
of your history, your life. Survey
the whole scene of persons you have
known. Perhaps by sixty, you could
create a new ceremony. Maybe Christ
could do it. Buddha, Mohammed. Imagine
it: the anointer might be yourself. You
could pour the oil into your hands. Then
lift it to your head, allow sticky liquid to run
down your face until the decision blinds
your eyes awhile. You could say to yourself,
“I cherish you, whatever
it is you have chosen. The way you
have decided or had, by necessity,
to choose. Now, here, whatever
it is you happen to be or do,
I call you out.
I bless you.”
Blowing Sand May Exist”
Highway sign near Clovis, New Mexico
All she knew was that grit got in her eye.
Her husband, who was driving, thought
it had been written by a frustrated philosopher.
He came straight home and wrote an essay—
forty pages—on all its possible meanings.
She had been meditating as they whizzed by.
She didn’t even see it. “If it may exist,”
he reasoned, “it also may not.”
We were out on the desert, like life.
We were out where we all need reminders
and signs. And after reading them we think
of heeding. Warned, we wait for the wind.
One Thing It Was
Of course it was animus projection
or neurosis. It was her search for God.
Her Dionysian-lack. A yen to frequent
artists, a weakness for Italian males.
Perhaps just a failure to pray?
Call it recherché du temps perdu
(they were fifty). It was her Dickinsonian
quest for spiritual bliss, a fatal infatuation.
It was her old trick of giving-in-order-
to-receive. Both of their failed bondings
at homes. Unfaithfulness, and guilt, and sin.
Unliberated leanings on the wrong men.
Fascination with fire and butterflies.
But then, after all labeling, fashionable
name-calling, blaming, nit-picking second
guesses, some simple, quite out-moded facts
remain: one thing it was was love.
Esther Decides
She was only a woman, and no more
than his latest wife who was commanded
not to come before him without the grant
he gave away, candy to children.
Although she was beautiful, she had an
inner life she had harrowed a long time.
Often she danced with her soul mates, or she
meditated. Sometimes she prayed. Sometimes
she went to see her shrink. She paid the bills
herself and knew her animus. (Haunted
by the ghost of her lost father, she thought
she slew it every year on his death day,
begged him not to bother her much more.)
But when her cousin called her to act
for her people, for Yahweh, and for herself,
she weighed it on the gauge, as Mary did
one distant day. Then Esther took Spirit,
pumped her lungs with it, breathed seven breaths.
So she walked straight ahead, content to be
a Jew at risk, with good breasts. She wanted
no heaven. She faced him, female to male.
He looked. He decided. But both could live
with themselves a long time after what they said.
Esther alone had caused them to choose. (Now
she tells her dead dad all this as they talk.)