This is poetry moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
Thanksgiving Day turns into Black Friday, which leads to today, Cyber Monday. “Hurry, hurry; worry, worry,” society seems to demand. In contrast, today’s poem, “Tuesday Morning” by Sharon Fagan McDermott, lifts us out of anxiety and returns us to thanksgiving. The poem takes place during the pandemic, the author lonely and separated from her ill mother and large family. As she explains, writing the poem “helped me to re-imagine my situation from simmering worries into gratitude for the small beauties that were still in my everyday life.”
Sharon Fagan McDermott is a Pittsburgh-based poet and writer with four collections of poetry, most recently Life Without Furniture (2018). Her book of essays, Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life, co-written with M.C. Benner Dixon (University of Michigan Press, 2023) was recently named a “Best Book for Writers” by Poets and Writers Magazine.
Let’s face it. The world can be a chaotic, stressful, and lonely place. As poet Sharon Fagan McDermott puts it, it also can be “a place without care.” How even more important, then, are small reminders of beauty: a neighborly greeting, flowering dogwoods, a light rain, a Tuesday morning walk with your dog.
Here’s “Tuesday Morning” by Sharon Fagan McDermott
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Blue truck’s driving too fast up Cromwell,
the brick road around the corner from my house.
6:20 AM and he’s all reckless disarray, blows through
the stop sign. I’m glad the two little backpack boys
aren’t up and walking to school yet.
It doesn’t take much to set my teeth on edge anymore.
This world’s a careless place, a place without care
more often than I’d like. But on the next block,
Yvonne who owns the local florist shop steps into
her flowered van and smiles. I say, You’re up early.
Love my work! she shoots back, without a trace
of irony. So now my mind is turned back to all
the flowering—dogwoods, pink and cream,
mixing petals with light rain. Much of this year,
I felt broken, sewn up, unsure of what holds
a soul together, unsure of what binds us
to grace or strength in order to move forward.
It’s Tuesday morning in the rain. Each brick
on the brick houses I pass shimmers dawn.
My beautiful dog will need toweling
when we get home. On a neighbor's stoop
I’m startled by the sight of two white cats.
I name one Chaos. I name one Serenity.
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Originally published in Gyroscope Review.
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That was “Tuesday Morning” by Sharon Fagan McDermott. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
