Category Archives: Poetry

Is Easter’s coming?

Posted on by
Reply

After receiving this today I called Steve suspecting depression. “Hi, Steve. Your stuff’s been really dark lately. Are you depressed?” “No! Why?” said Steve with a chuckle. “Not at all. Pay attention to the last line. I CAPITALIZED Easter.”

miserable days

these days cold rain falls on faces
looking for the season’s changing
…
birds are silent somewhere hiding
winds whip trees no buds are showing
…
bulbs are prisoned in their places
beneath clods slowly rotting

floods have drowned all springlike traces
dark clouds keep the sun from shining
…
graves are closed is Easter coming

– steve shoemaker, urbana, il, feb. 26, 2013

What did you ASK in school today?

Posted on by
6

Another Verse by Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL Feb. 23, 2013

Verse — Learning
(With thanks to Ellis Cowling)

What did you learn in school today?
…is not the best question.
Ask your kids instead:
Did you ASK any good questions
in school today?
What puzzled you?
What did you explore today?
Did you solve any mysteries?
Was there something that made you
laugh today?
Did you say or write something that
helped others laugh?
What did you do today that was kind?
Today, did you help another learn?
What can you teach me right now?

fear of dying

Posted on by
Reply

fear of dying

the umbrella is gone
…
with my mother’s death
a year ago
i am the oldest
in the family
…
slowness
stoopedness
sickness
forgetting
falling
all remind me
of my age
…
i visit doctors
more than friends
…
faith is far away
fear is near

[stoopedness–yes]

-Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 23, 2013

To my dying dog

Posted on by
Reply

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 24, 2012

You are only two years old…
We still call you “Puppy,” and
Ears prick up, head turns, eyes lift
Even though your muscles hurt.

60 pounds now, full grown…before
Lupus hit, your tail would raise,
On alert. You’d blaze beside
Bicycles, runners, all safe–

Fenced out. Now you move slowly
Just to lie by my chair. The
Medicines seem worse than the
Damn disease: no energy,

Appetite gone, eyes dull. We
Hope, see more vets, but each day
Lose ground. If I were the sick
One, I’d raise hell, but you stick

By my side in spite of pills,
Shots, eye drops and smelly salves.
Soon we must decide: mercy?
Even more bad medicine?

Soon we will both be put down.

Verse – Collie

Posted on by
2

We bought our collie puppy from a farm
about two hours drive away. We’d read
a lot about the woman breeder from
the Internet, saw pictures of the stud,
the dam, and former Champions. A pet
was all we wanted, but a pure-bred dog
was beautiful as well. Good temperament
was guaranteed. The pup we chose grew big
and sweet by nine months, but at just a year
was very sick from a genetic flaw.
The vets had salves and drops and pills that wore
us out (and cost as much a month as food.)
The breeder never bred the pair again,
and Blazer has become our greatest friend…

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 21, 2013

The Promise of a Storm

Posted on by
Reply

There is a warning whisper in the wind.
The birds have heard and gather on a wire
to watch. My old ears cannot hear much sound
without my aids. I search and finally find
new batteries: the wind becomes a roar!
I quickly dial them down from music to
a conversation: whistles, whines and more
now wind around our house. The clouds race to
go there from here, and here from there. I see
the colors change from white to grey. The snow
begins to fall and white returns in swirls. The ice
forms on the twigs–the trees begin to know
they’re in a struggle with the wind. They try
to bend, and hope the promise was a lie.

– Verse “The Promise of a Storm” – Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 22, 2013

It takes one

Posted on by
Reply

Click HERE to read “It takes one” – a poem sent to Views from the Edge today from nuclear-free New Zealand by David Earle in response to “The Home of the Scared and the Land of the Tyrannized.”

It all begins with one.

Ashes

Posted on by
Reply

On our campus the Priests go where
the students are, so ashes were
imposed right on the Quad as Lent
began. Fat Tuesday was last night,
…
and at the bars we danced and drank
and some hooked-up, so that we stank
of booze and sweat (and worse) if we
slept through our shower-time. Did we
…
imagine penance washed our souls
clean after pushing homeless men
aside on our way home? Or that
…
the school kids we ignored were fools
beyond all help? Forget that when
we failed third grade, some set us right?
…
Perhaps the filthy cross we see
in mirrors all day above our eyes
shows hearts we seldom recognize.

– A Verse by Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, Illinois, Feb. 20, 2013.

NOTE: The university is the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana
where Steve still walks the mall after many years as a campus
minister with The McKinley Church and Foundation and as Executive
Director of the Campus Y.

Loneliness and Love

Video

Reply

George Matheson wrote this hymn. Matheson (1842-1906) was one of Scotland’s great preachers. Most people didn’t know that he was blind. When the sister on whom he had depended to be his eyes and his companion was married, he was left alone to fend for himself. He wrote “O love that wilt not let me go” the night he had “celebrated” the joy of her new life. The rendition in the video captures the emotion and the faith of the hymn-writer, whose faith and poetry still encourage later generations in times of personal loss and loneliness.

Breaking the fast

Posted on by
Reply

Another versified look into the private life of Steve Shoemaker:

“What I Carry from the Kitchen Each Morning”

–2 boxes of cereal under my left arm
–1 large glass glass between 2 fingers & thumb of left hand
–1 gallon of 2% milk by the handle with remaining 2 fingers of that hand
–With my right hand, 1 bowl containing a spoon & 4 pills
on a plate with a table-knife balanced precariously on the edge
–1 piece of buttered toast atop the bowl
–a jar of red raspberry preserves clutched between right forearm & where my waist used to be
–An eagerness to break my fast

Steve: Sounds like you’re pretty well-waisted even before you break the fast. Maybe a sequel verse for full-disclosure…about the rest of the meal – the stack of pancakes or the waffles, the half-pound of bacon, the maple syrup, the butter, and the three-cheese omelet.