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"Lava Lamp"
by
James McBride
I sit and watch a lava lamp, the prize
My fourth grade son received for reading books:
The Readathon at Roosevelt. He eyes
Me as I gaze, with a puzzled look.
"What are you doing?" "Thinking about you
And lava lamps and all the stuff we would
Have missed if we had not had you."
He nods and leaves, as if he understood.
Indifferent, the viscous spheres rubbing and
Sliding and bumping couple and divide.
Our coupling, neither quiet nor cool, began
Again the chain of life that bides.
The fruit of passion, play, and love and joy—
From love, new love-our dear, dear boy.
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Bed of Roses Love Sonnet Contest Winner
Finalists
In Garrison Keillor's latest book, Lake Wobegon native Margie Krebsbach dreams up the idea of a trip to Rome, hoping to get her husband Carl to make love to her — he's been sleeping across the hall and she has no idea why. She finds a patriotic purpose for the journey. A Lake Wobegon boy, Gussie Norlander, died in the liberation of Rome, 1944, and his grave, according to his elderly brother, Norbert, is in a neglected weed patch near the Colosseum...
It's a story of Wogegonians in a strange land, telling stories of kinship and self-revelation — all delivered with Keillor's trademark humor.
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From Garrison Keillor:
“When I was 16, Helen Fleischman assigned me to memorize Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 29, ‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state’ for English class, and fifty years later, that poem is still in my head. Algebra got washed away, and geometry and most of biology, but those lines about the redemptive power of love in the face of shame are still here behind my eyeballs, more permanent than my own teeth. The sonnet is a durable good. These 77 of mine include sonnets of praise, some erotic, some lamentations, some street sonnets and a 12-sonnet cycle of months. If anything here offends, I beg your pardon, I come in peace, I depart in gratitude.”
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