truly a new year, a new century finally begun

PRAISE SONG
FOR THE DAY

Each day we go about

our business,

walking past each other,

catching each others’ eyes

or not,

about to speak

or speaking.

All about us is noise.

All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din,

each one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem,

darning a hole in a uniform,

patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere

with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum

with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky;

A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words,

words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed;

words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone

and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side;

I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe;

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce,

built brick by brick the glittering edifices

they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign;

The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love,

love beyond marital, filial, national.

Love that casts a widening pool of light.

Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,

anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp --

praise song for walking forward in that light.

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

Jan 20, 2009 12:45 ET

i am the laziest girl in the world

BLUES

I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch,
butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.

Sometimes come
dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown,
the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong
of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example,
I did not work at all!

I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.

To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.

To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you
what you have.

There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.

I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V's of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.

Elizabeth Alexander

From Body of Life by Elizabeth Alexander, published by Tia Chucha Press. Copyright © 1996 by Elizabeth Alexander.

all of this by way of saying that i need to start exercising again, and i've run into a wall before i've even begun. i've exercised a lot, intermittently, in the past: running, working out at a gym, lots of walking, even working out with exerciseTV. right now i am simply not motivated at all.

except for the fact that my mother started developing alzheimer's when she was not much older than i am now, and already you'll never know when i'll just forget how to use something, like my answering machine, that i've used a million times before, and plus they say that really the only thing that slows or even stops it is exercise, and it works really well. 1

can you help? please share with me any ideas, suggestions, thoughts, whatever you have that can help me get moving again, and i thank you from my heart. and my brain cells.