Robin Chapman
Life in this female body necessarily contributes--its frissons and joys, childbirth, mothering, and menopause, strengths and aging; and the viscissitudes of life as a woman in the sciences, beginning research and teaching on children's language learning in the 1960s when there were very few of us in academia; and the simultaneous expectations, in the long-ago media, for young women as objects of desire, or service as housewives; learning, in life and my poetry, to use everything, body and mind, emotion and logic.
Spa Day in Wisconsin
Cashing in my gift certificate before it expires,
I abandon wrapping presents for the Beltline
in light snow, a sister city, to be treated by Jackie
(both of us discreetly recovering from colds)
to an hour of hot oil massage with hot river rocks,
accompanied by the plink of harp water music,
revealing the knots in my neck and back, ending
with meditation in the relaxation room and a glass
of cold water, followed by an hour and a half
escorted to a vibrating chair set to low wave,
with my feet soaking in hot tub jets of suds
while Marsha sands the rough parts off and trims
and buffs my toenails, treats my calves to raspberry
sugar syrup exfoliation (I’m remembering now
there was no time for breakfast) followed by
cucumber and avocado cream mask and heat
and massage for my calves, making my feet
reluctant to leave for the rough socks and fur boots
fitted with slip-on YakTrax wire traction devices
that carry me out to the lobby where, seated
at the table for two hours of manicure, I watch
the traffic crawling by, the swirling flakes
falling fast now, as Connie soaks, clips cuticles,
massages my hands, trims and files, strokes
layer after layer of enamel onto my nails,
telling me about her 17 foot Christmas tree,
20-foot ceiling, acre yard, and postponed-till-
January root canal, and the hot lava rocks are distant
now, the clock is racing, the storm descending
as I sit in my coat and hat, prepaid, keys
at the ready, waiting for nail varnish to dry,
warned to touch nothing—released to scrape
ice off the windows bare-handed, drive home
at 5 below, slow in the fast lane, loose and warm,
full of gratitude, shivering and cursing.
Canoeing the Bark River
-for Jim Martyn
You can still paddle, we can help lift the canoe,
though none of us can pronounce
the name your doctors gave you for your disease,
Lou Gehrig’s too, that shakes your hand,
ripples muscles, nerves dying back to the look
of winter-stripped trees, and so we waste
no time finding the river, tie up for lunch
under the silver maple canopy, watch
the light above us turning into smoke—or, no,
it’s the sun reflected from the rippling
water, sending light over the shaking undersides
of the silver leaves as wind rustles them;
the birds sing back and forth under the canopy
of green, flashing from sunlight to shade,
redstart, vireo, cardinal, crow—and, in the dead
willow branches, a flock of swallows
dart and flash—there is a whole summer left to drift
over purple water, under green canopies,
through the sweet, harsh voices of this world,
the slow distant barking of geese or dogs,
and the steady shaking of the light that, yes,
could be smoke, or haze.
Robin Chapman is author of five chapbooks and six books of poetry, most recently Smoke and Strong Whiskey from WordTech Editors and Abundance, winner of the Cider Press Editors' Book Award. Her books have won two Posner Poetry Awards and the Wisconsin Library Association's award for outstanding book of poems. Her poems have appeared recently or will appear in Babel Fruit, Qarrtsiluni, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, and Spillway. Recipient of three Wisconsin Arts Board Awards, including a Literary Fellowship, and residencies at Banff Centre for the Arts Leighton Studios and the Vermont Studio Center, she has collaborated with visual artists and photographers. and co-founded the traveling Epidemic Peace Imagery exhibit. Her poems have been set to music by composers Sara Scott Turner, Joseph Dangerfield, and Stephen Paulus. She posts fellow/sister poets' work with her watercolors on Robin Chapman's Poem a Day Blog. She co-edited the anthology On Retirement: 75 Poems (University of Iowa Press) and has a second anthology in press. 84 Over 60: Women Poets on Love (Mayapple Press).