Poetry by Ana Marie Boyd

    Billy Bergen CC





Gospel of Rosie


My best friend Rosie loves to bake.

She puts her hair up in a bun and rolls up her sleeves,

and whatever she makes, she makes at least two dozen.

She says she only does things all the way.

It's all about the investment.

It's with-rolled-up-sleeves, or not at all, she says.


She hand-delivers plates to loved ones

on Sunday afternoon dinners,

cascades through rooms like wheels live on the bottoms of her feet.

In and out she flies from kitchen to living room

with cups and plates in her hands and balanced on arms

because part of loving

is serving

and every time she hands you a silver spoon

to eat your ice cream with she is actually

remembering everything her grandmother ever taught her

about love.


My Rosie loves Italian wine paired with Manchego.

She pairs it with a rich Tempranillo,

she can tell you why they're good together.

Sometimes I call her from the market and I say,

“Rosie, I'm at Capellas. I am buying wine to go with Manchego Fresco.

What kind should I get?"

She laughs and I fall in love with our friendship again, for the seven thousandth time.

"Get the Tempranillo, Crazy," she says to me with all the confidence in the world.

She laughs because she thinks that my phone call from the grocery store

is what I consider "an emergency,"

but the truth is, I remembered what kind of wine to get before I called.

I just wanted to hear Rosie's voice.

She taught me the beauty of a ritual, and now I can't get enough of them.


My Rosie brushed and french-braided my hair on my birthday last year,

had me sit down in front of her cross-legged as she sat stooped up above me

on the chair.

This was the position of Saturday evenings with my grandmother as a child.

I always stared straight ahead, head perfectly still,

but I could feel her through her hands.

It was more than enough.

The truth is, I'm not sure I've ever felt closer to another person than on those nights

when I sat in front of my grandmother, wordless.


My Rosie who brushes my hair,

drives to hospitals at night,

sometimes after our phone conversation where she tells me

about the Manchego and the rich Tempranillo.

I guess it's a testament to the fact that we can be

two things at once.

I guess it’s a testament to the fact that

we do it all the time. 

She doesn't tell anyone about the hospitals. She doesn’t even tell me.

According to her she goes for the warmth of their blankets,

but she told me later that ever since she was diagnosed with a chronic illness

she's  afraid that she's dying

and she just needs somebody to tell her that she's not.

Yeah, I think that's how it started, the more I think about my Rosie the more I think it started small,

a need for reassurance one cold night, a touch on the arm from a stranger

in a white coat with credentials

and eyes that have special powers to see inside bodies.

I think she started thinking that every time she got afraid, she could go

to the men in white coats with super-power-eyes, the ones who walk into the room after the

ones who hand you super-power-blankets

and she could be pronounced "suitable for a normal life."


It's almost like a production, you wait for the curtain to open and

the white coat man to enter.

She told me that she has sat for hours before watching feet walk back and forth

underneath hospital curtains, studying shoes and the way people step: 

some quickly, haphazardly, gently, carelessly, lazily,

Lovingly.

When the white coat man entered,

he counted Rosie’s heartbeats,

he listened to her lungs,

he pressed down on various parts of her body,

"You

aren't

dying,"

he  announced,

and every time he said it it may as well have been a speech from the president

for how prolific it sounded to her ears.

And when she left that night,

her shoes

were the hopeful ones.


She asked me once,

"Does anybody else ever wish that

the white coat man

was your father?

Has anyone ever thought it?"

My Rosie told me once that her father

used to close all the blinds in the house, shut every window tight.

Some nights when he hadn't taken his medicine

he would make her push all the furniture in front of every entrance and exit to the house.

He said they couldn't leave.


He said they mustn't talk or they might hear us

and she never knew who they were

but only that she loved them, all of them.

Why?

Because he did.

So they pushed lazy boy chairs, dressers, end-tables in front of the front door.

When people kept asking her why on earth she would have done that

the only answer that she could think of to explain it was:

because he makes the best omelette on Saturday mornings,

or,

because his smile is warm like the sun.

I guess it's a testament to the fact that we can be two things at once.

I guess it's a testament to the fact that we do it all the time. 


So, he made her barricade the world out

and crouch down alongside him next to the door

until the rustling of people subsided

When my Rosie got older, she spotted postmen from far away and watched them push their mail carts down sidewalks,

and door-to-door salesmen,

and women who planted flowers in yards on bended knee as though in prayer,

they were the Amen women, they were the Oh Mercy Me! women.

They were the people who mowed their lawns, and well, pretty much everyone else who walked outside.
She waves at them.

That's my Rosie. Sometimes she can’t stop looking, and waving.

I think it's why she loves people as much as she does.

I think it's because she loved them long before she ever knew them.

She stared at them through secret openings and tiny crevices within boarded up houses

and, well, you could spend a lot of time gathering up your love in a place like that.

It's with-rolled-up-sleeves, or not at all, she says.


I go around now telling people about my Rosie.

I go around telling them about duality

and how we all stand so close to our own edges

and I write stanzas of poetry that are mostly about the good things that Rosie does

because the world is full of people who become addicted to something

and sometimes the thing they become addicted to, is a thought,

and it doesn't erase their Love. Or their omelettes. 

In fact, sometimes,

it just makes all of it so much stronger.

And what I try to do now, is point out the Gospel of 

All The Other Things They Do That Matter.


So here goes:

My Rosie loves to bake. She's beyond her years in the art of shortbread-making.

She is the only woman, besides my grandmother,
​
who has ever attempted to brush my hair

and see it through to the end.

She is a connoisseur of cheese and wine and

is resourceful enough,

even in the depths of her compulsion,

to see the beauty in the tops of people's sneakers.

Lovingly, life-changingly:  those are yours, my Rosie.

Your sneakers are the loving ones





This Is How I Tend, A Poem for Community


When we commit to a practice

we make it a habit

I’ve learned so many ways

to pray / 

This is how I tend 


Like walking at the same time

every day, for instance, 

and passing the same Apostle Plant
 
on 27th Street

It knows my name,

I know its name

We bow to one another /

This is how I tend 


Repetition doesn’t broadcast its notoriety

and it might not tell you because it's humble

but it secretly heals:

holds our tears

kneels next to them 

makes them tea with honey /

This is how I tend 


We listen 

not with words

but with the ability to 

live inside    a pause

to build a nest 

so that you can rest

a nest, soft like feathers 

so that you will have a place to land

that maybe looks like my eyes,

my voice, my breathing, 

all simply vehicles 

that we lend 

that we offer 

for communion / 

This is how we tend 


and I am trying to take my ego out of it

so that I can simply be part of the frame  

like landscape: like a trellis

that you will remember quietly standing there 

when you look back some day 

because I don’t need to relate 

or even understand 

in order to be a witness /

This is how I tend 


Your emotion

is not weakness

It is majestic 

like the ocean 

It has seen every kind of weather 

and people still visit it

because it is: 

alchemy, chemistry,

awakening, resonance

and we need it 

to live. /

This is how I tend


You waited with me

in the pandemic

as we grieved the loss of

the Theater of Love

the loss of

tactile costume gloves

and stage managing light

that reflects off of faces,

and the excited energy bouncing off walls

before the show,

the trays of cakes and brownies 

We always cherish that part, you and I 

When we feed you it means we love you /

This is how we tend 


It wasn’t an obligation

but our truest inclination

my deepest intention

to listen / without solving 

This is how I tend 


We water 

the garden

so that we can see it

blossom

We nurture

the fire

so that we can feel

its warmth


We tend

We connect 

We care

We shepherd

We hold space

collectively

We gather with other beings 

with patience and in genuflection 


We bless

We pray

We seek 

We listen 

We grow 

We look after 

We watch over /

This is how we tend 


We didn’t know 

that the caregiving

from our own hands

could heal wounds

That the care from another’s hands

could heal ours

It happened when we weren't looking 

Transformation is quiet, like grass swaying /

This is how we tend


It was presence

that has shifted my position in this world

It is connection

that nourishes 

us back to health /
​
This is how we tend 




Ana Marie Boyd is a poet, writer, and educator who lives in Eugene, Oregon. A graduate of the University of Oregon, she studied English literature, psychology, and world religions. Raised in a multiracial and multigenerational home, her writing seeks to explore themes around family heritage, personal identity, pandemic loss, grief/trauma, spirituality, and reckoning.
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