Saturday, December 25, 2010

Poem: Christmas in Norway; Nora, Sacajawea; *I'd* like to slam a door


Last year, walking uptown from the Village, those small lakes curbside as snow melts. That woman and I laughed at our efforts. If it were her and me, our silly kind, finding our way to Oregon, would western expansion mean decimation? Too heavy for Christmas Day?  Take what you want. Be joyous. Slam a door. Change the world. (And though I know you know this, Torvald was Nora's husband in Ibsen's A Doll's House.) Thanks to the gang at Delirious Hem for their advent calendar o' poems.

Christmas in Norway


Nora the door-slammer
knows every ridge of
Torvald's thumb.
A regular Sacajawea
is she, tracking
her way from out under.

Ahead a few steps,
a thoroughly nice woman,
thoroughly my age
calls watch outs for cars
and slush. Thank you, Sacajawea.
She laughs. How many years
since I heard Sacajawea,
Lewis and Clark, Torvald.
I'm not well-researched.

I'm lazy.

What I know for sure is old.
Ibsen wrote a great scene
and I have a decent hold on
western culture against
much of which
I'd like to slam a door.

Little's known of
Sacajawea's life after Lewis and
Clark opened up the west,
so rich in natural assets.

_______________
Sarah Sarai, published in Delirious Hem's 2010 Advent Calendar, December 24 Poem 'Plosion

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