What We Take With Us
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About this ebook
Through the prisms of love and loss, memory, individual narratives, and the natural world, this collection of poems celebrates the bounty of life—ordinary human experience as an act of discovery. Our daily encounters with the world, universal and particular, are what breathe life into us—what we take with us and ultimately leave behind. The poems examine the common landmarks of our lives, “the careful threads that hold us together,” joy and suffering, passions and disappointments, the search for identity, complexities of nature, growth and decline, the paradoxes of reality. Meaningful gifts abound in the small and often astonishing details which serve to define the human condition.
Susan Dworski Nusbaum
Born in Rochester, NY, Susan Dworski Nusbaum received her BA from Smith College and her law degree from the University of Buffalo Law School. She lives in Buffalo, N.Y., where she has worked as a teacher, arts administrator, and most recently as a criminal prosecutor. She has been a frequent participant in the Chautauqua Institution Writers’ Festival and Chautauqua Writers’ Center poetry workshops, and has served on the Board of the Chautauqua Literary Arts Friends. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Connecticut Review, Poetry East, Nimrod International Journal, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Chautauqua, Harpur Palate, Wisconsin Review, The Sow’s Ear, Earth’s Daughters, Artvoice, and The Buffalo News. Her manuscript, What We Take With Us was a finalist in the 2014 Brittingham/Pollack Prize Competition, University of Wisconsin Press.
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Book preview
What We Take With Us - Susan Dworski Nusbaum
What We Take With Us
Poems
by:
Susan Dworski Nusbaum
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Coffeetown Press
PO Box 70515
Seattle, WA 98127
For more information go to: www.coffeetownpress.com
www.susandworskinusbaum.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Excerpt from Section #10 of Nights and Days of 2007: Autumn,
from A Map of the Lost World, by Rick Hilles, © 2012. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press
Cover Painting: Near the Water,
by Susan Copley
Cover Design: Sabrina Sun
What We Take With Us
Copyright © 2014 by Susan Dworski Nusbaum
ISBN: 978-1-60381-233-7 (Trade Paper)
ISBN: 978-1-60381-234-4 (eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014936691
Produced in the United States of America
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
* * * * *
The following poems have also appeared in the publications listed below:
Living Alone
The Connecticut Review
Departures
The Chautauqua Literary Journal
Shore, Mountain
Chautauqua
Learning the Language
Harpur Palate
Psalm
Salt
Nimrod International Literary Review
Grace
Poetry East
The Back Stairs
The Sow’s Ear
Ingathering
Wisconsin Review
For my children and grandchildren
***
To the memory of
Ruth and William Dworski
Sanford Nusbaum
Ronald VanBlargan
***
I am grateful for the guidance, encouragement and friendship of Ansie Baird,
Phyllis Hatfield, Philip Terman, Diana Hume-George, and The Writers’ Center of the Chautauqua Institution
1
Psalm
Without a word, you did this for me:
gathered my whites, my darks,
spot-cleaned my green sweater, sorted
my underpants, underwire bras, nightgown,
separated out the gray-soled gym socks,
removing crumpled tissues from my black jeans,
turning them inside out, set aside my red blouse
with the pearl buttons for special attention.
All the while I wrote poems upstairs
listening to the whoosh of hot water,
the tumbling of snaps and zippers,
heard you shake out the wrinkles,
your wedding band clinking on the folding table
as you straightened my shoulders, buttoned my fronts,
felt for dampness, tenderly pressing cottons and silks
with your dry hands, as the scent of cleanliness
released from the dryer drifted up the steps.
You let me be; my throat catches in gratitude—
my things laid out on our bed, folded square,
crotches tucked, cups nestled inside one another,
bleached soles matched in pairs