A Selection of Poetry by James Langlas

The following poems were published in Spoon River Quarterly:

About Words

Since youth I have hoped to hear it—

Music, shifting in the trees,

Through the trees,

Like wind across the lake.

Some old men can find the words

To say they’ve heard it—but

Even the wordless ones, sometimes

Especially the wordless ones,

Know it’s there when they push

Their boats out in the morning

And the ribbed, carved sand

Is made smooth by the tiny waves

That correct everything

Beneath their feet.

A Broken Branch

I can see it now. Some boy

had a few minutes after closing

a school book in the quiet

of his room, there with the light

in the upstairs window.

Darkness was closing its hands

around the throat of day.

He needed the feeling one more time,

the sensation of being surrounded

by the light air at the top,

the satisfaction of touching

the black bark, the breath separating

this world and the next.

The Secret of Gardening

The neighbors saw us out in the back yard

in the early mornings,

our hands working the soil,

scooping then watering,

the drops from the hose trickling

over the youthful plants

that reached for something

we knew might not be there.

Strange how we kept knocking

against each other like clods,

trying to make things right,

giving it our feeble best

to take a single breath,

or make one movement,

to show that we belonged together

because everyone else believed it.

And so what finally made the difference?

Did we catch ourselves up to our wrists

in the moist earth and feel

the insulation rubbing

against the insulation and see

the effortlessness paying off

in an unspoken, perfect way?

Or did we reach for the roots deliberately,

gripping something substantial

we had been a part of all along?

August

We sit in odd positions now,

on the front step or

behind the screen,

rocking in the uneven shade,

watching the blades

of grass turn against

themselves,

some of them

folded tightly, creased

as if by a gardener’s hand,

the others

lying flat, pressed

beneath the children’s feet,

there

where a private path

leads into the womb

of the seasons,

into the trees where

the laughter is.

The Way We Grow Older

You believe you have closed the last door,

wrapped the final gift and placed it

on the doorstep before leaving town.

Your bags have been packed for some time,

socks together, underwear stacked,

shoes stuffed with money.

Plans are written down.

In the final minutes, everything slides

around the corner and comes to rest,

heaped along the curb.

Then one evening the car won’t start.

You have always slept on your left side,

and suddenly you are on your back

in the morning. The man mowing

the neighbor’s lawn develops a limp,

his shirt sleeves torn at the elbows,

revealing the truth about work,

the dangerously sharp edges of method.

The angle of the hill behind your new house

has gotten steeper.

It isn’t until Labor Day

during some uneventful year

that you claim to have discovered

a better way to grill the steaks out back.

In November you tell your wife

that the wood in the fireplace

must burn just so if it is going

to last the evening.

Your daughter decides to quit

playing the piano forever.

When you notice that the debris

outside the door

has been disturbed by the wind,

been mixed really, a single pile now

with a rounded shape at the top,

you hope that the family house

is still standing, that the tree fort

in the oak will be able to bear your weight,

that someone has been watering the flowers

all along. 

The following poem was published in Cutbank:

Becoming a Miser

Suddenly the world stops turning.

And every crack in the ground collapses

within itself. Tiny pieces of bark fall

from the trunks of trees, tumbling

upon each other at odd angles,

causing the birds overhead to circle

again, look out of one eye,

and fly toward something secure,

an old nesting place

or the sturdy branch above

the river, where the wind

is always from the east.

It is this way with so much.

My mother used to speak of an uncle

who wore only one pair of suspenders,

the same pair to work and to church,

who drove his sputtering truck

on empty, for miles,

to sell his dead wife’s shoes.

And there was the lady down the block

who had keys for everything:

the garage, the cupboards,

the heavy drawers in her dresser.

In the end she couldn’t escape

from her own house.

The smoke had crept up

from the basement and turned the locks

inside out

while she slept.

You, too, have seen it all happen,

the smallest things turning on themselves,

leaving you with your arms extended,

your eyes on the ground, looking

for a footprint, a single leaf,

a broken twig.

And finally you tuck your hands

in your pockets and move toward

the open field, searching

for the pile of rough stones

someone else has assembled

and forgotten.

The following poem was published in Black Warrior Review:

The Truth about Drowning

The only parts of you that matter are your arms and legs,

how fast they can move, if they have what it takes,

their strength. For one brief moment, you think

about church, the way you used to fold your hands

as a child, the beauty of the sacrifice, where

the priest mixed the water with the wine, and

the white thread disappeared into the cup

before everyone’s eyes looked to heaven.

And now you finally know what all of that meant.

You would give anything for one sweet breath.

You wonder who will find you, if your legs will be caught

below the surface, your swollen hands finally touching

the shore, your fingers pointing toward the road.

Perhaps some boys fishing will notice the lightness

of your hair as the water filters through it,

or some teenagers with a six-pack will be walking

along the bank and discover you making love

to the shallows.

Before the water floods your mouth

and your head falls back into the cushion of current,

you believe you feel your father’s quiet grip on your arm,

the way he would lead you through a crowd

or into a strange room where the lights were dim.

But you realize that the next touch you feel

will be businesslike, someone’s fingers

in your armpits or around your ankles.

And when you are lifted toward the sky,

your eyelashes drying in the wind,

every part of you that your parents loved

will be laid bare.

The following poem was published in American Scholar:

The First Signs of Spring

The house has finally stopped falling in upon itself,

and the corners of the bedrooms have softened.

You do not bump into things in your hurry

to find daylight, in your search for the stairs.

It is a time of doors opening smoothly,

into the hallway, from one room to the next.

The drain in the bathtub is clear again,

and all running water has a destination.

The tile feels good to your bare feet,

and your ankles do not crack

as you enter the shower.

You begin to notice the length

and coarseness of your hair, the curls

behind your ears. You remember why

you are fascinated by the colors of things:

the soap on the mirror, the lime on the walls, skin.

No one knows why it all comes down to this,

why we always seem to look somewhere else.

We make some easy comment about fresh smells

drifting in through the screens

or the different shades of green out back

when it’s really just time to figure out

what we’ve been missing and then get up

and make something of ourselves.

The following poems were published in Poetry:

Waiting to Adopt a Child

You begin to think there is nothing left

for you.  The air neither comes nor goes

in the room upstairs, where the dust forms

tiny balls along the floorboards,

the fresh colors on the walls turn pale,

the new furniture begins to creak in the night.

Your wife knows beforehand what simple phrases

you will utter, how you will move through

the carpeted rooms of the house, looking

at your image reflected in the windows,

studying the sharp line of your nose,

talking aloud to yourself about heritage.

You have seen your neighbor’s trees bear fruit

even in the wrong seasons, and the soft rain

of evening dampens the earth wherever he walks:

to the garden, to the mailbox, toward the ball

and bat lying next to each other on the lawn.

Each time you turn on the post light, even the moths

fail to come.  The music you play in your car

floats out the windows before you hear it.

Memories do not lie.  Every image you own of childhood

becomes clearer at night.  When you reach over in bed

to comfort your wife, you see the descending hand

of your father, feel the way he stroked your hair

in the moments before you slept.  You hear your own

breathing against the pillow, the coming and going

of life, and try once more to repeat someone else’s

truth: Your loss may soon be your gain.

 Connections

      (for Jack)

My son treats me with his swagger,

a bounce in his step I wish were

mine.

Clever at seven, he understands

what adopted means but knows we share

the same blood, really,

man-to-man, fingers around the bat,

talk of hard things on the surface,

eyes.

I can see him at my age,

holding my hand

as I sleep away what’s left,

whispering in my deaf ear

the words we have both come

to believe.

Another Birthday

Suddenly you’re holding such a thin rope.

Here you are, things going right,

the kids are safe, and some lousy flashback

or one look in a shadowy mirror,

and you wonder if there’s time

for something else, a chance

to find out if your shoes

really fit or if your car

will ever start again.

Maybe tomorrow you will find yourself

sitting in a corner, your knees

drawn up to your chin,

your elbows shaking stiffly, like leaves,

and all the lights will go out.

Or you will realize that flames

could end it all, and there will be

no way out the back door.

Who can say?

We’re getting there, both of us,

all of us, aren’t we, taking

those long walks now

but feeling as though we’ve

never left the yard, the muddy boots

by the door reminding us of where we’ve been?

And all of the forgetting, the disappearing

words of the sick people

in our dreams,

those who told us it would be like this,

the long finger of some distant uncle

pointing down the road.

A Loss of Memory

You are frightened

when you first realize something

is gone, when the strings that hold now

to then are snapped, leaving you

somewhere above ground with nowhere to land,

nothing to hold onto.

It has gotten so the keys in your pocket

all look the same. None of them

will unlock the car or the suitcase

you have packed. Not one of them

will lock the front door. You do not

remember if you have turned off the water,

if you emptied the trash yesterday

or today.

There was a time

when you could hold your palm out,

a few inches from your face,

and marked how some lines joined

one another, how every crack sprang

from the lifeline or searched for it

or finally touched it

when you slowly made a fist.

There was a time

when you thought things

like that mattered.

When you thought everything did.

Soon someone will come for you.

In all of your hurry to get things done,

to find that one comfortable spot

for the two of you, to finally raise

the kids, you had believed that now

would never arrive. And here you are

looking out the window, studying

the glass and the way a streak

can smear the green of the front lawn

or twist the sidewalk where

it had always been straight.

Here you are feeling gravity

in your shoulders and the ache

deep inside, reminding you that life

all comes down to this:

It’s not what you have known,

but what you have forgotten.

Crossing

(for my father)

Here the water reaches

all things

and flows endlessly,

giving a touch to motion,

until it finally grips

the branches,

and they move beneath the current

that takes me where it must,

away from myself,

across the sandy bottom,

toward the one figure

who will take me home.

James Langlas (May 16, 1951 - August 13, 2018)

Former teacher, poet, author, Taekwondo Grand Master, and department chair at Wheaton North High School and professor at Florida SouthWestern State College, James Langlas earned his degrees at University of St. Thomas, Northwestern University and Northern Illinois University. Langlas was an 8^th degree black belt. He was a gold medal winner at the International Taekwondo Federation World Championships in 1974.  With the help of his wife, Michelle, he founded Langlas Taekwondo in 1980 and Pathways for Achievement in 1996, which combined after-school tutoring and community service with Taekwondo instruction.  In 2005, Langlas received the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award from the State of Illinois. He also founded and chaired Wheaton Community Partners in Poetry to foster an interest in poetry among all ages. In 2012, Langlas became the author of a book entitled, Heart of a Warrior: 7 Ancient Secrets to a Great Life. Langlas’ poems were published in Poetry, American Scholar, Spoon River Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cutbank, The Indiana Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, Swamproot, and Black Warrior Review, among other journals.