Storyteller of the Week

 Judith Waller Carroll

  

 Judith Waller Carroll with her grandsons, Reid, left, and Sawyer and her husband, Jerry

Judith (Judy) Waller Carroll grew up in Montana, spent thirty years in the San Francisco Bay Area, sixteen years in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, and currently lives in Oregon— locales that inspire her work.

Judy is the author of Ordinary Splendor, (MoonPath Press, 2022), What You Saw and Still Remember, a runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Award, The Consolation of Roses, winner of the 2015 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Prize, and Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, published in numerous journals and anthologies, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Judy took creative writing classes in college and a few writing classes when her children were little, but only began writing poetry in earnest when she retired from a career in public relations and fundraising. One of the first poems she submitted for publication won first place and was nominated for the Best of the Net. That was all the encouragement she needed.

Writing is not a novelty in the Carroll family. Her husband, Jerry, was a reporter and columnist for 30 years with the San Francisco Chronicle and is the author of seven novels. Her son, Justin, writes short fiction, as well as newspaper and magazine articles. Daughter, Jessica, is a power-house publicist in the San Francisco Bay Area and occasionally blogs on current events. Fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Tova is an aspiring screen writer. So far, Tova’s twin brother Jack, and Justin’s two boys, Sawyer, 4, and Reid, 2, appear to be STEM guys.

 

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

 Judith Waller Carroll, my younger sister and only sibling, and I grew up in Montana listening to our English teacher father who was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson recite poetry. We both wrote poetry and fiction at a young age. Although I went on to write newspaper stories, short stories and novels, Judy was always a poet.

Says Judy. “My father taught me to appreciate language and my mother taught me to appreciate music. Poetry is my way of combining the two. “

Since she is the poetry expert, I rely on her to give me feedback.  We both write poems about our childhood, but we tell the stories from a different perspective. We support each other’s poetry although we write in a completely different style.

 I am proud to publish Judith’s powerful visual narrative poems that show who she is as a person.

 

 Valentine for Our Fifty-fifth Year

 Where is the marathon runner? The agile dancer?

 How did our little girl turn into a woman
with a daughter in high school?

Wasn’t it just yesterday
we were taking her to kindergarten
and picking her up from the middle-school dance?

Now with your walking stick and silver beard,
both of us in dapper hats, we are the couple
the clerks in Safeway remember and smile at.

Just before Christmas a woman stopped us
in the parking lot. You look so cute together.

Tomorrow let’s drive to the lagoon and look for the swans.
If the weather’s clear we can see them from our car.

Their long necks bending together into a heart.
Bright white against the gray horizon. 

Letter to My Husband, Away for the Weekend

Fifty-two years and very few separations.
Perhaps that’s why it feels like you’re still here,
working upstairs at your computer

or reading in the chair by the window
while I putter in the kitchen,
procrastinate paying the bills.

Last night it felt strange to lie in our bed alone,
but I slept well and only missed you
in that hazy hour before dawn,

our customary snuggle
as we wait for the house to warm up,
your sleepy voice telling me your dream.

Is this what grief feels like?

The absent way I stop by your chair as if you were in it.
The same small stab of surprise
each time I find it empty.  

To the Red Dress I Never Had the Nerve to Buy 

 Beckoning from the shop window,
giving me that come-hither look.

I always passed you over
for the demure teal
with the high neckline,
the elegant black A-line
that could be dressed up or down.

But if you were here now,
hanging in my closet,
I’d wear you everywhere:
to the Farmers’ Market,
the grocery store, the pharmacy.

To the cardiologist’s office
where the nurse always asks,
How are we doing today?
Any recent falls?

Maybe even to Starbucks
for a Chai latte
and cinnamon swirl coffee cake.

Still an invisible gray-haired lady,
but with more sassy style.  

The Children Are Crying and a Dog’s at the Door

 We have lived near the ocean,
at the foot of a mountain,
in the woods where a fox napped
outside our sunroom window, and now
this house we are sharing with our son and his family.
Five decades of belongings tucked tightly
into our small suite of rooms. Unpacked
boxes still waiting in the garage.
But the sun is out, the irises are blooming,
and here comes the baby saying Uh Oh,
the three-year old explaining how garbage trucks work.
Two purring cats massaging our legs,
a pair of disheveled dogs wagging their tails.
A burst of high notes coming from the bird cage:
the cockatiel’s version of Ode to Joy.

Advice to My 15-year-old Granddaughter

 Stop trying on outfits
and come to the window.
Gaze out at the garden.
Notice the gangly sunflowers
beside the elegant roses.
The tall slim daisies  
next to the round hydrangeas,
each one of those blooms
as beautiful as the other
Think how boring the yard would be
if it were just a flat line
of one kind of flower. Oh, honey,
I wish when I was your age
someone had told me
to throw on an old sweater
and not worry what my hair looked like.
To run out into each new day.  
To look up at the sky.

Alive and Well in Arizona

A woman we thought was dead
came back to life today on Facebook.
Here’s a picture of her in the desert,
where she has been living
all those years we thought her gone.

The same almost-smile, like she was hiding
a secret. The same thick hair, now silver,
still wavy and wild.

Once a loose tendril caught fire
from a candle on our mantel. You heard it crackle
and pulled her away so swiftly and smoothly
not a drop of wine spilled from her glass.

Her husband was as handsome as she was beautiful,
but we heard he had other women.  
He left her to play in a rock band.
Word was she got cancer and died.

But here she is, dwarfed by a saguaro.
She has changed her name but still writes stories.
Sometimes javelinas come up to her front door.
 

Conductor at the Window of His Empty Train          

 We see them all the time now,
empty commuter trains rattling
through the intersection, maybe one man
in the back, staring at his phone.

Over a decade since we commuted anywhere.
even longer since we rode the kind of train
our parents took us on when we were children,
that carried our fathers off to war.  

That sleek train in North by Northwest
where Cary Grant exchanged witty quips
in the dining car with Eva Marie Saint,
who, cool and collected, hid him
in her sleeper car while the conductor searched.

And later, when she pulled down the bed,
the camera discreetly moved to the tracks,  
the steel wheels gathering speed,
the train hurtling toward a tunnel,
the dark window revealing nothing,

“Letter to My Husband, Away for the Weekend” was first published in Clementine Unbound.
And ‘The Children are Crying and a Dog’s at the Door” in Muleskin Journal.