Encore

 Judy Kronenfeld 

 

 

Judy Kronenfeld and granddaughter Nadia 

My Grandchildren and Me

By Judy Kronenfeld

I started writing poetry in high school but largely stopped after college for at least 15 years for a complex of reasons I explore in my essay, “Why I Stopped Writing and How I Started Again: Embracing the Authentic, Contingent Self,” which is in my newly published book Apartness: A Memoir in Essays and Poems, Inlandia Books, 2025. But, thankfully, I started again in early middle age and haven’t stopped!

There’s no one way I write. Sometimes almost complete “gift” poems come to me in a rush that feels trance-like; more often, after the first draft, I have to pocket the poem in a drawer, and wait a while (the passage of time is essential) so my next look will be revealing. Sometimes a whole lot of re-seeing has to happen before I am at all satisfied with the poem; quick looks vs. belabored ones are often best, separated by significant chunks of time. There’s chance and serendipity in all of this; something I’ve read or realized or noticed in one of those passages of time can turn out to be the stimulant for a meaningful revision of part or whole. Many different situations can spark poems, but these sparking situations do tend to involve solitude and attention to inner and/or outer worlds: quiet walks alone outside, even if only in my own neighborhood, when I can hear myself think, listening to music, or just sitting in my study watching the light change in the room.

Why do I write about my grandchildren? My love for them and their charm spark poems, especially suddenly rediscovered love and charm. And that suddenness is built into my relationship with my grandkids because we live 3000 miles apart and see one another only a couple of times a year. When I see them, I am always newly struck by that delightful, almost surprising feeling of being related, and charmed by their warmth, their uniqueness, their growth in understanding and social behavior.

 I always feel protective about any problems they are having and want to be supportive, to be connected.  But, at the same time, I’m not always confident about how to accomplish those goals since I don’t fully know my grandkids in the way I would if we lived in the same town and saw each other every week. It’s probably the sense of discovery in each visit, the return to a feeling of closeness and connectedness both surprising and familiar that energizes this poet.

In “Early Astronomy,” I am certainly charmed and delighted.  In “Definitional,” I am utterly swept up into an experience made much more precious by its rarity. But there is also a kind of poem born of reflective distance—a poem that, in a way, substitutes for the actual experience of talking to my granddaughters, because we are so far apart, and may not know each other well enough to have certain conversations. “Looks and Love,” especially, as well as “My 8-Year –Old Granddaughter Discovers the Arbitrariness of the Sign” fit in this category. “Catch and Release,” which is about my youngest grandson (apologies to my also marvelous oldest—by 8 months grandson—who is not represented in this collection!),  is by intense love (and relief).


Early Astronomy


My granddaughter tells me with the charm
and certainty of her five years that Jupiter
“is the ice cream planet. If you stepped on
it, you would sink,” she recites, passing on

the disarming metaphor of her “other”
grandma. Her eyes go dreamy when she
envisions Saturn’s rings. (My turn: “snow-cone” texture!)
“Whoa!” she says when we read that Betelgeuse

could hold a billion of our suns. Undwarfed
by spaces where no human race is,
silences where matter barely whispers,
giggling at the name and unafraid, she’s on a ride

like the Flying Unicorn, and just thrilled
with these new proofs the world was made for delight.

Originally published in Innisfree Poetry Journal.


Looks and Love
            Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
            Featured like [her], like [her] with friends possessed...
            —William Shakespeare

 

 

Anya

For N. and A.

How young girls struggle with appearances—
worshipping others’ posts on Instagram,
while searching their own mirrors in despair,
always desiring this girl’s hair and that girl’s nose,
sometimes befriending only those who seem
equally a “7.” Or a “4.”
I want to gather mine in my grandma arms
to tell them just how lovable they are.

Sweethearts—it’s true, no eyes are immune
to sparks and glitter. Even in these late decades
of my life, irises startle-blue as Newman’s
induce shivers. Yet it’s quite impossible
to summon first impressions of the faces
of lovers, and friends, even relatives
whom we once judged—minus? plus?—when we’ve known
their owners for years. Their kindness, funniness,
and open hearts make their features unseeable,
changed—

lit by who they have become to us,
cherished, because uniquely theirs—like yours.

Originally published in Off course.


Definitional

Irresistible belly dance music on,
we girls, all alone—during my quick visit
from the opposite coast—shoulders wiggling,
hips twitching, spring
into crazy moves in my daughter’s tiny
living room in our jeans and tees—
she, with the munged cartilage
excised from her right knee, leading;
I, with my tender knees,
one replaced, one not;
and my six-year-old granddaughter
of the shy sidelong smile,
the only one of us whole—all
go for it: undulate
and kick, furl
and unfurl hands, whirl
and dip and drop, laughing,
into chairs, trying to catch
our breaths. I have fed
on the good reliable bread
of contentment, but this
was dripping fistfuls of sequin confetti
flung into the air and hanging for a moment
crackling like fireworks—this sudden,
utterly impractical, small sweet
of joy.

Originally published in Schuylkill Valley Journal.

 
My 8-Year-Old Granddaughter Discovers the Arbitrariness of the Sign

My daughter reports from afar
that my beloved girl, turned
philosopher—told to get into her teammate’s mother’s
car for soccer practice—said: “Why is a car
CAR?” Then louder, exasperated hands
clutched at her waist, “I mean
what is CAR?” Then, “What is a WORD?”
she apparently almost shouted,
before heading out (her mom saying, “Later!”)—
as if she’d been fooled,
and was now getting wise to the ruse.

I remember being a kid saying
ANKLE ANKLE ANKLE a hundred
times over, until it dissolved into a sea
of non-meaning and couldn’t be
recovered for a while—no boat
even making it out there with a search
party; only the tongue against the soft
palate ANkle ANkle ANkle, like a helpless
untrained oar slapping the water.
Scary and thrilling, too, like being unable
to move in a dark fun-house room
with tilting floor and walls—
all boundaries confused.

But my feisty girl was vexed!
I wish I was there to say: the fun
beats out the frustration, pumpkin,
take heart. If I phone and catch her this weekend
in the hour between dance class and soccer,
she’ll probably have forgotten
her insight and sharing my own
will feel forced and stale, though I want to tell her,
Wait’ll you notice you’re using phrases
arriving from nowhere, whose histories
are mysteries, whose meaning you can’t
state. And yet they’re redolent
as fresh bread and fit into conversational
slots neatly as bagels into bagel
slicers. I want to share that my dad,
her great-grandpa, delighted in saying
You're a gentleman and a scholar,"
whenever he won a few pennies
off a buddy at gin rummy.
And how I've spent smiling moments
anticipating dropping "And Bob's your uncle"
into the stew though I've no idea
what it literally means—or maybe because.
You're my referent for the sign granddaughter,
darling, though 3000 miles away.
(And Bob's your uncle!
I've written my part in a ghost
conversation.)
Welcome to the world where solidities
are mostly space, sweetheart.
Score a goal!

Originally published in Off course.


Catch and Release

My fierce and anxious mother used to cast
an eagle-eye-net over her only child, and, later,
her grandkids—at the playground,
on the sidewalks—as if her gaze could corral
them like a sheepdog, because Something
was always crouching, like a lion in the shade,
to snatch the smallest drifter from the herd.

And now my own heart races outrageously
when any of my grandkids can’t be gathered
into the seine net of my glance.
Like the littlest wriggler, all of five,
capricious as an unschooled fish—
the world his iridescent oyster shell,
to find and to admire—who loves to give
his folks the slip, and vanish.
Whom no one notices sliding away
till submerged to the neck, in the calm, sliding sea,
while the tide rises, and the breeze comes up,
turning its pearly surface to shards.

Too late when I look up for the tenth time
from my book to scan the children digging in the sand
and shout his name where is he where is he
while his mother, panicked, runs
towards a commotion down the strand.

But oh! the nifty tricks of chance—
how a local fisherman anchored close in,
how he happened to look,
how he plucks you out,
as if in a children’s story book.
And here you are! our lamb,
our joy, cherubic
in your mother’s tightening arms,
come back smiling—unaware—
from the world’s great snare, uncaught.

And the Something, nearly fed,
slouches away,
unnamed.

Originally published in Connotation Press.