Super-Sized Series

 Umbrella

 
Peggy Trojan’s fourth daughter Karen and her polka dot umbrella
Polka Dot Joy by Peggy Trojan
One spring day,
Karen and I walked downtown
across the bridge
to the Montgomery Wards
catalog office.
It was just the two of us,
rare in a family of eight.
She had previously selected
a matching raincoat, hat, and
umbrella, white with
multicolored polka dots.
Once her order arrived,
Karen soon reported
that people smiled whenever
she wore her new outfit.

Decades later,
Karen’s front hallstand
holds a fine collection
of polka dot umbrellas.
She still maintains
wearing polka dots in the rain
makes everyone smile.


 

Rain by Joanne Durham

Tough day to be buried,
says the old woman with wild hair
sliding into the seat beside me
on the subway. She shakes 
puddles from the folds 
of her umbrella, best friend
of forty years laid in the earth today.

Did the rain pound on her coffin 
like it did on our flat roof
this morning, before dawn, 
when we awoke to the crash
of thunder, scampered barefoot
to close all the windows, 
and made love? Was it even
the same rain? 

From To Drink from a Wider Bowl 

 



 
Joan Leotta and her daughter, Jennie

My Daughter Gave Me an Umbrella for My Birthday by Joan Leotta

Last birthday,
my adult daughter, (who 
thinks she now must
act the part of my mother),
gifted me a lovely new umbrella
from a pricey local shop.
This umbrella opens with a mere touch
so I won’t have to struggle in storms,
can avoid letting water pour down on me.
With one signal from my finger, 
a garden of flowers
spreads over my head.
When I asked why she thought
I needed such quick protection, my 
dear one, who knows the blue moods
that wash over me in rain. explained, 
“This umbrella is empowered 
to undermine rain’s 
determination to submerge 
your thoughts in dreary 
contemplation.
Under this umbrella 
Mom, you can dare to splash 
in puddles while keeping your head dry,
you can imagine gray skies transformed
into the colorful garden 
your new umbrella offers.”
So, now, on days of driving rain,
I do pop open my new umbrella,
hold it high, smile that my dear
child remembered the magic 
puddle-jumping days
we shared in her childhood, and 
I can forge ahead, smiling, protected, 
cosseted, by my daughter’s love.



 
Wilda Morris
 

I Carried My Umbrella All Over London by Wilda Morris


I flew to London with an umbrella—
and rubbers to keep my feet dry—
as I explored ancient streets,
stood on the bridge listening
to Big Ben knell the hour,
climbed from the subway 
to the open doors of St. Paul’s,
marched in place outside
the fence of Buckingham Palace
as guards changed places.

All week I awaited the rain and fog
for which the city is known.
The sky opened only once 
to clean the London air
but I was inside the British Museum
gorging myself on Egyptian antiquities.
My only clue—reflections  
on the damp street as I returned,
dry from head to foot, to my hotel.

 

My Grandmother Brings her Big Black Umbrella by Sharon Waller Knutson

every time we walk to town
even when there is no sign
of rain or a storm in sight.

Most of the time 
she never even opens it 
but uses it as a weapon

when a dog jumps up
and tears her hose
with his toenails.

or if a thug tries
to snatch her saddle
bag from her shoulder.

She swings that umbrella
and they flee, tail
between their legs.

But one day 
in the middle
of our walk home

sky surprises us
with a shower.
We remain dry

as toast as grandma
snaps open 
her umbrella.

I learn power
and dignity
from my grandmother

who was steady
and sturdy
as her big umbrella

especially now when
I am a bag of bones
with ribs sticking out

like Grandma’s umbrella
which I never inherited
and don’t recall ever owning one.


 


Safe Place by Rachael Ikins

Knees to my chin 
like a frog I squat beneath my umbrella.
World whirs. 

Upside down umbrella,
a coracle. Curl in the bottom 
a naked seed of something. 
Boat carries me over the sea.

Poets’ voices wash against the sides. 
Splash and whisper,
 almost translate.

On a turquoise sun-shaft my voice drifts to sea bottom. 
Sand crab sifts it, meat?
 
Wash/wash, waves lick the place I hide, 
nothing but skin between sea and me.

I call for my voice. Dog-paddle
back home, shake fur, soak me
more than skin deep.

Before growls.
Before the fireball
above the trees.

 

CORVUS TRIOLET II by Barbara Crooker

A strut of crows marched up the lawn,
umbrellas furled against the rain,
obsidian-eyed, they cawed their scorn.
A strut of crows marched up the lawn,
their racket broke the back of dawn,
their song a dirge of grief and pain.
A strut of crows upon the lawn,
those black umbrellas wet with rain.

From South Boston Literary Review



 

Blue Heron by Laurie Byro

Grant that we may meet her on our path, grant
that one day Mrs Van Gogh may sit before us 
in the carriage.    Theo Van Gogh

The story goes that the painter from Holland hired her
as his model. She was as untouched by him as the blue
heron they’d seen asleep with its head under its wing.
The couple slept side by side for many months

and then the painter died.  The heron, or probably one
of its descendants, rose like a parasol and glided 
over the banks of the Rhone where it stood
like a sentinel beside the iris blanketed pond.

His dreamscapes peeled off the water in all shades 
of blue for each night she slept next to him but would
not agree to marry. Fog, thick as tempura, settled around

the old house where inside the woman dreams of Delft
blue eyes. Pipes creak. An early painting of her seems
to sigh and moan, startling spiders, displacing dust.