Anne Whitehouse
The Professor’s Necktie
One winter nearly a century ago,
Professor G’s Massachusetts farmhouse
caught fire and burned down.
He was a gentleman farmer
and lived there only in the summers.
No one knew how the fire started.
It was the depths of the Depression.
Desperate people roamed the countryside.
Notified by a neighbor,
the volunteer fire department arrived
too late to save the house.
Professor and Mrs. G drove up
the next day. Among the ruins
they found a volume
of Robert Frost’s poetry.
The cover was warped,
and there were scorch marks
at the edges of the pages.
On the title page still smelling
of smoke was the poet’s inscription.
His conventional message conveyed
his good wishes to the professor.
The occasion was a poetry reading
at the college five years ago.
There was a celebratory dinner
for Frost before the reading,
where faculty were invited.
The poet arrived at the last minute
without a necktie, despite
having been given explicit instructions
about the college dress code.
So Frost could attend his own dinner,
Professor G loaned him a beautiful tie
purchased the previous year
from a London haberdasher
made of fine silk in rich stripes
of blue, red, and gold.
Frost wore the tie to dinner
and afterwards to the reading.
When he left the next morning,
he took the tie with him
and never did return it,
although the professor wrote
to remind him it was not a gift.
Lady Bird
In my day, women had their sphere,
and men had theirs. I became an observer,
concealing myself behind public duties.
Some people mocked me for my devotion
to wildflowers. Let her occupy herself,
they said, with a cause of little importance,
leaving us free for matters of consequence.
There is a damaged place in each of us.
With me, Lyndon never had to be ashamed
of the gawky farm boy yoked to poverty
as a result of his father’s foolish dreams.
He was a disappointing husband,
but I would never leave him.
I come from a long line of women
who learned to look the other way.
They lived with what they couldn’t change.
It didn’t mean they liked it.
There’s a reason I love wildflowers.
They’re not glamorous or flashy.
They have a modest prettiness
that’s worth a second look.
The seeds may lie dormant for years,
settled or buried, blown by the wind,
but one day they will take hold and bloom.
Then they will be everywhere.
