Decorating the Cultural Hall

Decorating the Cultural Hall
by Linda Hoffman Kimball

I don’t know how to ask for what I need.

Wheedle? No. No wheedling.

All my requests need to

A) get the tasks done and

B) keep their spirits strong.

Who knows who needs what?

I may need the basketball hoop draped with crepe,

But they may need hand-holding

Or an appeal to their manliness

Or a reward

Or a command from God channeled through me.

Who knows?

And then there’s the flack, the backlash –

The “too soft,” “too strong,”

“too bossy,” “too passive,”

the “too worldly,” “too liberal,”

“too conservative,” “too prudish”…

Can’t anyone just get up there and drape the hoop?

This poetry writing is starting to get to me. All the introversion of images and mood. All the navel-gazing bugs me.  It’s taking too much time and mental energy. Besides,
I have a lot of other things I’m trying to juggle right now. One is a major Christmas celebration coming up in early December at church. It will be wonderful, and the people I’m working with are great and kind. But the process takes me back to many times when I’ve been “in charge” of things (even way back when as the Parent Chair of my kids’ cooperative nursery school. The structure was cooperative in that parents were expected to help; not that the kids were especially cooperative.) Writing poems every day is starting to tap into emotional stuff, like a kind of art therapy. I’m not sure that’s something I’m really ready to post openly. So I sat down to the computer today, a little grumpy and restless, and here’s what evolved.

Aim for the stars, you’ll hit the moon

Or the garage roof, or the leaves waiting to be hauled to the curb.

Stalwartly they plod along, plod along, plod along.

Stalwartly they plod along harboring ill will.

I don’t know how to ask for what I need.

Wheedle? No. No wheedling.

All my requests need to

A) get the task done and

B) keep their spirits strong.

Who knows who needs what?

I may need the basketball hoop draped with crepe,

But they may need hand-holding

Or an appeal to their manliness

Or a reward

Or a command from God channeled through me.

Who knows?

And then there’s the flack, the backlash –

The “too soft,” “too strong,”

“too bossy,” “too passive,”

the “too worldly,” “too liberal,”

“too conservative,” “too prudish”…

Can’t anyone just get up there and drape the hoop?

What to do about a title:

Decorating the Cultural Hall?

Decorating the Fellowship Hall – for a more ecumenical feel?

Working with Volunteers?