White sandal

Dated 10/31/1934, this may have been written after Evelyn’s heart condition condemned her to dance no more.

White Sandal

White sandal, weather-beaten, blurred with age,

What dainty foot was bound in your sheer walls?

What tracings have you limned upon the page

Of waving sands and starry, wooded halls?

With melancholy thud, your instep falls

Into a rubbish heap. Your blackened face

And tarnished bow are sympathetic calls

To blither days. Those slender strands of lace

Could not combat a modern maiden’s dancing pace!

Evelyn Coffey

No More to Dance!

I am uploading the poems with no exactitude as to when or why each was written. We know that Evelyn experienced a heart attack sometime near the times of her sister’s and mother’s deaths. To be told she must give up her dancing career would have been another death to her.

Sentence

No more to dance!

As well forbid the butterfly

His path of flowers,

Or sever twilight from the day.

This heart is more than flesh,

A potpourri of muscles and blood!

My lover is the wind,

With rain upon his hair,

And I must ride with him.

Evelyn Coffey

Holding you and Him together.

I have no dates on Evelyn's poems, but this would seem to have been written after Rose's and her mother's deaths. Faith and grief intertwined, inseparable, glowing.

Calvary Pilgrimage

I went there

(they said you were there).

One darkling day

I saw you descend

(each of you),

closed in a shining thing,

closed to me

forever.

I heard the music sigh

and the surrender sound.

I heard words

saint-sweet with your names.

Christ-sweet with His.

But it was no more true

of you

than of Him.

They could not close you

in a box:

not you,

white and shining --

more shining than sun

to remember,

whiter than starlight.

Not when there would be

tomorrow.

Not when he died

on a cross

who did not die.

I brought flowers......

purple and gold.

I spread them

on the sun-struck grass,

on the waiting grass,

green dipped of earth and sun.

Kneeling,

I made a purple cross,

and hung it with a gold heart.

I fashioned a cross

quickly --

more quickly than His Cross

was fashioned,

but sprung from the same earth

that bore the heavenly-burdened tree.

Oh, not sweeter than that Cross,

this new,

lying on the soft grass

under the wheeling sun.

Not sweeter.....

but sweet,

holding you and Him

together.

Evelyn Coffey

A sense of humor, too

To think of Evelyn only as the holy, mystical, praying poet is to miss an enchanting facet of her personality. Her sense of humor pops out in some of her poetry as she addresses unexpected subjects.

DETROIT’S ENCOMIUM

Hurrah for Cincinnati!

The pins are down; the game is won!

Ohio’s Southern Bowling Five

Are bright in the Eighth District sun.

The day was hot as fever’s breath;

The men were hard to muster;

But each man battled to the death

To beat Detroit or “bust’er.”

Old Cleveland staggered to the fore

And toppled Detroit by forty-three.

But Cincy’s twenty-five-sixty score

Has stymied both, as you can see.

Hurrah for Cincinnati!

Detroit’s the home of gray-haired sighs

And Cleveland’s hopes are shattered thin.

The Southern men have seized the prize.

Come on, fellows, take the pennant home.

Shout your glory to the wind.

Heave your chests, all medal-pinned.

“The last is first”– you’ve heard the “pome.”

Let the weary pennant-seekers

Roll their last ball in the dust.

Hurrah for Cincinnati!

Faith’s the watchword – faith and trust.

Now the trembling hordes are silent.

Now the paeans gladly ring.

Hang your trophy on the mantle –

You can have the “doggone” thing!

Evelyn Coffey

A tribute to John Daniels

Evelyn’s poems were first put on line by her Detroit friend and neighbor John Daniels. (freelemonadestand.blogspot.com/) At some point, probably when he retired, the site was removed. At his encouragement, I, a family member who did not know Evelyn as he and his family did, set up this website to share her work again.

I am indebted to John and his family for saving the poems, many of which I never saw until he put them on-line. He taught about her poetry in a college class, and his insights into Evelyn and her work are profound and loving. I almost feel a usurper to write about her when his experience with her is so much more rich and personal. But that I want to do so is further evidence of the powerful influence of this lovely woman whom I was blessed to call family.

Thank you, John.

Another poem that may refer to her lost sister and her experience of longing for her.

Song for a Rose

I pressed a rosebud to my lips

and drank the melody of rain.

The ecstasy was almost pain.

I pressed a rosebud to my lips

and lushed its fragrant, mellow tips,

Sheer-bubbled with a dewdrop chain.

I pressed a rosebud to my lips

and drank the melody of rain.

Evelyn Coffey

Dying offers life its noblest part

Evelyn lost her father before her second birthday and her mother and sister in the two years before her twenty-ninth birthday. Grief and death weave their sad pattern through many of her poems. Her Catholic faith was the balancing factor that carried her through those griefs, never erasing them but rather embroidering them with motifs that allowed her not only to endure, but to do so with grace and sometimes even joy.

Behold the Roses

Still? Oh, never still, the singing voice
That balanced on warm waves of sound as birds
In spring upon the swelling oak rejoice,
And frame their ardor in no wreath of words.
The day is beauteous, and the heavens play.
But hungry earth has need of this new gold
That once was flesh we loved. No mortal clay
Has shaped the song or struck the holy mould.
Behold the roses, swinging on the vine . . . . .
Their waking day is brief; the winter long,
All-patient earth will fold their petaled wine
Within her press to recreate their song.

Leavened, the spirit; glad, the noble heart;
For dying offers life its noblest part!

Evelyn Coffey

(later titled “To Peg”)

Have You Seen a White Kitten?

Sadly, I am out of personal Evelyn stories now. But I had a note from Jack and Julia’s first grand daughter who remembered Evelyn visiting her grand parents in Cambridge when she was a little girl. Look at how many silken fragments of Evelyn’s essence she caught in this short paragraph:

“And I loved Evelyn Coffey too! I looked so forward to her visits, I can even remember her smell! And her voice and face was so angelic!! So beautiful! My Brother Paul and I would save any found coins for her as she would have them blessed and donate to the poor! And she was a wonderful cook! I’ll never forget a salad she made (I didn’t eat salads then) where she had sliced apples in it! I started eating salads from that point on!”

Henceforth, I shall add a poem each day and hope that as time passes, ones who knew Evelyn will stumble into this blog and send their memories.

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Our baby lost Spence.

Have you seen a white kitten?

Youthful grief is intense:

Our baby lost Spence.

Little cats have no sense.

Its address is unwritten.

Our baby lost Spence.

Have you seen a white kitten?

Evelyn Coffey