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A mind for it

Mary Elyn Bahlert

As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I majored in English. I didn’t say a word – at least not aloud, in class, as response to a question or to ask a question. I was silent, except when I visited with another student, someone who sat next to me in class, say. But I was listening. I had been silent in high school, too, although I joined a forensic society and was able to make presentations to my classes with ease. It would take several years – long years – after I’d graduated and moved on to my first position with the Federal Government as a Claims Representative for Social Security, assigned to the Field Office in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and even later, when I moved across country to study at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, to settle into life in Northern California, before I’d break through the shell of the shame that kept me silent as my busy mind answered questions, wrote papers.

The name of the class intrigued me. “Theology and Literature.” And so, as was my way, I sat silently in class as the instructor – an Episcopal Priest who seemed to enjoy teaching (I remember that!) began the first meeting by explaining that we’d be writing papers, and that to receive an “A” in the course, we would also be expected to take part in class discussions. I knew that an “A” was out for me then – because I never spoke up in class. But I was an avid student; I loved the literature and I loved the focus we took. And I knew this: I had a mind for what we were reading, what we were studying, for what the professor brought to us.

I wrote the requisite papers and completed the semester without having said a word. And I waited along with the other students as the final paper of the semester was returned. And I waited also, to receive my final grade in the class. There it was: “A.”

I’d done it! And that “A” got my attention. It confirmed my thought that I had a way with this kind of thinking, for theology, for a way to bring together literature – which I loved – and theology – which I also loved.

*

My semester in a student in “Theology and Literature” came to mind today as my husband and I looked over the collection of a lifetime of poems I hope to have published. I’ve always thought: “someday.” It seems that in these elder years, the “somedays” of life are having to step into the light, or be banished forever from my hopes, my dreams. “Someday, I’d like to have my poems published.” The sting of jealousy that accompanies my experience when a friend publishes still arrives some days. But someday – my someday – seems to be now.

Now, now, now… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 10/25

Uncategorized

If the world hadn’t stopped

Mary Elyn Bahlert

If the world hadn’t stopped 
its incessant orbit, 
its frantic motion – one day to the next –
if all the people hadn’t halted their wars, 
their value counted in barrels of oil, 
I expect I wouldn’t have seen the sun brightening, blue by blue, 
or known the smell of the morning air, fresh, 
as I go sniffing like a cat 
to catch a whiff of what has gone before. 
I would not have opened my window, grateful, 
or wondered at the sound of humans calling into the night to give thanks.

I expect I wouldn’t have stopped midday to pray,
my arms lifted beside the lonely tree, 
its branches lifted, also, in gratitude 
for the magic of the sun, the sky, the dusk and dawn. 
We would not have murmured together at the light 
of the lilies at dusk, 
at the quiet that hangs over the morning air, 
at the call of the crow hoarding its bounty: 
all of us inhabitants of this magnificent earth.






Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2020










Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, View Place, 2020

		


			
		
	






	
	

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Gingko Trees
	


	

							

			 Mary Elyn Bahlert		
		
		

			

I’m always delighted to walk under the Gingko trees in Mountain View Cemetery near our house in Oakland.  The branches are full and leaf out over the sidewalk as we pass under them, the shade protecting us from the afternoon sun here in Oakland.  And gingko trees hold special memories for me.





When I was a student at Washington High School in Milwaukee, an English teacher gave us the assignment of finding the gingko trees in Sherman Park, a few blocks to the north of the high school, along Burleigh Street.  And so I took a walk through the park, looking upward into the trees and finding the ginkgo trees, collecting a few leaves to take with me to complete the assignment.  





The upper flat we lived in during my high school years was on North 49 Street, in the block south of Burleigh, and so those trees stood only a few blocks to the east of   where my family lived.  Many times, I walked through the streets from Center to Burleigh, stamping through the leaves on autumn days, or quickening my pace during the winter as I skirted around icy places on the cement.  





The streets were beautiful then, the branches of elm trees and a few maples meeting overhead and over the road, lush green in the summer and bright orange and red in the autumn.  





Sometimes, I like to walk along those streets in my memory.  They formed an audience to the person I was becoming.  And those streets marked the edges of what I knew, even in the years after I stood in a doorway of our flat, looked out into the street, and said aloud:  “I don’t belong here.”





I didn’t know it then, but my path would take me far away from those narrow streets, those crowded flats. I didn’t know it then, but I would live for many years in northern California, for many more years than I walked home from school under the trees whose branches covered me, followed me home.










Gingko leaf, from a tree in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland   photo by meb, 9/2025

		


			
		
	






	
	

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First Kiss
	


	

							

			 Mary Elyn Bahlert		
		
		

			

Our house on Ring Street stood right next to the alley, and from the porch of our upper flat I could see my Grandma Markowski in her long black coat, her head covered in a cotton scarf, as she made her way from her house on Burleigh Street to our house – walking in the alley.  Grandma was a babushka, a peasant woman from Ukraine who came to the United States with my Grandpa; he had left his home to find a better life for himself and his children.





The alley was lined on either side with garages.  My dad rented a garage down the alley to keep our car out of the weather.  When I was a child, we children played outside for hours, close to home when we were little, and farther away as we grew.  From the front porch or the small back porch outside our kitchen door at the back, my mother could keep an eye on me as I played.





I have a memory from those times, when I was very young.  I am in the bath tub, and Mom is helping me with my bath.  As she runs a washcloth over me, and without looking at me, Mom says: “I saw you hit a little girl when you were playing today.” 





“That wasn’t me – that was another little girl who looked just like me.”





I see Mom turn her head away, a smile coming to her face.  She liked to call me, “Mary, Mary, quite contrary”.





One of the favorite games of kids in my neighborhood those days was playing Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, our television heroes, whose show we watched faithfully every Saturday morning, one in a line-up of shows for children that aired – a new episode every week.  Randy Larson, a neighbor boy my age who lived in a flat around the corner on 12th street, played Roy Rogers to my Dale Evans.  And one day, as we played our parts, riding our bikes in place of horses – skinny, blond-haired Randy Larson leaned over from the seat of his bike and planted a kiss on my cheek!  We laughed!





*





My mother always kept up to date on happenings in Milwaukee.  And she read the obituaries, faithfully, in The Milwaukee Journal.   If something or someone of note to me had had their name mentioned, she made sure to tell me.  And so, one day, I had the news from my mother that Randy Larson had been killed in Vietnam.





In 2015, Jeff and I traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet up with our good friends and traveling buddies from the U.K. – Pat and Tone.  While there, we visited the Vietnam Memorial.  I had long wanted to see the Memorial, the Vietnam War having made a mark on me as it had on all members of my generation.  I looked for Randy’s name on the register, and found his name engraved on the Memorial.





Just another working class kid, a kid who died serving in a War that was not declared a War, his name a memory on a wall.