Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week’s segment features Carol Alfus.
Alfus has lived in McHenry County for most of her life, where she raised her family and taught special education. Now retired, she enjoys traveling, gardening, reading, but most of all spending time with her grandchildren. She has always loved writing, but poetry is her favorite. She loves the way a poem can tell a story, capture a moment, or express a range of emotions from wonder, to anger, to joy, to bliss and beyond.
Alfus takes her inspiration from the sublime (the night sky, the beauty of nature) to the ridiculous (parking lot gulls, fortune cookies) as well as the deeply personal (the birth of a grandchild, the death of a loved one). She belongs to a poetry group at her Unitarian Universalist church, and enjoys sharing her poems with family, friends and at various open mic nights around Woodstock.
Alfus has volunteered with programs for people without housing, environmental and conservation organizations and as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). She feels the seeds for this work were planted in part by the 60's folk music she unapologetically loves and this inspired her poem “Soundtrack.”
I’m a sucker for a folk song--
a familiar, three-chord tune
with a message of justice or freedom,
an honest, big-hearted song,
as filling as meatloaf or pie.
I grew up with folk songs,
blue collar, blue jean, back porch songs
about workers’ rights, civil rights
and dreams of a better world.
We believed in those songs and sang them with voices
urgent and sincere.
These are the songs that woke me up,
pulled me off the island of myself,
tossed me into the river of humanity,
saying “Now do what you can--
it’s why you’re here.”
And I did, or I tried where I could,
am still trying…
but lately it’s been harder and harder
to find the why,
to keep on trying.
I’ve been needing someone
to play me a folk song--
something I could sing along to,
throw my head back and
lose myself in lyrics I believe--
a song to remind me to believe.
And then…
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
riding on the City of New Orleans
singing “Come and go with me to
that land that land that’s made for you and me,”
and I woke up with a song on my tongue,
a four-four strum thrumming in my veins,
and a whispering in my ear,
“Carry on.”
~Carol Alfus
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
