How you affect others

Via Jon Tyson's recent emails; file these under How You Affect Others.

From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck:

Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent, and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood nearby, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break. The children peeked at the faces of the men and women, and then drew careful lines in the dust with their toes. Horses came to the watering troughs and nuzzled the water to clear the surface dust. After a while, the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard, angry, and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, what'll we do? And the men replied, I don't know. but it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole. The women went into the houses to their work, and the children began to play.

Weather
Linda Pastan

Because of the menace
your father opened
like a black umbrella
and held high
over your childhood
blocking the light,
your life now seems
to you exceptional
in its simplicities.
You speak of this,
throwing the window open
on a plain spring day,
dazzling
after such a winter.

After Work
Richard Tones

Coming up from the subway
into the cool Manhattan evening,
I feel rough hands on my heart-
women in the market yelling
over rows of tomatoes and peppers,
old men sitting on a stoop playing cards,
cabbies cursing each other with fists
while the music of church bells
sails over the street,
and the father, angry and tired
after working all day,
embracing his little girl,
kissing her,
mi vida, mi corazón,
brushing the hair out of her eyes
so she can see.