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I have a Wendell Berry poem that you posted a long time ago -The Peace of Wild Things. I have it taped onto my desk right in front of me and have taken comfort from it many a time. I just sent it to a friend in trouble, hoping it would soothe him some. Thank you for doing this.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
The Percherons
My sister and I went out to them with sugar
cubes and bridled their heads when they bent down
to eat from our palms. We led them over
to the long white fence on which we climbed
to the topmost rail, then threw our legs
across their backs, clutching the reins to steady
ourselves against their girth, steering them out
into the hills until we were lost, or thought
we were, only to find ourselves at Judith
Creek or Holcomb Rock where we’d turn back
in the early dark, gripping their manes, crouching
low, galloping hard on the high soft
road across the fields to the open barn.
- Chard DeNiord
The Morning’s News
The morning’s news drives sleep out of the head
at night. Uselessness and horror hold the eyes
open to the dark. Weary, we lie awake
in the agony of the old giving birth to the new
without assurance that the new will be better.
I look at my son, whose eyes are like a young god’s,
they are so open to the world.
I look at my sloping fields now turning
green with the young grass of April. What must I do
to go free? I think I must put on
a deathlier knowledge, and prepare to die
rather than enter into the design of man’s hate.
I will purge my mind of the airy claims
of church and state. I will serve the earth
and not pretend my life could better serve.
Another morning comes with its strange cure.
The earth is news. Though the river floods
and the spring is cold, my heart goes on,
faithful to a mystery in a cloud,
and the summer’s garden continues its descent
through me, toward the ground.
- Wendell Berry
Borrowing
What do we own after all in this life?
Shards of the moon, a shudder of pearl
through oak leaves wrestling with the wind,
its light borrowed, as our own hearth fires,
from the sun.
Wouldn’t it be better if from the beginning
we learned the truth – that all is lent,
that only our souls belong to us, and they, too,
only for the lease-hold of our days,
and little we know that number or what comes after.
Astonishing in sunlight, the lilies have split their long buds
to open each separate petal -- butter yellow blossoms
ignited like the moon, as if from within.
Remember spring’s first grass?
The same impossible incandescence
we once held and now must bring forth from within
to burnish and give unto others – slyly
and without effort, assuming another purpose – light
escaping everywhere -- in the bodhisattva who passes
no judgment, the old horse alone in the field, or the man
in Tianamen Square, side-stepping to stay in the path
of the tank. Light, the flood of it! Brief
and unforgettable -- the broken moon, the lilies of the field.
- Elizabeth Herron
A Day is Coming
A day is coming
in which misery will end.
A day is coming
in which poverty
will open bank accounts
in every nation.
A day is coming.
I hear it coming.
A day is coming
in which the
campesino
will gather his children a green spring
and go on vacations.
I believe it.
I see it.
A day is coming
in which a soldier will be
decorated
for helping
instead of killing
his poor brother.
A day is coming
in which lovers
will serve themselves from large bowls
warm love and faithfulness.
A day is coming
in which the Christ who returns
is the Christ who never left.
A day is coming
in which the father will ask the son
for friendship
instead of respect.
A day is coming
in which the student
and a poor laborer
will be half and half.
A day is coming
in which the prisoners
come out
running in the fields and shouting
about their freedom.
A day is coming,
I see it coming.
- Lalo Delgado
It is no gift I tender,
A loan is all I can;
But do not scorn the lender;
Man gets no more from man.
Oh, mortal man may borrow
What mortal man can lend;
And 'twill not end to-morrow,
Though sure enough 'twill end.
If death and time are stronger,
A love may yet be strong;
The world will last for longer,
But this will last for long.
- A.E. Housman
Anthem
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen
elegy for the red-breasted bird, rev 1
for Robin
red-breasted bird
crimson song as wide as his heart
gifts of joy flying off every feather
bringer of light and promise
that dark and cold are not forever
to exorcise his pain
he has taken his all from us
to end the despair
he has bled his wounds to silence
hearing again the mourning-shrouded message
that something was at its end
its time was up
he thought it meant his life entire
all too common a mistake
the hand of death abides
holds the hand of life itself
they walk together yin and yang through all our days
our battles our celebrations our silent hours
we who tire of the unwelcome darkness
we who cannot imagine
coming through the next endless night
we who hear the roaring siren call of surcease
and lie in the shadows of forgetting
are easy prey for the lurking error
the knife is always at the ready
it can kill or it can pare
behold how often do we prune the vine so it will flower
dead-head the rose to urge its blossom
run one more lap to tone the tired muscle
it is too late for him
red-breast will not serenade again
but the call to die will rise in us again
the call to death is real its urgency intense
demanding response it will not disappear
but let us listen again
it is a gift a priceless tune
and we must remember how to hear it
we must harken we must seek
we must embark on the dark treasure hunt
until the hidden culprit is known
until what must be heard behind the siren-song is heard
until what has become burden is left behind
until that which is at its end is allowed to die
until what keeps us fettered is released
so that all that can still live and laugh and love in us
does remain
- Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg
©
Building With Its Face Blown Off
How suddenly the private
Is revealed in a bombed-out city,
How the blue and white striped wallpaper
Of a second story bedroom is now
Exposed to the lightly falling snow
As if the room had answered the explosion
Wearing only its striped pajamas.
Some neighbors and soldiers
Poke around in the rubble below
And stare up at the handing staircase,
The portrait of a grandfather,
A door dangling from a single hinge.
And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed
By its uncovered ochre walls,
The twisted mess of its plumbing,
The sink sinking to its knees,
The ripped shower curtain,
The torn goldfish trailing bubbles.
It’s like a dollhouse view
As if a child on its knees could reach in
And pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.
Or it might be a room on a stage
In a play with no characters,
No dialogue or audience,
No beginning, middle and end-
Just the broken furniture in the street,
A shoe among the cinder blocks,
A light snow still falling
On a distant steeple, and people
Crossing a bridge that still stands.
And beyond that- crows in a tree,
The statue of a leader on a horse,
And clouds that look like smoke,
And even farther on, in another country
On a blanket under a shade tree,
A man pouring wine into two glasses
And a woman sliding out
The wooden pegs of a wicker hamper
Filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.
- Billy Collins
The Kookaburras
In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
their cage, they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them
no, and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.
- Mary Oliver
not an elegy for Mike Brown
I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name
his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
until we forget what we are mourning
& isn’t that what being black is about?
not the joy of it, but the feeling
you get when you are looking
at your child, turn your head,
then, poof, no more child.
that feeling. that’s black.
\\
think: once, a white girl
was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan war.
later, up the block, Troy got shot
& that was Tuesday. are we not worthy
of a city of ash? of 1000 ships
launched because we are missed?
always, something deserves to be burned.
it’s never the right thing now a days.
I demand a war to bring the dead boy back
no matter what his name is this time.
I at least demand a song. a song will do just fine.
\\
look at what the lord has made.
above Missouri, sweet smoke.
- Danez Smith
well at least something beautiful has come out of this tragedy ...
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
The Talk
It’s more than time we had that talk
about what to say and where to walk,
how to act and how to strive,
how to be upright and stay alive.
How to live and how to learn,
how to dig and be dug in return.
When to concede and when to risk,
how to handle stop and frisk:
Keep your hands where they can see
and don’t reach for your ID
until they request it quite clearly.
Speak politely and answer sincerely.
The law varies according to where you are,
whether you’re traveling by foot or driving a car.
It won’t help to be black and proud,
nor will you be safer in a crowd.
Keeping your speech calm and restrained,
ask if, in fact, you’re being detained.
If the answer is no, you’re free to go.
If the answer is yes, remained unfazed
to avoid being choked, shot or tased.
Give every cop your ear, but none your wit;
don’t tempt him to fold, spindle, mutilate, hit
or otherwise cause pain
to tendons, bones, muscles, brain.
These are things you need to know
if you want to safely come and go.
But still there is no guarantee
that you will make it home to me.
Despite all our care and labor,
you might frighten a cop or a neighbor
whose gun sends you to eternal sleep,
proving life’s unfair and talk is cheap.
- Jabari Asim
Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
- Langston Hughes
The Street Cleaner
She had a purpose
Cleaning the streets
Some days it was dirt
Some days it was trash
And some days it was
Rose petals
From the funeral marches
Strewn on the road
By insane mothers and fathers
Who lost their sons and daughters
Infants and grand-children
To war
She heard the voices
Which arose from the dead
Bodies never buried
With her broom in hand
She dutifully
Made circles of rose petals
In the quiet places
To honor them
A touch of beauty
She thought
In this time of darkness
Then she moved on
Her palm frond broom in hand
Cleaning
- Corlene Van Sluizer
Stop Throwing My Country To The Wind
If the flames of anger rise any higher in this land
Your name on your tombstone will be covered with dirt.
You have become a babbling loudmouth.
Your insolent ranting, something to joke about.
The lies you have found, you have woven together.
The rope you have crafted, you will find around your neck.
Pride has swollen your head, your faith has grown blind.
The elephant that falls will not rise.
Stop this extravagance, this reckless throwing of my country to the wind.
The grim-faced rising cloud, will grovel at the swamp's feet.
Stop this screaming, mayhem, and bloodshed.
Stop doing what makes God's creatures mourn with tears.
My curses will not be upon you, as in their fulfillment.
My enemies' afflictions also cause me pain.
You may wish to have me burned, or decide to stone me.
But in your hand match or stone will lose their power to harm me.
- Simin Behbahani
(1927-2014)
(Translated from the Farsi by Kaveh Safa and Farzaneh Milani)
Rise and Fall
Let go of fear
and rest in that which is.
For peace, like love,
comes to those who allow it.
Let go of fear
and rest in stillness.
Watch the breath rise...
and fall.
Watch the tide rise...
and fall.
Watch towers rise...
and fall.
Watch walls rise...
and fall.
Watch statues rise...
and fall.
Watch empires rise...
and fall.
Watch the breath rise...
and fall.
Let go of fear
and rest in the arms
of the One
who has always held you,
the One who holds
atoms and empires
and oceans and stars.
Let go of fear
and watch what happens next.
- Larry Robinson
Poetics
I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms
things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:
not the shape on paper — though
that, too — but the
uninterfering means on paper:
not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.
- A. R. Ammons
Sure On This Shining Night
Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.
- James Agee
Meadowsweet
Tradition suggests that certain of the Gaelic
women poets were buried face down.
So they buries her, and turned home,
a drab psalm
hanging about them like haar*,
not knowing the liquid
trickling from her lips
would seek its way down,
and that caught in her slowly
unraveling plait of grey hair
were summer seeds:
meadowsweet, bastard balm,
tokens of honesty, already
beginning their crawl
toward light, so showing her,
when the time came,
how to dig herself out -
to surface and greet them,
mouth young, and full again
of dirt ,and spit, and poetry
- Kathleen Jamie
*cold and damp air: fog
The Earth Quaked
03:20
as sudden as
a missile strike
quaking earth
sent me rushing
naked into the street
what does it mean when we no
longer trust the ground we stand on?
or the sky above?
did it wake the birds?
did they too hold their breath
waiting for
the great silence?
- andrew zarrillo
The Last Drought
Winds that bring no clouds
clouds that carry no rain
falling rain that doesn’t reach the ground
I grieve bitterly for the home that has been lost
tonight outside: sounds of rain, of a thin
brief rain falling to the piteous earth—
voices tender as ghosts
that claim neither present nor future
yet the memory of a birth-right to rain
lingers— crystalline, flawed
reaching across synapses
that are already doomed by delusion
we are dispossessed
we wait
but we are owed nothing by the sky.
- Lee Perron, © 2014.
The Man with the Hoe
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power.
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More fraught with menace to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?
- Edwin Markham
Crow Justice
As I pump gas, a flock of crows passes
Overhead. Then another flock arrives,
And another, and a third, fourth, and fifth.
Jesus, the sky itself is made of crows,
And they’re louder than the nearby freeway.
Could this be a family reunion?
Maybe these dark birds are planning for war.
Then, with one great hush, the flock goes silent,
And separates into living currents,
And forms winged rivers around a mid-air
Island of three quickly deserted crows.
Why? I don’t know at first, but then one bird,
Much larger than the rest, breaks from the flock,
Quickly followed by other large, fast birds,
And leads a mass attack on the lost crows
And snap-snap-snaps their necks, and as they fall,
Tears them in half. As the crow-pieces hit
Hot pavement, the flock, as one, celebrates,
Yes, they celebrate, And I realize
That I saw a public execution.
A murder of crows, indeed, but what crimes,
Among the crows, are punishable by
Death? I can’t begin to understand crow
Morality, Hey, I don’t want to try,
But justice, like time, flies and flies and flies.
- Sherman Alexie
He uses language with such artistry
But what a dreadful image of the man
Without whose labors we would revert to
The life of shepherds, hunter/gatherers.
If I'm missing something here please tell me -
Tell me what it is. Tell me what you see
Tell me what you hear. Tell me what you know
Tell me how you wrap your mind around it.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Markham was deeply touched by a woodcut print he saw of an exploited laborer. It haunted him and his emotional response resulted in the poem. His words:
“As I studied Millet’s The Man with the Hoe, I realized that I was looking on no mere man of the field: but was looking on a plundered peasant, typifying the millions left over as the debris from the thousand wars of masters and from their long industrial oppressions, extending over the ages. This Hoe-man might be a stooped consumptive toiler in a New York City sweatshop; a man with a pick, spending nearly all his days underground in a West Virginia coal mine; a man with a labor-broken body carrying a hod in a London street; a boatman with strained arms and aching back rowing for hours against the heavy current of the Volga.”
The social reform movements of the time were the perfect fuel for the rise in popularity of this poem. He is talking about the injustice of exploitation of labor through time, from the beginning of human recorded history up until and including the labor exploitation he saw in his present world.
The lines you cite refer to the fact that so very little appreciation is felt towards the extremely hard labor that goes into the luxuries we enjoy, so without these labors, we would still be in the hunter gatherer phase of human development. We can still say the same thing today. Without the labor of farm workers planting, plowing, pruning and picking in the hot California sun, we would not be able to enjoy the gifts of avocados, grapes, citrus fruits, lettuce, peppers.
Aldous Huxley said “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by gardenmaniac:
thank you so much for this, Chris. I had no idea. And his words about the painting? As powerful as the poem ...
On Living
I
Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example --
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people--
even for people whose faces you've never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.
II
Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery--
which is to say we might not get up
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see if it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast...
Let's say we're at the front--
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind--
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.
III
This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space...
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived..."
- Nazim Hikmet
Nazim Hikmet was arrested and sentenced to 28 yrs in prison on the grounds that military cadets were reading his poems, particularly the Epic of Sheik Bedreddin 1936 about the 15th c. peasant rebellion against Ottoman rule. It was the last of his books to appear in Turkey during his lifetime.
With Few Exceptions
All death is generic, off the
rack, or on, it's one thing or
another. Old age, that Fool
who crossed the centerline
with whom you now share
That same sad anniversary.
Death of the celebrated is
still simply a dissolution of
sorts, even assassinations,
poisonings, softly in the
Bed-You-Made. Generic,
not custom, not special, an
Organ or another fails, a cell spirals
into more, then more, replicating
its cruel self. All death is like that
not exceptional unless
You're the one jogging that
Lonely stretch of beach just as
a rotting Whale reaches gaseous
Perfection and explodes,
or while walking the dog, a perigee moon
making midnight into day, a drop
of Space Detritus finds you unaware
and unafraid and the dog stays beside
you while you gratefully
tell your life goodbye.
- Rebecca del Rio
The Last Wolf
The last wolf hurried toward me
through the ruined city,
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby-crowned highrises
left standing,
their lighted elevators useless
Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping gait
closer the sounds in the deadly night
through clutter and rubble of quiet blocks
I heard his voice ascending the hill
and at last his low whine as he came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched
He trotted across the floor
he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered
Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.
- Mary TallMountain
A Zero-Circle
Be helpless and dumbfounded,
unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come
from grace to gather us up.
We are too dulleyed to see the beauty.
If we say "Yes we can," we¹ll be lying.
If we say "No, we don¹t see it,"
that "No" will behead us
and shut tight our window into spirit.
So let us not be sure of anything,
beside ourselves, and only that, so
miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero-circle, mute,
we will be saying finally,
with tremendous eloquence, "Lead us."
When we¹ve totally surrendered to that beauty,
we¹ll become a mighty kindness.
- Jelalludin Rumi
Mathnawi IV, 3748-3754
(Translation by Coleman Barks)
A Brave And Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
- Maya Angelou
What I Want
What I want is to see your face
In a tree, in the sun coming out,
In the air.
What I want is
To hear the falcon-drum and light again
On your forearm.
You say, "Tell him I'm not here." The sound
Of that brusque dismissal
Becomes what I want.
To see in every palm your elegant silver coin shavings,
To turn with the wheel of the rain,
To fall with the falling bread
Of every experience,
To swim like a huge fish
In ocean water,
To be Jacob recognizing Joseph.
To be a desert mountain
Instead of a city.
I'm tired of cowards.
I want to live with lions.
With Moses.
Not whining, teary people. I want
The ranting of drunkards.
I want to sing like birds sing,
Not worrying who hears,
Or what they think.
Last night,
A great teacher went from door to door
With a lamp. "He who is not to be found
Is the one I'm looking for."
Beyond wanting, beyond place, inside form,
That one. A flute says, I have no hope
For finding that.
But love plays
And is the music played.
Let that musician
Finish this poem. Shams,
I am a waterbird
Flying into the sun.
- Jellaludin Rumi
(Translated by Coleman Barks)
A conversation with the Moon
You are in your heavens Miz Moon
And I am in my cups.
The Japanese named their Lunar Goddess
"Tsukiyomi-no-mikoto"
("The Great, The Exalted")
And, luminous as you are tonight
Surrounded by a galaxy of stars,
I certainly concur.
Artemis was the handle
For your Exalted-ness,
That Socrates and Homer
Used in prayer.
And in some yesterday,
For that for same purpose.
The Romans renamed you
......"Diana"
That was after
The Big Botta Bang
of course
But before the Pope
was a Catholic,
And before the botta bing
(Blame it on the brandy, Miz Moon )
Will a Moon Goddess
still accept a prayer,
From a punster
For one who really shined.
On this day...,Septemer 9th
in 1940, John Lennon was born
In the midst of bombing raids
on Liverpool
Just to be Hinkled to his end
on my birthday 12/8/1980
Please shine brightly on that boy
Today and or all time
Remember each night, his prayer
"Give Peace A Chance."
Thank you, and good morning.
- Patrick Burns
For Failure
The will of color loves how light spreads
Through its diffusions, making textures subtle,
Clothing a landscape in concealment
For color to keep its mysteries
Hidden from the unready eye.
But the light that comes after rain
Is always fierce and clear,
And illuminates the face of everything
Through the transparency of rain.
Despite the initial darkening,
This is the light that failure casts.
Beholden no more to the promise
Of what dream and work would bring.
It shows where roots have withered
And where the source has gone dry.
The light of failure has no mercy
On the affections of the heart;
It emerges from beyond the personal,
A wiry, forthright light that likes to see crevices
Open in the shell of a controlled life.
Though cruel now, it serves a deeper kindness,
Wise to the larger call of growth.
It invites us to humility
And the painstaking work of acceptance
So that one day we may look back
In recognition and appreciation
At the disappointment we now endure.
- John O’Donohue
synchronicity for me reading this today! sharing further.
♥ ॐ
with a heart & an om, and heck let's throw in a Sun,
for even though the poem is about "failure" and does
not use cosmetics to disguise its cracked, broken landscape,
it yet opens the silver lining...:waccosun:
How Will It Feel To Be Brushed By The Lion's Mane
Hot and fiery, cool and indifferent
Will it sing me a song of the past
Bring up my ancestors from the unleavened earth
How will it feel to be touched,
Touched by the flame of that lion’s mane
Tawny, golden eyes that see through me,
Find my true selves on the other side.
How will it feel to hear
The lion’s roar
In the early morning
Dew hanging softly on a spider’s web.
How will it feel to come home
To the space between the worlds
Where the rust colored earth
Holds secrets that I still want to know
That I still need to know.
I want to make poems
While thinking of the bread of heaven
And the cup of astonishment.
I want to make poems
That look into the earth
And the heavens and see the unseable.
I want to make poems to thank
Those who have come before
Touched the earth
And made it holy
So that I may walk
And know who I am
Speaking through my ancestors
The voices of those who will speak through my veins.
How will it feel
To be brushed by the lion’s mane?
- Margaret Caminsky-Shapiro
(With appreciation to Dorothy Walters poem, “Seekers”)
You Will Never Be Alone
You will never be alone, you hear so deep
A sound when autumn comes. Yellow
Pulls across the hills and thrums,
Or the silence after lightning before it says
Its names—and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
Apologies. You were aimed from birth:
You will never be alone. Rain
Will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
Long aisles—you never heard so deep a sound,
Moss or rock, and years. You turn your head—
That’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.
- William Stafford
Bats in the Belfry
Bats are the least of the beasts
that may inhabit the belfry.
Sometimes the touch of the full moon
on the ropes are enough
to stir the clappers
& set the bells to clanging
spreading panic among the denizens
made of our phobias & frights.
The bats flit & the other beasts
crawl, skitter, scamper about.
Blame the moon who cannot help
touching all in her light
including the ropes that bind us.
- Rafael Jesús González
Murciélagos en el campanario
Murciélagos son los menores de las bestias
que puedan habitar el campanario.
A veces el toque de la luna llena
en las sogas basta
para agitar los badajos
y poner las campanas a clamar
difundiendo pánico entre los residentes
compuestos de nuestras fobias y sustos.
Los murciélagos vuelan y los otros bichos
se arrastran, saltan, huyen.
Culpa a la luna que no pueda
no tocar todo bajo su luz
inclusive los lasos que nos atan.
© Rafael Jesús González 2014
Very little has happened
they tell me I was born
I don’t remember
parents gone
children grown
a grandchild
red sandstone
hard granite
from 30,000 feet
in this airplane
the clouds below
are white
- trout black
Rumi's Moon
After words flutter about
followed by proclamations of “Ahhh!!!”
I step down off the back porch
into the mystery of evening
I stand on the bare dirt
making out moonglow
just over the roofline
there she is in her glory
for the last full moon of summer
And over there
the old church’s cathedral spire
is fully lit like a rocket on the launching pad
aiming for an unknown destination
that has already been reached in moonlight
The moon says:
There is nowhere to go
that cannot be found here
the journey and the destination
are one and the same
So, enjoy the fluttering
followed by “Ahhh!!!”
and savor the dark drive home
- Marshal McKitrick
For The Children
The rising hills, the slopes
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
- Gary Snyder
September
September first comes round in my cold knees.
In voices from the next room, and the body
radiant from a shower.
September comes with the tinnitus of country silence,
the blue bay that keeps things still.
The uselessness of success in spiritual practice
seems lasting. But that’s such a weak account
of the even weaker failure of weakness.
For the fact is if I can’t offer half an hour
to the One who gave me life…
if I can’t listen for even half an hour for Him…
if I can’t offer the One a half hour of gratitude for that…
then immodesty has no limit.
You hear what I am saying, I know.
I am not someone who so treasures his every mood
that he must thrust each precious slice into you,
and I don’t feel bad at all here. I feel good.
Because I know you’re listening.
Maybe.
May Be. The mediation, the message, is:
the embryo of glee.
In September it starts to stir.
Before the end – just watch it –
it wants to be born,
once more.
- Bruce Moody
The Kookaburras
In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
their cage, they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them
no, and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.
- Mary Oliver
Mending the Cloth
For my ailing father, WWII Veteran and POW/MIA for nine months, and
his fallen Humpin’ Honey B-29 crew, lost 12-7-44.
Through the slits of sun shining on the backroads,
I imagine my father's fallen crew sewing
him back together when he crosses over.
Nine men, each with silk from the parachutes
they never had time to open, taking the tiniest
of stitches to mend his torn cloth.
In return, my father gives back the singular
heartbeats he has carried for them
these past sixty-eight years.
Finally free of the weight
of each man's final moments, my father soars
back to his hometown, to his mother and father and sisters,
to the wife and daughters who knew
a duty-bound man with unresolved grief
and the guilt of having survived.
Sometimes the most generous contracts we make
carry the heaviest burdens. It takes
years until the debt is repaid,
each side to the other.
Sometimes we never know the reason
so many had to suffer. We can only know
what the heavens reveal
on a solitary afternoon when peace drops in
alone and unannounced
like a silver needle
falling from the sky.
- Jackie Hallerberg
Mirrors At 4 AM
You must come to them sideways
In rooms webbed in shadow,
Sneak a view of their emptiness
Without them catching
A glimpse of you in return.
The secret is,
Even the empty bed is a burden to them,
A pretense.
They are more themselves keeping
The company of a blank wall,
The company of time and eternity
Which, begging your pardon,
Cast no image
As they admire themselves in the mirror,
While you stand to the side
Pulling a hanky out
To wipe your brow surreptitiously.
- Charles Simic
Sent from my iPad
End Of Summer
An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.
I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.
Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.
- Stanley Kunitz
Sent from God knows where.
Dream On
Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.
- James Tate
Larry, this poem just made me smile
it speaks of those, so blind and deaf,
who think their lives worthwhile
yet their kids go bad to steal a verse
to fill that awful void.
Oh, they're the ones who pay the price
for the beauty of a painted word.
"Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial."
[QUOTE=Larry Robinson;183539]Dream On
Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing....
Nocturne
Last night in bed
I mouthed a prayer
of my own composition.
It sounded offhand, it was carelessly
addressed, it twisted my meaning
entirely, it left an ache,
I didn’t know what I was doing.
So I took down my yellowed copy
of French With Pictures
by the late literary critic I.A. Richards
and I put my petition
into soft French words.
I.A. Richards believed that irony
was the language of redemption.
He wrote and lectured famously on this,
but his masterpiece was French With Pictures.
“The chapeau is on the table.”
“The man with the beard stands before the window.”
“She comes from a village by the sea.”
There is no improving the old traditions.
They are already mortal, partial, and wrong.
The woman at the table by the window
puts her head into her hands.
“Into your hands,” she said.
- Sara Miller
Sent from Yazd.
Tashlikh
These are the days of awe -
time of inventory
and a new beginning
when harvest of what we sowed
comes in.
(What have we sown
of discord & terror?
Where have we fallen short
of justice?)
The scales dip & teeter;
there is so much
to discard,
so much to atone.
When our temples stood
we loaded a goat
with our transgressions
and sent it to the wild.
Now we must search our pockets
for crumbs of our trespasses,
our sins to cast upon the rivers.
The days are upon us
to take stock of our hearts.
It is time to dust
the images of our household gods,
our teraphim,
our lares.
© Rafael Jesús González 2014
Tashlij
Estos son los días de temor -
tiempo del inventario
y un nuevo comienzo
cuando la cosecha de lo que sembramos
entra.
(¿Qué hemos sembrado
de discordia y terror?
¿Dónde hemos fallado
en la justicia?)
Las balanzas se inclinan y columpian;
hay tanto de que deshacerse,
tanto por lo cual expiar.
Cuando estaban en pie nuestros templos
cargábamos una cabra
con nuestros pecados
y la echábamos al desierto.
Ahora tenemos que buscar en los bolsillos
las migas de nuestras faltas,
nuestros pecados para echarlos a los ríos.
Están sobre nosotros los días
para hacer inventario del corazón.
Es tiempo de sacudir
las imagines de nuestros dioses domésticos,
nuestros térafim,
nuestros lares.
© Rafael Jesús González
Sent from Isfahan.
A Message From The Wanderer
Today outside your prison I stand
and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
you have relatives outside. And there are
thousands of ways to escape.
Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
and shouted my plans to jailers;
but always new plans occured to me,
or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
or some stupid jailer would forget
and leave the keys.
Inside, I dreamed of constellations—
those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
heroes that exist only where they are not.
Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as—often, in light, on the open hills—
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then—even before you see—
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.
That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.
Now—these few more words, and then I’m
gone: Tell everyone just to remember
their names, and remind others, later, when we
find each other. Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way—
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.
There will be that form in the grass.
- William Stafford
Belief In Magic
How could I not?
Have seen a man walk up to a piano
and both survive.
Have turned the exterminator away.
Seen lipstick on a wine glass not shatter the wine.
Seen rainbows in puddles.
Been recognized by stray dogs.
I believe reality is approximately 65% if.
All rivers are full of sky.
Waterfalls are in the mind.
We all come from slime.
Even alpacas.
I believe we’re surrounded by crystals.
Not just Alexander Vvedensky.
Maybe dysentery, maybe a guard’s bullet did him in.
Nonetheless.
Nevertheless
I believe there are many kingdoms left.
The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather.
A single gem has throbbed in my chest my whole life
even though
even though this is my second heart.
Because the first failed,
such was its opportunity.
Was cut out in pieces and incinerated.
I asked.
And so was denied the chance to regard my own heart
in a jar.
Strange tangled imp.
Wee sleekit in red brambles.
You know what it feels like to hold
a burning piece of paper, maybe even
trying to read it as the flames get close
to your fingers until all you’re holding
is a curl of ash by its white ear tip
yet the words still hover in the air?
That’s how I feel now.
- Dean Young
Barking
The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.
- Jim Harrison
Absolution
The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.
Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
And loss of things desired; all these must pass.
We are the happy legion, for we know
Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass.
There was an hour when we were loth to part
From life we longed to share no less than others.
Now, having claimed this heritage of heart,
What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?
- Siegfried Sassoon
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
- W. H. Auden
Sent from Tehran.
Nest
I awaken
To find your head
Loaded with sleep,
Branching my chest.
Feel the streams
Of your breathing
Dream through my heart.
From the new day,
Light glimpses
The nape of your neck.
Tender is the weight
Of your sleeping thought
And all the worlds
That will come back
When you raise your head
And look.
- John O’Donohue
This Is Not To Say
A garden shows the care of hands, but this is not to say those hands have made it grow.
That birds will sing among the trees is not to say that trees will harbor song, and
Too, though drought withers the vine, this is not to say the Sun brings death to life.
That a person like a flower in love may bloom is not to say that love is like a flower, or
When by candlelight two lovers burn, that’s not to say the candle is the fire.
Thoughts may dart and school like minnows, knowing nothing of the sea,
Though this is not to say that water, mute infinity of liquid sparks,
Could not rise into a cloud to rain upon a garden, or shade the gardener’s eye.
This is not to say that thoughts are love or candlelight or song,
This is not to say a garden, or the gardener, is a cloud.
- Lewis Caraganis
Room For My Father's Ghost
Now is my father
A traveler, like all the bold men
He talked of, endlessly
And with boundless admiration,
Over the supper table,
Or gazing up from his white pillow —
Book on his lap always, until
Even that grew too heavy to hold.
Now is my father free of all binding fevers.
Now is my father
Traveling where there is no road.
Finally, he could not lift a hand
To cover his eyes.
Now he climbs to the eye of the river,
He strides through the Dakotas,
He disappears into the mountains.
And though he looks
Cold and hungry as any man
At the end of a questing season,
He is one of them now.
He cannot be stopped.
Now is my father
Walking in the wind,
Sniffing the deep Pacific
That begins at the end of the world.
Vanished from us utterly,
Now is my father circling the deepest forest —
Then turning in to the last red campfire burning
In the final hills,
Where chieftains, warriors and heroes
Rise and make him welcome,
Recognizing, under the shambles of his body,
A brother who has walked his thousand miles.
- Mary Oliver
Concurrence
Each day's terror, almost
a form of boredom-- madmen
at the wheel and
stepping on the gas and
the brakes no good --
and each day one,
sometimes two, morning-glories,
faultless, blue, blue sometimes
flecked with magenta, each
lit from within with
the first sunlight.
- Denise Levertov
Bedecked
Tell me it's wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy
store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger.
He's bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star
choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.
Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says
sticker earrings look too fake.
Tell me I should teach him it's wrong to love the glitter that a
boy's only a boy who'd love a truck with a remote that revs,
battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping
off tracks into the tub.
Then tell me it's fine—really—maybe even a good thing—a boy
who's still got some girl to him,
and I'm right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in
the park.
Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son
who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means—
this way or that—but for the way facets set off prisms and
prisms spin up everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he's cast rainbows—made every
shining true color.
Now try to tell me—man or woman—your heart was ever once
that brave.
- Virginia Redel
This Ecstasy
It’s not paradise I’m looking for
but the naming I hardly gave a thought to.
Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness
among the animals before I started
listening to the news. Call it the hint
I had about the knowledge that would explode.
In the meantime, which is real time
plus the past, you’re swishing your skirt
and speaking French, which is more
than I can take, which I marvel at
like a boy from the most distant seat
in the Kronos Dome, where I am one
of so many now I see the point
of falling off. There’s not enough seats
for us all to attend the eschaton.
This ecstasy that plants beauty
on my tongue, so that if it were
a wing, I’d be flying with the quickness
of a hummingbird and grace of a heron,
is so much mercy in light of the darkness
that comes. Who would say consolation?
Who would say dross? Not that anyone
would blame them. All night I hear
so many echoes in the forest I’m tempted
to look back, to save myself in hindsight,
where all I see is the absence of me.
Where all I hear is your voice,
which couldn’t be more strange.
How to go on walking hand in hand
without our bodies on the path
we made for our feet, talking, talking?
- Chard DeNiord
That Child
That child was dangerous. That just-born
Newly washed and silent baby
Wrapped in deerskin and held warm
Against the side of its mother could understand
The language of birds and animals
Even when asleep. It knew why Bluejay
Was scolding the bushes, what Hawk was explaining
To the wind on the cliffside, what Bittern had found out
While standing alone in marsh grass. It knew
What the screams of Fox and the whistling of Otter
Were telling the forest. That child knew
The language of Fire
As it gnawed at sticks like Beaver
And what Water said all day and all night
At the creek's mouth. As its small fingers
Closed around Stone, it held what Stone was saying.
It knew what Bear Mother whispered to herself
Under the snow. It could not tell
Anyone what it knew. It would laugh
Or cry out or startle or suddenly stare
At nothing, but had no way
To repeat what it was hearing, what it wanted most
Not to remember. It had no way to know
Why it would fall under a spell
And lie still as if not breathing,
Having grown afraid
Of what it could understand. That child would learn
To sit and crawl and stand and begin
Putting one foot forward and following it
With the other, would learn to put one word
It could barely remember slightly ahead
Of the other and then walk and speak
And finally run and chatter,
And all the Tillamook would know that child
Had forgotten everything and at last could listen
Only to people and was safe now.
- David Wagoner
Making A Fist
We forget that we are all dead men conversing wtih dead men.
—Jorge Luis Borges
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
Cast All Your Votes For Dancing
I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even bloom!
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and works and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.
You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.
Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!
O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!
- Hafiz
Cultural Evolution
When from his cave, young Mao in his youthful mind
A work to renew old China first designed,
Then he alone interpreted the law,
and from tradtional fountains scorned to draw:
But when to examine every part he came,
Marx and Confucius turned out much the same.
- Carolyn Kizer
1925 - 2014
Democracy
If a tree falls in the forest
And no one is there to hear it
Does it make a sound
If a ballot falls in a box
And no one knows
What they are voting for
Does it really count
What happens to a dream deferred
To justice deterred
To life
When it becomes impossible to live it
I don't want to know
Because I want more than a vote
I want to be a participant
See
I want to live in a free country
A democracy
Where hate speech
Doesn't pass for freedom
Where
No one has to turn to crime
To feed their children
If you were to put
A measure on a ballot
I would vote for democracy
I want the same things as anyone
And i want them for everyone
I want to live in a free country
A democracy
Not with over two million
Locked in cages
Or millions more
Pushed into the street
Where as Ferguson shows
You cant even surrender
To police
One nation
Under ghetto birds
And terror copters
Locking down children
At the border
Cutting off
Families
From their water
While cutting lunch programs
To drop bombs on Iraq
I dont want to live like that
I want to live in a free country
A democracy
What happens to a dream deferred
To justice deterred
To life
When it becomes impossible
To live it
If you dont know who you are
You can never know your power
You dont know who you are
But you will soon find out
Let your voice be heard
And may it finally count
- Matt Sedillo
Jesus Incognito
Don’t tell anyone, but I love Jesus.
I love his big dark Jewish eyes, so full of suffering soul,
like an unemployed poet’s, and his thick sensuous Jewish lips,
and his kinky curly hair, just like mine, uncontrollable despite conditioners,
and the way he always argues with everyone
and will go to hell for love.
He’s just like that Buddhist god Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion,
except his name is easier to pronounce.
When you’re in trouble it’s hard to remember to yell for Avalokiteshvara,
but “Oh Jesus!” arises naturally
every time a crazy driver hot-dogs past me on the freeway.
I know I should say the Shema when I’m about to die,
but will I be able to remember Hebrew at a time like that?
I don’t want to die saying “Oh shit!”
I’d like to leave my body consciously, like a Tibetan lama, sitting in full lotus
with my head turned toward where I’ll reincarnate next.
But let’s be realistic: I probably couldn’t meditate enough to become enlightened
in the however-many years I have left.
Jesus seems easier. All you have to do is love everyone.
Well, seems is the key word here.
Sometimes the more you try
to love people, the more you hate them.
Maybe it would be better to try
not to love people, and then watch the love
force its way out of you like grass through cement.
Anything is better than organized religion.
I don’t like the singing in churches — all those hymns in major keys.
I don’t think religion should sound so triumphant.
It should be humble and aware of the basic incurable pathos of the human condition,
and in a minor key and sung in a mysterious ancient language, like Sanskrit or Hebrew.
Is it OK for me to love Jesus but not be Christian?
I could try to open my heart and give away all my possessions.
It’s not that different from being Buddhist, after all, except for a history
of witch burnings, the Inquisition, the subjugation,
rape, and pillage of indigenous peoples all over the world,
not to mention twenty centuries of vicious antisemitism. That’s a lot to overlook
to get back to a baby born among animals to a Jewish mother, Miryam.
And what about that other Mary, the sexy one? Jesus, I don’t believe you died a virgin.
I think you needed to taste everything human, to inhabit the whole mess:
blood, shit, flies, regret, envy, why-me.
I owe you and all the other bodhisattvas and sages
and newborn babies a debt of thanks
for agreeing to come back and marry yourselves
to our painful predicament again and again —
and I do thank you, bowing to the infinite directions.
- Alison Luterman
If my life is a mythological tale
then my art is all around me waiting to be formed
my freedom is demanding that I keep my eyes open
my demons are protective dragons swirling in my home
and my choices are doorways into potential realms...
a sliding door moment with each breath
what will I choose next?
if there is no tomorrow, so let me fly forth in this moment
for there is not art born of a moderate soul
what if I spoke my truth
what if I raged against the way things are
not accepting them like a good girl
would I be too much for you then?
how wild is too wild?
how free is too free?
I long to be wild as the wild horses
thundering and biting
racing under an untamed moon
I long to be on fire with flames song
torching my tongue
my lips split open
I long to stand on the wildest mountain
with my arms flung wide
fingers prying the heavens
I long to run through woods in the rain
dive into the rivers and
be born in Her oceans again
I am naked as I write this
I stand in the cold truth of my flesh
Curves and scars and sacred breath
I trace my ribs my belly my neck
Coming home to myself
Her mark...
Her mark is upon my skin
The broken open and the opening
Light is slowly trickling in
And a secret longing dares to begin
I tremble with immortal yearnings
- Suzanne Sterling
Seawater Stiffens Cloth
Seawater stiffens cloth long after it’s dried.
As pain after it’s ended stays in the body:
A woman moves her hands oddly
because her grandfather passed through
a place he never spoke of. Making
instead the old jokes with angled fingers.
Call one thing another’s name long enough,
it will answer. Call pain seawater, tree, it will answer.
Call it a tree whose shape of branches happened.
Call what branching happened a man
whose job it was to break fingers or lose his own.
Call fingers angled like branches what peel and cut apples,
to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking.
Call her afterward tree, call her seawater angled by silence.
- Jane Hirshfield
A Poem A Day
I got another poem today
Just like everyday
A miracle on the internet
Sometimes I read them
Sometimes I'm too busy
Yet they still come
A poem a day
The sender doesn't know
If I read them or not
Its his Yoga
He says it keeps him focused
A poem a day
Some of them are beautiful
Sometimes I scratch my head
What was the writer thinkin'
Some touch me deeply
Some I don't understand
Doesn't matter what I think though
They keep comin'
A poem a day
Today's poem
Cracked me open
Like a vase of water
Dropped and shattered
Its all about Jesus
Buddha
Sages who came to heal
Down home wisdom
Elegant and eloquent
Mind engaged then
Dragged straight to the heart
Sobbing at my computer desk
Tears on the keyboard
With a poem a day
My dog
With the compassion
Of all those sages
Wags her tail at my tears
Puts her nose on my knee
Looks soulfully up at me
With loving brown eyes
Is the dog a poem
The cat also
Comes and jumps up
Rubbing his head on my leg
Is the cat a poem too
Maybe the dog is Jesus
Always loving
And the cat is Buddha
Always reaching up
Just for me
A poem a day
- David McNair
Thank you Larry, for your poem each day.
It enlightens my soul in so many ways.
A poem a day can fill this bowl
It gives the mind a structured goal.
Way better than Sudoku or a crossword each day
It fills the soul in many a divergent way.
Like the astrology forecast of Mr. Rob Brezsney
One can bounce these new ideas across this vast, open sea.
Or for Hemmingway whose typed pages that were never trashed
With his previous words now published indeed he had cashed.
I’ll be glad with reading a poem each day
So I can write something new in some other way.
Words of poetry here don’t always have to rhyme,
But what better use of one’s mind is there with all this free time?
©2014Tim Gega
Your Bubbling Enthusiasm
Greets me and meets me,
Infuses me and enthuses me,
Imbues me and seduces me,
Excites me and delights me,
Smiles on me and shines on me,
Frees me and increases me,
Reflects me and protects me,
Pleases me and releases me,
Amazes me and encourages me.
Your Bubbling Enthusiasm completes me.
©2010Tim Gega
The Farm OnThe Great Plains
A telephone line goes cold;
birds tread it wherever it goes.
A farm back of a great plain
tugs an end of the line.
I call that farm every year,
ringing it, listening, still;
no one is home at the farm,
the line gives only a hum.
Some year I will ring the line
on a night at last the right one,
and with an eye tapered for braille
from the phone on the wall
I will see the tenant who waits—
the last one left at the place;
through the dark my braille eye
will lovingly touch his face.
“Hello, is Mother at home?”
No one is home today.
“But Father—he should be there.”
No one—no one is here.
“But you—are you the one . . . ?”
Then the line will be gone
because both ends will be home:
no space, no birds, no farm.
My self will be the plain,
wise as winter is gray,
pure as cold posts go
pacing toward what I know.
- William Stafford
Beggar's Song
Here’s a seed. Food
for a week. Cow skull
in the pasture; back room
where the brain was:
spacious hut for me.
Small then, and smaller.
My desire’s to stay alive
and be no larger
than a sliver
lodged in my own heart.
And if the heart’s a rock
I’ll whack it with this tin
cup and eat the sparks,
always screaming, always
screaming for more.
- Gregory Orr
Old Bones
Out there walking round, looking out for food,
a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed that you can crack
plucking, digging, snaring, snagging,
barely getting by,
no food out there on dusty slopes of scree—
carry some—look for some,
go for a hungry dream.
Deer bone, Dall sheep,
bones hunger home.
Out there somewhere
a shrine for the old ones,
the dust of the old bones,
old songs and tales.
What we ate—who ate what—
how we all prevailed.
- Gary Snyder
Flaws
Of the dead ones
it’s the flaws we remember most
and may the most cherish
that part of life they couldn’t ever get right
pain never stopped running riot along those nerves
something irreplaceable is gone forever
the breath knows more than the voice will say
grief is our first glimpse of eternity
still— young Psyche defiant in her love
walks tall and naked out of adolescence
into the forest of eventuality
the forest with the understory of thorns
hands bound with vines behind her back
at every turn she’s redder in the neck and chest
bleeding toward her Calvary
Woodland Artemis gestures with her chin to muse Erato—
Folly is the true wisdom of youth,
the will to exist.
- Lee Perron
Trust
The Precipice It doesn't matter when they appear, these thresholds, these footpaths that again and again end, drop in to a chasm. We shift out of a phase that lingered too long on a broken horizon.
We resist the fall with all our being, holding on like tenacious weeds to the cliff where meaning faltered, slipping from the place we made for it.
Now life's change waits like a stepchild at the doorstep of the house where it may belong. As it gets darker you are afraid of the next step's blind touch.
What can you now rely upon? Nothing to do about the encroaching fact of gravity, a hint of vertigo, anonymity.
The precipice is the resistance to the next moment, its unveiling, its miracle. Nothing to do but wait for a visualization, a vague shape of a memory that provides a theory of where you stand at this moment.
No other way but to perhaps study the light inside you.Abide in it as threshold, as prayer or as somebody who thinks about you as God.
Abide in that courage that arrives as trust.
- Rich Meyers
I Won't Come
I won't come
I wob't go
I won't live
I won't die
I'll keep uttering
The name
And lose myself
In it
I'm bowl
And I'm platter
I’m man
And I'm woman
I'm grapefruit
And I'm sweet lime
I'm Hindu
And I'm Muslim
I'm fish
And I'm net
I'm fisherman
And I’m time
I'm nothing
Says Kabir
I'm not among the living
Or the dead
- Kabir
(Translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra)
Growing Old
What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The luster of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
—Yes, but not this alone.
Is it to feel our strength—
Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more loosely strung?
Yes, this, and more; but not
Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dreamed ’twould be!
’Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow,
A golden day’s decline.
’Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,
The years that are no more.
It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young;
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.
It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion—none.
It is—last stage of all—
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.
- Matthew Arnold
The Secret Joy of Growing Old
The secret joy of growing old:
The new perspectives that unfold.
No longer needed every day;
No expectations come your way.
The years of toil are finally gone,
With generations moving on.
We always did as we were told,
Without a thought to growing old.
What does a formless future hold?
Is there a joy in growing old?
It's time to let your mind expand,
To hold life's wonder in your hand,
To sweep the floor and make the bed,
Be sure the animals are fed;
To watch a sunrise, smell the air,
Feel life revolving everywhere;
To water plants and pet the cat,
And taste the magic in all that.
So does a Paradise unfold:
The secret joy in growing old.
3-20-14
I like this better, Larry. smiles ....
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Voyeurs
—after the short documentary Vultures of Tibet by Russell O. Bush
We watch others
watch a Sky Burial
in the flapping winds of Tibet.
The vultures arrive
from the stony peaks
piecemeal at first
then as sky avalanche
a tumble of
boiling birds tearing
into flesh.
The curious pay a fee
to local officials
make a short climb
for the best angle
snap shots of the vultures
the human body.
We watch each other watch
audience
filmmakers
tourists
camera lenses
monks
vultures
their hard copper beaks
brown feathers fluttering
like prayer flags.
- Jodi Hottel
Dream On
Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.
- James Tate
:heart::heart::heart:Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Came up with this one yesterday afternoon:
Poetics 101
Behind every poem there lives a true life story.
Some words are laced with anguish and pain
while others are illuminated with magnificent glories.
Some Poems fall under the Ex Malus Gratis Theory
Where something good is later discovered
in something that was once thought dreary.
There are picket fence metaphors
and allegories and euphemisms galore
As some are dying to get in on this floor
while others would kill to get out of the door.
Some poets do it with rhymes
while others merely reflect on nostalgic times.
It’s as old as time these lexicons of rhymes
to bear ourselves in versed poetic lines.
Each one of us has a story to share
exposing our raw souls if we can dare.
Every poem becomes one hallmark
if you say it gently or create a spark.
Poetic journaling can help at times
untwist the logics in one’s own mind.
Not every script can be sublime
or written into such a comedy divine.
At times we wish our words would flow
to each and every average Jane and John Doe.
Unfurl that flag of emotion now
and share your pain and show us how.
Our words sometimes may be many
as the journey goes up a steep hill.
But when the past dies out in us
One hopes their poetry never will.
So master those words and you can’t go wrong
and maybe some day we will all sing your song.
Amazing Grace that saved a wretch like me
was nothing more than a sailor’s immortal epiphany.
This life is short and some take it for granted.
These poems are our voices and need to be ranted.
Silence is banal and who needs more of that?
Just find your own voice then punch a hole in your hat.
©2014Tim Gega
I always enjoy poems about poetry. My contribution...
Faking Poems
Only the really shrewd can tell.
I'm moaning in meter,
under white sheets of paper,
Turning some trickery
In pseudonymph style.
My well-crafted climax,
and creative writhing
are pulling the wool over
somebody’s sighs.
With my cunningly-acted
passionate breathing of metaphors,
arousal of muse,
I've been faking poems again
for some inarticulate love.
© Chris Dec 1990
Love it, Chris
Some days it's true, but they tend to lead to better lines at other times too...
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Chris Dec:
I've got one also
I need a new poem
not like the last one
something fresh
unpublished
something with a tinge of god
or trees
or mint crushed by a footstep
it doesn't have to be fancy
or slick
it just has to say what I mean
clearly
more of less
i need a new poem today
whatever is says
I'll accept
enjoy and move on
the poem need not speak
the deep meanings
or the cliches of the century
it only needs to speak its words
its sounds
it's meanings and innuendoes
what ever
they are
where ever they come from
from a void
or from a deep well
a mountaintop
the dirty gutter of a city
a glacier
just so the words
say something
say what needs to be said
i need a poem today
Richard Nichols
Shifting The Sun
When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses. May you inherit
his sun, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn’t.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.
- Diana Der-Hovanessian
I like it, Richard.
With all the neurons firing here today I feel like the earth is spinning just a bit faster today...
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." ~ WH Auden
And mine:
The Alchemy of Age
When we look with soft eyes,
the physical form becomes translucent with age.
Bodies, veils to spirit worlds, wear thin.
Life’s chafing smoothes hard edges and steeled egos.
Opalescent colors show through transparency.
Without youthful resistance feelings flow,
bless with cleansing springs.
Sorrow, when released,
purifies the heart,
reveals sweetness of being.
Anger owned becomes ardor
that can be ridden as a tiger
through rain forests of divine desire.
Self-examined elders eclipse
psyches’ erroneous beliefs,
transmute experience into wisdom,
emerge as alchemists of soul.
©2004 Star Kissed Shadows, Sher Lianne Christian
Into October
These must be the colors of returning
the leaves darkened now but staying on
into the bronzed morning among the seed heads
and the dry stems and the umbers of October
the secret season that appears on its own
a recognition without sound
long after the day when I stood in its light
out on the parched barrens beside a spring
all but hidden in a tangle of eglantine
and picked the bright berries made of that summer
- W.S. Merwin
Gardenmaniac, your quote inspired me to come up with this little ditty yesterday.Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by gardenmaniac:
Namaste
My Word Playground
The Dictionary is like crossing the Monkey Bars.
The Thesaurus is like going down the waterslide with ease.
The Swing is my imagination, flying fast and high or low and slow.
The Green Grass is my lush carpet where I can rest or dream all day.
And, the Tree of Knowledge sits in the center of it all.
It’s fun to play here alone, but it’s also fun to have playmates too.
My Time spent at the Word Playground is like a vacation paradise.
©2014 Tim Gega
Oatmeal
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unsual willingness to disintigrate, oatmeal should
not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John
Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something
from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
"Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad
a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through
his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his
pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if
they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket
through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay \ itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal
alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there
is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started
on it, and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their
clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering
furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneaously
gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh
to join me.
- Galway Kinnell (1927-2014)
To hear the poet read this poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xv8EY2vWJg
Sometimes the Dead
Sometimes the dead
drop in for a visit;
Unannounced,
they brush past me
on the front step
as I juggle groceries and keys.
Having no need
for doors locked or open,
they make themselves at home,
kick off their shoes, rest
their bones
on couch and creaking rocker.
While I put away
eggs and bread and cheese,
they thumb through yesterday’s
newspaper, old New Yorkers, dusty
books of poetry, arguing idly
over the TV remote.
Sometimes the dead
settle into the back seat;
while I drive
they lean out open windows,
letting the wind blow through them.
When it rains
they press pale cheeks
to cool glass, watching
ghostly reflections of light
on wet pavement.
Sometimes I think
they fiddle with the radio
when I’m not looking.
Why else would tears
spring to my eyes
at a song that was never ours?
Why else would I cry
at a certain turn in the road,
where spreading arms of valley oaks
reach out in empty embrace?
Sometimes I doubt,
but if the dead do not stop by,
why do I put down my fork,
the food in my mouth suddenly
ashes and dust?
Why, then, do I wrap myself
in blankets at night,
warding off the dull chill
of a room that is at once empty
and too full to bear?
- Lisa Shulman
The Hunkering
In October the red leaves going brown heap and
scatter
over hayfield and dirt road, over garden and circular
driveway,
and rise in a curl of wind disheveled as
schoolchildren
at recess, school just starting and summer done,
winter’s
white quiet beginning in ice on the windshield, in
hard frost
that only blue asters survive, and in the long houses
that once
more tighten themselves for darkness and
hunker down.
- Donald Hall
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
- Jane Kenyon
The Fall Almost Nobody Sees
Everybody’s gone away.
They think there’s nothing left to see.
The garish colors’ flashy show is over.
Now those of us who stay
hunker down in sweet silence,
blessed emptiness among
red-orange shadblow
purple-red blueberry
copper-brown beech
gold tamarack, a few
remaining pale yellow
popple leaves,
sedge and fern in shades
from beige to darkening red
to brown to almost black,
and all this in front of, below,
among blue-green spruce and fir
and white pine,
all of it under gray skies,
chill air, all of us waiting
in the somber dank and rain,
waiting here in quiet, chill
November,
waiting for the snow.
- David Budbill
You are quick to call me Brother,
In your made up Brotherhood.
But you don't know that I know,
What you wish you understood.
For you are not my Brother,
I know when I am down.
You're just an acquaintance,
Nowhere to be found.
-Michael Anthony-
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
- Wendell Berry