Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Solstice

Nothing has hindered
the advance of summer -
Not remains of fire
or fear of more,
Not crying children
or deportations,
Not nuclear proliferation
or lies
or murders
or the tearing apart
of our country at its core.

We are bound by nature,
a force as large within us
as around us.
We are one with it.
We are nature itself.

So when the rose greets us
let us feel renewed.
And when the lavender fields
are in full bloom,
let us, like the bees,
sing in harmony.
And let us drink the fruit of the vines
through centuries, perfected.

Let joy creep into our souls
and celebrate
that we have no control
of the seasons,
that summer still comes
and brings its warmth
and joys and fullness,
and carries us on its path
into the future, into the light,
into the sun.

- Sherrie Lovler

A poem sent today by William Rain, a gardner in Boulder:

A Ripe Fig

Now that you live in my chest,
anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.

Those other things that entice people,
like porcelain dolls from China,
which have made people weep for centuries,
even those are changing now.

What used to be pain is now a lovely bench
where we sit under the roses.

A left hand has become a right.
a black wall, a window,
a cushion in a heel of a shoe,
a leader of an assembly.

Intelligence and silence.
What we say is poison to some,
nourishing to others.

What we say is a ripe fig,
but not all birds that fly eat figs.

- Jellaludin Rumi
(translation by Coleman Barks)

Ghost Road Song
for my father, 11/19/1927 – 6/27/2009

I need a song.
I need a song like a river, cool and dark and wet,
like a battered old oak; gnarled bark,
bitter acorns,
a song like a dragonfly:
shimmer - hover - swerve -
like embers, too hot to touch.

I need a song like my father’s hands:
scarred, callused, blunt,
a song like a wheel,
like June rain, seep of solstice,
tang of waking earth.

I need a song like a seed:
a hard and shiny promise,
a song like ashes:
gritty, fine, scattered;
a song like abalone, tough as stone,
smooth as a ripple at the edge of the bay.

I need a song so soft, it won’t sting my wounds,
so true, no anger can blunt it,
so deep, no one can mine it.

I need a song with a heart wrapped in barbed wire.

I need a song that sheds no tears,
I need a song that sobs.
I need a song that skates along the edge of black ice,
howls with coyotes,
a song with a good set of lungs,
a song that won’t give out, give up,
give in, give way:
I need a song with guts.

I need a song like lightning, just one blaze of insight.

I need a song like a hurricane,
spiraled winds of chaos,
a snake-charming song,
a bullshit-busting song,
a shut-up-and-listen-to-the-Creator song.
I need a song that rears its head up like a granite peak
and greets the eastern sky.

I need a song small enough to fit in my pocket,
big enough to wrap around
the wide shoulders of my grief,
a song with a melody like thunder,
chords that won’t get lost,
rhythm that can’t steal away.
I need a song that forgives me my lack of voice.

I need a song that forgives my lack of forgiveness.

I need a song so right
that the first note splinters me like crystal,
spits the shards out into the universe
like sleek seedlings of stars; yes,
that’s the song
I need,

the song to accompany you
on your first steps
along the Milky Way,
that song with ragged edges,
a worn-out sun;
the song that lets a burnt red rim
slip away into the Pacific,
leaves my throat
healed at last.

- Deborah Miranda

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive

- N. Scott Momaday

For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet


Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

- Joy Harjo

In the Boboli


The summer has not yet arrived

and is already departing, time claims --

time that has seen everything, that turns

all history on its ruthless lathe. Time

has not bent down to the blades of grass

or touched its wrist to the fountain water.

Watch a pigeon dancing, turning around

and around. Leaves in late spring

are still until they lift in the wind.

Time might know the waste of autumn

as just one point in an inescapable now

when birth and destruction cannot be pried apart,

but a sparrow comes to a piece of apple

and for this small bird, each taste of it is abundance.


- Kevin Pryne

Because


Because the world is being broken

into allotments of dollars and loss

We will plant our fruit trees and lilies

in the cracks between paving stones.

Because the world is rinsed scarlet with blood

we will take our own reds of passion and heart

and place them in hearths and love’s look,

knowing their potential for healing fire.

Because the world’s spirit is being torn

we will mend our own webs of connection,

that fine lace, stretching between us,

connecting us into all life in every direction.

Because the sky is being clouded over

with smoke and dirt and armored stars

we will stand in the dark of mountains, in backstreet alleyways

and in deserts to call out the old names of the starry ones,

The sky dancers: Astarte, Arianrhod, Venus, Aditi, our eyes shining,

Our eyes shining with hope.


- Rose Flint

Fathers

The sail is up and the white boat smooths the river’s skin
steady as it makes down the river to the bay as though
an engine drew it, which perhaps it does.

Fathers are such craft. We do not know what drives them.
All we know is the glamour of our attention.

The white boat gives no answer, too far off for us to hear an engine go.
But fathers, like a prayer, move by a mute murmur past
and far. We relish them. We do not know them. We see
their back bend as they rustle leaves for chestnuts
the rats have not consumed, and we
find the shavings in the white sink odd.
We wonder at their idiocy, constancy, strength.
We wonder where their past lives went, so far gone
not one stain remains to tarnish and enliven them.

Did they play with toys? Wet their pants? Did they run and scream?
Fathers? Unimaginable.
Because all we see we admire.

We admire with big hearts, with hearts of awe.
We are ready to approve without doubt
the genius and the mystery of the male that made our
bread.

- Bruce Moody

Ancestors & Angels

I write words to catch up to the ancestors
An angel told me the only way
to walk through fire
without getting burned
is to become fire.
Some days angels whisper
In my ear as I walk
Down the street and I fall in love
With every person I meet,
And I think, maybe this
Could be a bliss
Like when Dante met
Beatrice.
Other days all I see
is my collusion
with illusion.
Ghosts of projection
masquerading
as the radiant angel
of love.
You know I feel like
the ancestors
brought us together.
I feel like the ancestors
Brought us here and they
Expect great things.
They
expect us to say what
we think and
live how
we feel and follow the hard paths
that bring us near joy.
They expect us
to nurture
all the children.

I write poems to welcome angels
and conjure ancestors.
I pray to the angels of politics
and love.
I pray for justice sake
not to be relieved of my frustrations,
at the same time burning sage
and asking for patience.
I march with the people
to the border
between nations
where
everything stops
except
the greed of corporations.

Thoughts like comets
calculating the complexity
of the complicity.

There is so much noise in the oceans
the whales can’t hear each other.
We’re making them crazy,
driving dolphins insane.
What kind of ancestors
are we?

Thoughts like comets
leaving craters
in the landscape of my consciousness.

I pray to the ancestors and angels.

Meet me in the garden.
Meet me where spirit walks softly
in the cool of the evening.
Meet me in the garden
under the wings of the bird
of many colors.
Meet me
in the garden
of your longing.

Every breath
is a pilgrimage.

Every
breath
is a pilgrimage
to you.

I pray
to be
a conduit.

An angel told me:

The only way
to walk through fire—

become fire.

- Drew Dellinger

Appointed Rounds
At first, he refused to deliver junk mail because it was stupid, all those deodorant ads, money-making ideas and contests.
Then he began to doubt the importance of the other mail he carried.
He began to randomly select first class mail for non-delivery.
After he had finished his mail route each day he would return home with his handful of letters and put them in attic.
He didn’t open them and never even looked at them again.
It was as if he were an agent of Fate, capricious and blind.
In the several years before he was caught, friends vanished, marriages failed, business deals fell through.
Toward the end he became more and more bold, deleting houses, then whole blocks from his route.
He began to feel he’d been born in the wrong era.
If only he could have been a Pony Express rider galloping into some prairie town with an empty bag,
or the runner from Marathon collapsing in the streets of Athens, gasping, “No news.”
- Louis Jenkins

Belonging

Secrets vibrate in my veins.
Courage of white buffalo woman
joins cousin named Cortez,
No harmony or gold for me,
just disappointment and blood stains on my hands.

Foremother saber-tooth tiger’s
feral gold eyes say
Sink your teeth
into what makes you come alive,
Stalk what you love.

A clutch of speckled eggs
waiting in their nest,
as mother finch’s warbling song
calls out to her feathered family
enfleshed through dinosaur apocalypse,

Our kind at risk
in this uncharted time.
Waters rise.
Fires burn.
Species go away.

Life, death, and resurrection
belong to each other,
pathway of Creation,
primordial, ever-present,
transformation via traumatic endings.

Part of me in all of it,
complicit in losses,
conspiring to set things right
on the cusp
of everything.

- Sally Singingtree

"next to of course god america i

love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh

say can you see by the dawn's early my

country 'tis of centuries come and go

and are no more what of it we should worry

in every language even deafanddumb

thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gory

by jingo by gee by gosh by gum

why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-

iful than these heroic happy dead

who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter

they did not stop to think they died instead

then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

- e. e. cummings

Immigrant Picnic

It's the Fourth of July, the flags
are painting the town,
the plastic forks and knives
are laid out like a parade.

And I'm grilling, I've got my apron,
I've got potato salad, macaroni, relish,
I've got a hat shaped
like the state of Pennsylvania.

I ask my father what's his pleasure
and he says, "Hot dog, medium rare,"
and then, "Hamburger, sure,
what's the big difference,"
as if he's really asking.

I put on hamburgers and hot dogs,
slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas,
uncap the condiments. The paper napkins
are fluttering away like lost messages.

"You're running around," my mother says,
"like a chicken with its head loose."

"Ma," I say, "you mean cut off,
loose and cut off being as far apart
as, say, son and daughter."

She gives me a quizzical look as though
I've been caught in some impropriety.
"I love you and your sister just the same," she says,
"Sure," my grandmother pipes in,
"you're both our children, so why worry?"

That's not the point I begin telling them,
and I'm comparing words to fish now,
like the ones in the sea at Port Said,
or like birds among the date palms by the Nile,
unrepentantly elusive, wild.

"Sonia," my father says to my mother,
"what the hell is he talking about?"
"He's on a ball," my mother says.

"That's roll!" I say, throwing up my hands,
"as in hot dog, hamburger, dinner roll...."

"And what about roll out the barrels?" my mother asks,
and my father claps his hands, "Why sure," he says,
"let's have some fun," and launches
into a polka, twirling my mother
around and around like the happiest top,

and my uncle is shaking his head, saying
"You could grow nuts listening to us,"

and I'm thinking of pistachios in the Sinai
burgeoning without end,
pecans in the South, the jumbled
flavor of them suddenly in my mouth,
wordless, confusing,
crowding out everything else.

- Gregory Djanikian

A Blessing

For the graduates of the University of Arizona.

This morning we gather in gratitude for all aspects of sacredness:
the air, the warmth of fire, bodies of water, plants, the land,
and all animals and humankind.
We gather to honor our students who have achieved the extraordinary
accomplishment of earning doctoral or master's degrees.
We gather to honor their parents, grandparents, children,
family members, and friends who have traveled with them
on their path to success. They have traveled far distances to be here
this morning: we honor their devotion.

May we remember that holiness exists in the ordinary elements of our lives.

We are grateful for a homeland that has always thrived
on a glorious array of people and their diverse cultures, histories,
and beliefs. We acknowledge the generosity of the Tohono O'odham
in granting this land on which we learn, teach, celebrate
accomplishments, and sometimes mourn losses.

May we always cherish our ancestors as we prepare for the days ahead.
May we remember that we exist because of their prayers and their faith.

We are blessed with distinct and melodious tongues.
Our languages are treasures of stories, songs, ceremonies, and memories.
May each of us remember to share our stories with one another,
because it is only through stories that we live full lives.

May the words we speak go forth as bright beads
of comfort, joy, humor, and inspiration.
We have faith that the graduates will inspire others
to explore and follow their interests.

Today we reflect a rainbow of creation:
Some of us came from the east, where bright crystals of creativity reside.
They are the white streaks of early morning light when all is born again.
We understand that, in Tucson, the Rincon Mountains are our inspiration
for beginning each day. The Rincons are everlasting and always present.

Those who came from the south embody the strength of the blue
mountains that encircle us. The Santa Ritas instill in us
the vigorous spirit of youthful learning.

Others came from the west; they are imbued with the quiet, yellow glow of dusk.
They help us achieve our goals. Here in the middle of the valley, the ts'aa',
the basket of life, the Tucson Mountains teach us to value our families.

The ones from the north bring the deep, restorative powers of night's darkness;
their presence renews us. The Santa Catalina Mountains teach us that,
though the past may be fraught with sorrow, it was strengthened
by the prayers of our forebearers.
We witnessed the recent fires the mountains suffered,
and in their recovery we see ourselves on our own journeys.
We understand that we are surrounded by mountains, dziił,
and thus that we are made of strength, dziił, nihí níhídziił.
We are strong ourselves. We are surrounded by mountains
that help us negotiate our daily lives.

May we always recognize the multitude of gifts that surround us.
May our homes, schools, and communities be filled with the wisdom
and optimism that reflect a generous spirit.

We are grateful for all blessings, seen and unseen.

May we fulfill the lives envisioned for us at our birth. May we realize
that our actions affect all people and the earth. May we live in the way
of beauty and help others in need. May we always remember that
we were created as people who believe in one another. We are grateful,
Holy Ones, for the graduates, as they will strengthen our future.

All is beautiful again.
Hózhǫ́ nááhasdłíí’.
Hózhǫ́ nááhasdłíí’.
Hózhǫ́ nááhasdłíí’.
Hózhǫ́ nááhasdłíí’.

- Luci Tapahanso

(Luci Tapahanso is the inaugural poet laureate of the Navajo Nation)

When She’s Gone

Hades paces.
He doesn’t like it
when she’s gone.
It’s not that he envies
her summer reveries,
the company she keeps,
or the blossoms and fruit of
the sunshine world.
No, he’s made
his comfort here
in the mist realm,
but he feels unsettled,
unbalanced, drained
without her.

The dead drift by
in their bland uniformity.
Maybe it's color
that he misses.
Maybe it’s the fragrance
of flowers she is always
wrapped in, exudes,
even here.

He drums his fingernails
on the cold slate table.
He paces.
This is what he misses,
here among the gray
and boring dead -
her aliveness,
her very life.

- Maya Spector

The Brazilian singer and composer João Gilberto died on Saturday.
He wrote the score for the film "Black Orpheus". The photo illustrating this poem is of Marpessa Dawn the actress who played Eurydice.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

When She’s Gone

Hades paces.
He doesn’t like it
when she’s gone.
It’s not that he envies
her summer reveries,
the company she keeps,
or the blossoms and fruit of
the sunshine world.
No, he’s made
his comfort here
in the mist realm,
but he feels unsettled,
unbalanced, drained
without her.

The dead drift by
in their bland uniformity.
Maybe it's color
that he misses.
Maybe it’s the fragrance
of flowers she is always
wrapped in, exudes,
even here.

He drums his fingernails
on the cold slate table.
He paces.
This is what he misses,
here among the gray
and boring dead -
her aliveness,
her very life.

- Maya Spector

---

Poem for a Friend

I want to speak about that quiet thing
that does not leave
not with the graying of hair
or the fine lines creeping from the corner of an eye
not with an affair
or an unplanned stop
or even when the deep pink flowers
fade in the cooling air

I want to speak about that quiet thing
that stays
and allows the moon to hang in a deep black sky
on a crisp winter's night
that thing that stays
and allows a smile to return
after a long time hiding
beneath the depths of a private sorrow

I want to speak about the love that remains
in the face of a child
and in the touch of a friend
and in the quiet of an evening when you feel held
even if you are alone

I want to speak because I want a voice
for that thing that isn't frightened by our deepest cry
that thing that doesn't tire with our endless longings
that thing that is more beautiful
than even the best we've ever had

I want to speak about that timeless seed
inside of time
about the way it holds itself in both its flowering
and in its falling into something else
I want to speak about the commitment
to becoming

I want to tell you that your days are a graceful offering
on the alter of a full life

I want to say you are a garden
and your bounty isn't measured by what is taken and what is given
It is measured by that rare beauty
that has followed you through all the cycles of your growth


I want to say
that beyond our notions of perfection
there is wisdom
And that wisdom has weaved itself into something
magnificent

in you

- Shonna Wells

Love Is Not All

Love is not all.
To hold that Love is all
Burdens Love.
But Love is foolish -
Love will labor
To meet demands
It cannot fathom or survive.
To place all hope in Love
Brings it to its knees.

And Love is not light,
But it is the color in light.
Love is not the bread of Life,
It is the yeast that raises it up.

Love is the sweet elixir
That murmurs and flows
Among and between
All in its care.
Love suffuses all
That is given in Love.

When two humans are in love,
And they are awash in Love,
They drown in bliss,
They drift in tides of wonder
Until true Love lifts them up.


They surface, they breathe,
They come to their senses.
They see each other truly.
Still dripping with bliss,
They board their little boat together.
They raise their sails,
And Love fills them.


- DC Darling

It Could Have Been A Dream

The fun began at the Gratitude Garage
as I rode away to Poets Park
on a rented bike named
Astonishment

There on the edge of Blackwater Pond
Rumi and Neruda, like little boys
laughed as they swiped some of
Mary Oliver's Peonies

Mary, distracted by wild geese
tripped on some fallen branches
as she journeyed into the world

She waved me on as I careened past a red barn
where Wendell Barry argued with Galway Kennel
something about Galway’s pigs running loose
in Wendell’s apple orchard.

Robert Bly and William Stafford
blocked my path as they
exchanged morning poems about
snowy fields and parading elephants

Pumping up the hill past The House of Belonging
I noticed David Whyte hard at work
returning borrowed metaphors
to Rilke and Machado
Riding out beyond the field of right doing and wrong doing
there on red brocade pillows, under a weeping willow,
an Arab Sheppard and a Jewish Father
were eating fresh dates with Naomi Nye

I was so excited I nearly missed
Yehuda Amichai’s lost goat
drinking from the Sultan's pool

I did see Lisel Mueller giggling with Monet
something about his myopic eyesight
as he finished a painting in the park

On my way back
I bought a few golden apples
from Yates’ fruit stand
and hurried along

At the Gratitude Garage sharing apples
with Alison Luterman she gently said
she would help me find my lost mind

I said, "No Alison, I lost my camel."

She said, "No Doug. It was your mind, but it's ok."

- Doug von Koss

Poem about My Rights

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him if after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
which is exactly like South Africa
penetrating into Namibia penetrating into
Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if
Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the
proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland
and if
after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe
and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to
self-immolation of the villages and if after that
we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they
claim my consent:
Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of
the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about
and according to the Times this week
back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem
and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they
killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba
and before that it was my father on the campus
of my Ivy League school and my father afraid
to walk into the cafeteria because he said he
was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong
gender identity and he was paying my tuition and
before that
it was my father saying I was wrong saying that
I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a
boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and
that I should have had straighter hair and that
I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should
just be one/a boy and before that
it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for
my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me
to let the books loose to let them loose in other
words
I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.
and the problems of South Africa and the problems
of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white
America in general and the problems of the teachers
and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social
workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very
familiar with the problems because the problems
turn out to be
me
I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
myself
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
and my body and my soul and
whether it’s about walking out at night
or whether it’s about the love that I feel or
whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or
the sanctity of my national boundaries
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
of each and every desire
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
and indisputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
be-
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
the wrong sartorial I
I have been the meaning of rape
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
eliminate by forced
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life

- June Jordan

My Father’s Boots Say Amen, Amen, Amen


Late August, over the horizon the clouds came
Dark, rumbly gray creeping over the tops of the mulberry grove
The air was deathly silent
Mother called to us, hastily, not quietly
“Down in the cellar now”
Huddling in the dark, dank dirt cave
My young heart cried out silently
“What about Dad”
From the depths we heard the thundering roar of wind, imagined the lightening, listened to the icy downpour
Now silence
Emerging we see the landscape had changed
Between the wind and the hail the stateliness of the cornfield was gone
Alfalfa, purple with readiness flattened
The destruction overwhelmed me
My young heart cried out silently
“What about Dad”
From the vista of our hilltop house
I waited
Sitting on the open porch floor
Facing the driveway
Legs swinging in nervous desperation
Awaiting his arrival
I heard the sound of his boots approaching
I did not move
Did not look up
Did not say anything
My father stood beside me
In the silence
Surveying the devastation of the fields
He did not say a word
But he didn't need to
Whatever I needed to hear
Whatever questions needed answers
Were conveyed silently
My young heart knew
He was ok
I was ok
Life would go on
The world is a safe place
As he turned and walked away
My young heart was comforted by this sound

My father’s boots saying, amen, amen, amen.

- Rebecca Evert

Space—
through the eye of the Hubble

I

I caught her eye—
for a split second—
deep and black as space,
as she caught mine
and spoke the words, “Thank you.”
And in that instant, in that blackness, I saw the universe,
as if my eye were Hubble itself,
looking deep to the very edge of things,
as if I had no choice but see her sorrow,
her beauty, as she saw mine—
in an instant.

II

It was imperfect, at first,
the Hubble and one might argue, still,
as the images it receives and passes on
bend and stretch our psyches
as if we too were made of light,
push us into that cloud of unknowing
where words fall weightless
and awe is all
there is—
and mystery.
And so we feel
the beginning,
we feel
our heart
break open.

III

It was the most mundane of encounters.
I had held the door for the wheelchair bound
elderly man, I took to be her husband—
nothing strange, what anyone might do.
But the moment was not ordinary.
We were coming, all of us, from the same place.
And though we were strangers
and likely to never see one another again,
we had shared an hour
that left us, at once,
profoundly different
and exactly the same.
We had born witness
to the birth of stars—
star nurseriesthey were called,
giant nebula given ancient names like Carina,
the ship keel constellation of the southern sky
within which mountains and canyons
of frozen gas and dust might rise or fall
near twenty trillion miles—
one called Mystic Mountain
whose double spires
are topped by infant stars
flinging their signature streamers of gas
untold distances into the heavens . . .
oh, my . . . oh, my . . . how even this attempt
to restore a speck of weight to our words falls short
and we are left, as if our hearts were supernovae
blown wide open and brilliant
before fading toward death.

IV

And so it was as we left the theater,
my dear companion weeping
and I nearly so,
stood in the corridor
unable to move
toward the stairs
when a group
approached,
led by the
fallen patriarch,
pushed in his wheelchair
by one I thought to be his daughter,
flanked and followed by several others
and finally the wife and mother
whose small stature belied
the universe I found
in her eyes.


- Bill Denham

My Mother's Van

Even now it idles outside the houses
where we failed to get better at piano lessons,
visits the parking lot of the ballet school

where my sister and I stood awkwardly
at the back. My mother's van was orange
with a door we slid open to reveal
beheaded plastic dragons and bunches

of black, half-eaten bananas; it was where
her sketchbooks tarried among
abandoned coffee cups and

science projects. She meant to go places
in it: camp in its back seat
and cook on its stove while

painting the coast of Nova Scotia,
or capturing the cold beauty of the Blue Ridge
mountains at dawn. Instead, she waited
behind its wheel while we scraped violins,

made digestive sounds
with trumpets, danced badly at recitals
where grandmothers recorded us

with unsteady cameras. Sometimes, now,
I look out a window and believe I see it,
see her, waiting for me beside a curb,

under a tree, and I think I could open the door,
clear off a seat, look at the drawing in her lap,
which she began, but never seemed to finish.

- Faith Shearin

I am asked as Poet


I am asked as Poet Laureate of the city
to recite a poem on the children,
mothers, fathers separated, jailed,
caged, tortured in concentration camps
on the southern border.
How to put into song the suffering, the cries,
the terror, the fright of the children snatched
from their mothers', their fathers' arms
by rough hands, in harsh voices
in a tongue they do not understand?
How to tell their sleep of nightmares
exhausted by crying, not wrapped
in blankets of cotton & wool smelling of comfort
but in space blankets metallic & cold on the floor
of a cage? How to sing their deaths?
How to sing the anguish of the mothers,
the fathers for their little sons, little daughters?
How cry the pain & rage, protest
the cruelty of the villains in the White House,
the Congress, the Supreme Court of the land?
The muses grow mute; here the limits
of poetry. Only resistance will do,
revolution — that will be our poem.
There is no other.

- Rafael Jesús González

---

Se me pide como poeta

Se me pide como poeta laureado de la ciudad
que recite un poema sobre l@s niñ@s,
madres, padres separados, encarcelados,
enjaulados, torturados en centros
de concentración en la frontera del sur.
¿Cómo poner en canto el sufrir, el llanto,
el terror, el espanto de los niños arrebatados
de l@s braz@s de sus madres, sus padres
por manos bruscas, en voces rudas
en lengua que no comprenden?
¿Cómo decir su dormir de pesadillas
exhaustos de llorar, no envueltos
en cobijas de algodón y lana oliendo a consuelo
sino en mantas isotérmicas metálicas y frías
en el suelo de una jaula? ¿Cómo cantar sus muertes?
¿Cómo cantar la angustia de las madres,
los padres por sus hijitos, hijitas?
¿Cómo gritar el dolor y la rabia, protestar
la crueldad de los canallas en la Casa Blanca,
el Congreso, la Corte Suprema del país?
Enmudecen las musas; aquí los límites
de la poesía. Sólo servirá la resistencia,
revolución — esta será nuestro poema.
No hay otro.

- Rafael Jesús González

Sometimes a poem is a dirge.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

I am asked as Poet
...

---

Wade in the Water
for the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters

One of the women greeted me.
I love you, she said. She didn't
Know me, but I believed her,
And a terrible new ache
Rolled over in my chest,
Like in a room where the drapes
Have been swept back. I love you,
I love you, as she continued
Down the hall past other strangers,
Each feeling pierced suddenly
By pillars of heavy light.
I love you, throughout
The performance, in every
Handclap, every stomp.
I love you in the rusted iron
Chains someone was made
To drag until love let them be
Unclasped and left empty
In the center of the ring.
I love you in the water
Where they pretended to wade,
Singing that old blood-deep song
That dragged us to those banks
And cast us in. I love you,
The angles of it scraping at
Each throat, shouldering past
The swirling dust motes
In those beams of light
That whatever we now knew
We could let ourselves feel, knew
To climb. O Woods—O Dogs—
O Tree—O Gun—O Girl, run—
O Miraculous Many Gone—
O Lord—O Lord—O Lord—
Is this love the trouble you promised?

- Tracy K. Smith

Summer of the Moon Landing
for Ina and Kiku


A hundred of us dancing
at the good buddies’ ball,
but after lights-out, and
at the first irritation,
one is alone again…


– Jacques Brel


moon light
i arrived at age twenty despite so many stuttered repetitions of carbon paper self
a whole summer turning over a fresh leaf of butcher paper
a new-to-me metropolis ocean and city splashing against each other
colored shipping containers stacked in a rubik’s cube rearranging the world


three little maids from school braided together like the French braiding
of each other’s hair


half full
arches flattened hiking in flats the elevator shaft hills walking for work
we could walk to mattresses on the basement floor kosher wine like bruised pears
peanut butter rationed onto co-op bread nori slap in the face at ocean’s edge

moon dark
a pending lottery boys our age under glass the chance to enact their own
underage death scenes hearts stretched around my skeleton made of glass
humans landed on the moon we watched through soot and ice
grown men hopscotching planting a flag ina said isn’t that just like
our country go someplace new unspoiled immediately litter?

moon with her tiny new flag tattoo a blank-faced marble bust of earth
a round powdered loaf companions sharing this bread


half empty
summer friendships like parenthetical expressions easily deleted
come august (come, the rest of my life) kiku stayed ina and i
and two flash-frozen salmon flew as far as chicago meaning to take one fish apiece
but they had frozen inseparable


twangs of woodstock radiating from the radio me stuffing my stuff
into semester-abroad-suitcase


decades later a yellow alley light another summer night metal staircase still volcanic
on our warming globe the same moon glides stutters through her phases




encircled again breaking bread again alone again broken again

- Phyllis Meshulam

Praise What Comes


Surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise
talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks
before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps
you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions: did I love,
finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another
ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

- Jeanne Lohmann

Whales Weep Not!


They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.


All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
the sea!


And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's
fathomless body.


And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the
wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the
sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.


And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-
tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of
the beginning and the end.


And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!


and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.


- D.H. Lawrence

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

- David Wagoner

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Lost

---

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

Bird Bath

only this
matters: this ecstatic
baptism

this standing on stick-
thin legs where the singing
creek pools at the lip
of the waterfall

only this
ruby-feathered
chest diving to meet
its reflection

this beak piercing
again and again that quivering
surface, these wings half-
unfolding, a ruffle

of joy guiding rivers
of light a tumble
of droplets dressed
in rainbows along your hidden
spine

shattering all
decorum beneath
blue branches in quiet

assent.


- Elizabeth Reninger

1969

The summer everyone left for the moon
even those yet to be born. And the dead
who can’t vacation here but met us all there
by the veil between worlds. The number one song
in America was “In the Year 2525”
because who has ever lived in the present
when there’s so much of the future
to continue without us.
How the best lover won’t need to forgive you
and surely take everything off your hands
without having to ask, without knowing
your name, no matter the number of times
you married or didn’t, your favorite midnight movie,
the cigarettes you couldn’t give up,
wanting to kiss other people you shouldn’t
and now to forever be kissed by the Earth.
In the Earth. With the Earth.
When we all briefly left it
to look back on each other from above,
shocked by how bright even our pain is
running wildly beside us like an underground river.
And whatever language is good for,
a sign, a message left up there that reads:
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969, A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.
Then returned to continue the war.

- Alex Dimitrov

Earth from the Hubble telescope,
rose stem from Sonoma County back yard,
poem from Boulder's William Rain.

Wait Without Hope

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

- T. S. Eliot

July in Washington

The stiff spokes of this wheel

touch the sore spots of the earth.



On the Potomac, swan-white

power launches keep breasting the sulphurous wave.



Otters slide and dive and slick back their hair,

raccoons clean their meat in the creek.



On the circles, green statues ride like South American

liberators above the breeding vegetation—



prongs and spearheads of some equatorial

backland that will inherit the globe.



The elect, the elected . . . they come here bright as dimes,

and die dishevelled and soft.



We cannot name their names, or number their dates—

circle on circle, like rings on a tree—



but we wish the river had another shore,

some further range of delectable mountains,



distant hills powdered blue as a girl’s eyelid.

It seems the least little shove would land us there,



that only the slightest repugnance of our bodies

we no longer control could drag us back.

- Robert Lowell

Witchgrass

Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder—

If you hate me so much
don’t bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything—

as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
One enemy—

I’m not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can’t rest until
you attack the cause, meaning
whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion—

It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.

I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

- Louise Glück

Working Together

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

traveled at speed
round a shaped wing
easily holds our weight.

So may we, in this life trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

- David Whyte

Light Hoofed

What if we enter each day
so silently, so seamlessly
the birds don't sound alarms and dart away,
our minds so well released from fits of thought
we are kin to all that breathes,
like grazing deer
hidden in dapples of green

O how we would walk then
light hoofed and elfin eyed, even on crowded days,
each trembling leaf a welcome
Silky beating wings
would cool our errant fevers of mind
would keep us filled with awe
and kind


- Cynthia Poten

Roadside Attractions with the Dogs of America


It's a day when all the dogs of all
the borrowed houses are angel footing
down the hard hardwood of middle-America's
newly loaned-up renovated kitchen floors,
and the world's nicest pie I know
is somewhere waiting for the right
time to offer itself to the wayward
and the word-weary. How come the road
goes coast to coast and never just
dumps us in the water, clean and
come clean, like a fish slipped out
of the national net of "longing for joy."
How come it doesn't? Once, on a road trip
through the country, a waitress walked
in the train's diner car and swished
her non-aproned end and said,
"Hot stuff and food too." My family
still says it, when the food is hot,
and the mood is good inside the open windows.
I'd like to wear an apron for you
and come over with non-church sanctioned
knee-highs and the prettiest pie of birds
and ocean water and grief. I'd like
to be younger when I do this, like the country
before Mr. Meriwether rowed the river
and then let the country fill him up
till it killed him hard by his own hand.
I'd like to be that dog they took with them,
large and dark and silent and un-blamable.
Or I'd like to be Emily Dickinson's dog, Carlo,
and go on loving the rare un-loveable puzzle
of woman and human and mind. But, I bet I'm more
the house beagle and the howl and the obedient
eyes of everyone wanting to make their own kind
of America, but still be America, too. The road
is long and all the dogs don't care too much about
roadside concrete history and postcards of state
treasures, they just want their head out the window,
and the speeding air to make them feel faster
and younger, and newer than all the dogs
that went before them, they want to be your only dog,
your best-loved dog, for this good dog of today
to be the only beast that matters.

- Ada Limón

Coming to Know Silence

30 miles west of Ketchum
In the heart of the Sawtooths
I came to know silence.
It tiptoed in shyly
Following the belated curtain call of the sun,
As it eased into the maw of the mountains.

Slowly the cranes packed up their raucous squawks,
The ground squirrels ceased their alarming squeaks.
The wind, which whipped the pines fiercely all afternoon,
Dropped to a library whisper,
Then nothing at all.

I knew the night was alive with deer and elk,
Antelope and sheep,
But they seemed to walk in stocking feet.

I felt like the trail horse
Swiveling my ears to the window
Hearing a nothingness as vast as an Idaho valley,
As wide as the Western sky.

Deep beneath an alpine quilt,
I listened
And listened
And listened
To that most holy silence.


- Melissa Kelley

I Confess

These days I think too much
about assassination, and let me just say
I have come down against it every time,
swatting it away, a plague-ridden fly
in my otherwise mild and law-abiding imagination,
and that I do not accept the legal argument
that targeted killings are a country’s form
of self-defense, regardless of whether the target
will ever see the inside of a detention center,
and be faced with deciding, like thousands
of seven-year-olds, whether the assigned Mylar blanket
goes over or under on the mud-caked concrete floor.
Every time, I rise up on the right side of the question
though I have gone so far as to research the word:
From the Arabic, hashshashin, the Assassins of Persia,
perhaps so-named for the necessity of getting high
before slipping in the blade. (In private,
some Border Patrol agents consider migrant deaths
a laughing matter; others are succumbing to depression,
anxiety, or substance abuse.)
How, with or without the name, the act
is older than our ability to write it down.
How way back in the Old Testament,
there it was alongside the begetting and begats.
How in the Roman Empire, strangling in the bathtub
was the method of choice for murdering one’s king,
while, as you might expect, in Japan it was the sword.
Here in the U.S. we, as always,
prefer the gun, and let me just say,
I do not and will not own one.
I confess only to the image in my mind
of the mongrel dogs of history lapping at the wound.

- Pauletta Hansel

What Changes


My father’s hopes travel with me

years after he died. Someday

we will learn how to live. All of us

surviving without violence

never stop dreaming how to cure it.

What changes? Crossing a small street

in Doha Souk, nut shops shuttered,

a handkerchief lies crumpled in the street,

maroon and white, like one my father had,

from Jordan. Perfectly placed

in his pocket under his smile, for years.

He would have given it to anyone.

How do we continue all these days?

- Naomi Shihab Nye

The Elder of the Sea



We gather, reverently rooting shapes into the soft sand.

You rise and bow, filling the sea with gratitude

Your profoundly deep and moist breaths echo inside our silent hearts

And the full spectrum of your body sounds

Shake the undulating tides toward shore.

You silently speak in many tongues so each of us can hear

the Truth inside our own and eager hearts.

We listen with unbroken intent.

Nothing is missed, no one is forgotten.

After many breaths, you breathe your ancient counsel:

I carry my young through these sacred waters that have

Known many births.

One day my calf will travel alone and carry her own message

In the tongue of the Great Mother.

Your own young already travels the Great Sea and

Listens before her time.

You belong to this timeless knowing

And now free to live among your own sacred waters.

Swim your way Home now,

Swim your way Home now,

You will always find me living in the Great chamber

of your own heart.


- Shirley C Gillotti

Things About The Sun


Any time the sun
touches our part of the earth
we say the sun shines.

Sometimes dogs bark at the sun,
but I don’t mind it.

There are flowers the sun never sees.

Many times I have said to it,
“Wait!” And it waited.

With the sun, it will be all right
after I’m gone.

Where it can, the sun endlessly
examines things, nothing too large
or small for long, long attention.
When I walk I would view
like that -- all: rich, poor, young,
old, near, far. And I’d save a report
for whenever the sun does.

Mornings when it looks
at me, for an instant there are
all those other times.

- William Stafford

Questionnaire

How much poison are you willing

to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.


- Wendell Berry

August 6

can we forget that flash?
suddenly 30,000 in the streets disappeared
in the crushed depths of darkness
the shrieks of 50,000 died out

when the swirling yellow smoke thinned
buildings split, bridges collapsed
packed trains rested singed
and a shoreless accumulation of rubble and embers - Hiroshima
before long, a line of naked bodies walking in groups, crying
with skin hanging down like rags
hands on chests
stamping on crumbled brain matter
burnt clothing covering hips

corpses lie on the parade ground like stone images of Jizo, dispersed in all
directions
on the banks of the river, lying one on top of another, a group that had crawled to
a tethered raft

also gradually transformed into corpses beneath the sun's scorching rays
and in the light of the flames that pierced the evening sky
the place where mother and younger brother were pinned under alive
also was engulfed in flames
and when the morning sun shone on a group of high-school girls
who had fled and were lying
on the floor of the armory, in excrement
their bellies swollen, one eye crushed, half their bodies raw flesh with skin ripped
off, hairless, impossible to tell who was who
all had stopped moving
in a stagnant, offensive smell
the only sound the wings of flies buzzing around metal basins

city of 300,000
can we forget that silence?
in that stillness
the powerful appeal
of the white eye sockets of the wives and children who did not return home
that tore apart our hearts
can it be forgotten?!

- Toge Sankichi (translated by Karen Thornber)

Toge Sankichi (1917 – 1953) was a Japanese poet, activist and survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Aerial Photograph Before the Atomic Bomb


Why did such terrible events
catch my eye? After Hiroshima,
I turned the picture in Life around
in circles, trying to figure out this huge
wheel in the middle of the air, how it turned,
like a ferris wheel, its lights
burning like eyes.
The atom spinning
on course over the sleeping
vulnerable planet. I turned it the way one might
turn a kaleidoscope or prism. Even then I
knew about the town lying under,
like a child sleeping under the
watchful gaze of a rapist, before the spasm of
stopped breath, the closure at the
scream of the throat, before the body is awakened
along its shocked spine to bursting
light, the legs closing, the arms,
like a chilled flower. That eye, that spinning eye

seeking the combustible.
This was a heat
I had felt already in our house on Norwood.
Everything
looked green, placid as a green field,
predictable as machinery — an antique clock.
This was the instant
before destruction,
the fiery atom stuck
as if under the control of the artist
before it spilled and became irretrievable.
Could it be sucked back
in its lead bag, the doors of the underbelly slammed,
and those men who would go on to
suicide and madness, go on instead
to become lovers, priests, Buddhist
smilers and scholars, gardeners in the small plots
of contained passion?

- Toi Derricotte