two words for all

I don't think this quote was intended to be poetry, but to me, it qualifies. Thanks to this gratitude-inducing friend for the reference (in her profile).

And thanks to you for reading!

---

For all that has been, thanks.

For all that will be, yes.

Dag Hammarskjold

what to remember when waking

by David Whyte

In that first

hardly noticed

moment

in which you wake,

coming back

to this life

from the other

more secret,

moveable

and frighteningly

honest

world

where everything

began,

there is a small

opening

into the day

which closes

the moment

you begin

your plans.

What you can plan

is too small

for you to live.

What you can live

wholeheartedly

will make plans

enough

for the vitality

hidden in your sleep.

To be human

is to become visible

while carrying

what is hidden

as a gift to others.

To remember

the other world

in this world

is to live in your

true inheritance.

You are not

a troubled guest

on this earth,

you are not

an accident

amidst other accidents

you were invited

from another and greater

night

than the one

from which

you have just emerged.

Now, looking through

the slanting light

of the morning

window toward

the mountain

presence

of everything

that can be,

what urgency

calls you to your

one love? What shape

waits in the seed

of you to grow

and spread

its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting

in the fertile sea?

In the trees

beyond the house?

In the life

you can imagine

for yourself?

In the open

and lovely

white page

on the waiting desk?

we swept away

I love the bold, strong, sensuous nature of this poem. It feels childlike -- full of energy, memory, innocence...and yet so full of adult longing. The poet's choice to "personify" childhood experiences through the figure of horses gives those memories a size and majesty that just feels...right. As I think about how I've been formed by long-ago moments in my life, I realize that they do indeed carry weight and power that's intimidating, calming, wild, and beautiful.

---

There Were Horses
by Annie Lighthart

There were horses in all our days.

An open white page in any book was a lean white horse

looking out, and a swollen door stuttering at night

was the breath and stamp of a horse nearby.

Boys ran like horses

and our hidden eyes in the oak trees

wore their depth of amber.

Even the mountain swung its back low between peaks

and moved into the plain of darkness

like a horse coming home.

Those days we brushed each other's hair like the manes of horses

and with their kindness gave each other kingly gifts.

We stood skin to skin in the rain. We swept away the gathering flies.

such a kiss

Gate C22

by Ellen Bass

At gate C22 in the Portland airport

a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed

a woman arriving from Orange County.

They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons

and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,

the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other

like she'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,

like she'd been released from ICU, snapped

out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down

from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.

She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine

her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish

kisses like the ocean in the early morning,

the way it gathers and swells, sucking

each rock under, swallowing it

again and again. We were all watching--

passengers waiting for the delayed flight

to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,

the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling

sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could

taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back

and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost

as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,

as your mother must have looked at you, no matter

what happened after -- if she beat you or left you or

you're lonely now -- you once lay there, the vernix

not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you

as you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.

The whole wing of the airport hushed,

all of us trying to slip into the woman's middle-aged body,

her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,

little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

smell!

Such a great one.

----

by William Carlos Williams

Oh strong-ridged and deeply hollowed

nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?

What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose,

always indiscriminate, always unashamed,

and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled

poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth

beneath them. With what deep thirst

we quicken our desires

to that rank odor of a passing springtime!

Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors

for something less unlovely? What girl will care

for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?

Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?

Must you have a part in everything?

now i lay...

44

by e. e. cummings

Now i lay(with everywhere around)

me(the great dim deep sound

of rain;and of always and of nowhere)and

what a gently welcoming darkestness--

now i lay me down(in a most steep

more than music)feeling that sunlight is

(life and day are)only loaned:whereas

night is given(night and death and the rain

are given;and given is how beautifully snow)

now i lay me down to dream of(nothing

i or any somebody or you

can begin to begin to imagine)

something which nobody may keep.

now i lay me down to dream of Spring

he is risen indeed

Happy Easter to you. :)

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

by Jane Kenyon

I am the blossom pressed in a book,

found again after two hundred years...

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper...

When the young girl who starves

sits down to a table

she will sit beside me...

I am food on the prisoner's plate...

I am water rushing to the wellhead,

filling the pitcher until it spills...

I am the patient gardener

of the dry and weedy garden...

I am the stone step,

the latch, and the working hinge...

I am the heart contracted by joy...

the longest hair, white

before the rest...

I am there in the basket of fruit

presented to the widow...

I am the musk rose opening

unattended, the fern on the boggy summit...

I am the one whose love

overcomes you, already with you

when you think to call my name...

kay ryan, new pulitzer prize winner

A quote and small selection of poems from recently-awarded Pulitzer Prize winner and former poet laureate, Kay Ryan.

"Poems...can lodge right in your brain. They are by nature short. You don’t even have to remember all of them — you can remember just a phrase. That can be something you can turn to in any emergency, good or bad. You’ll pluck out a little group of words, just maybe a phrase, and that’s exactly what poetry is for. It’s for the things that really last. Because it lasts."

A Cat/A Future

A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she's
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.

Green Hills

Their green flanks
and swells are not
flesh in any sense
matching ours,
we tell ourselves.
Nor their green
breast nor their
green shoulder nor
the languor of their
rolling over.

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn't
be so hard.

film noir, poem-style

I can almost see the silhouette of a trench-coated man on a seedy street corner when I read this one... How 'bout you?

The Chase

by Kevin Young

I didn't have a rat's chance.

Soon as she walked in in

That skin of hers

violins began. You could half hear

The typewriters jabber

as she jawed on: fee, find, me,

poor, please.

Shadows & smiles, she was.

Strong scent of before-rain

Her pinstripe two-lane

legs, her blackmail menthol.

She had all the negatives

Hidden safe

and would not reveal the place.

Before you could say

denouement, I was on her case--

Slant hat, broad

back, my entrenched coat

Of fog. Fleabags,

neon blinds withdrawn--

The foreshadows fell on her face.

All night I tailed, stalked

the joint. Found

Her with the butler

playing patty-cake.

Baker's man. She nurse

him like a beer

till dawn. Doozy.

Was from her woozy.

My eyes wet.

Binocular mist.

I took two to the chest

Was all

rain, her blurring face

Her snuffed, stubbed-out

lipstick cigarette.

worth reading to the very end

Driving Montana, Alone

by Kate Phillips

I smile at the stack of Bob Dylan CDs

you are not holding in the passenger seat.

Storm clouds have gathered. My "Wow" rises

over the harmonica for your benefit,

but you cannot see that one sunlit peak


in the midst of threatening sky. The road turns

wet at the "Welcome to Anaconda" sign,

and I pat my raincoat, loosely folded

where your lap should be. "Anaconda was almost 

the state capital," I say, but that's all I know,


and you don't ask for more. You wouldn't mind

my singing and swerving onto the shoulder

for more snapshots over the car door.

And it's only when I get just south of Philipsburg

that your not being here feels like absence.


I want you to see these dark rotting barns,

roadkill of Highway One. It seems only you

could know why my eyes fill the road

with tears again when a flock of swallows

swoops through an open barn door

and rushes out the gaping roof.

haiku entertainment

This is exactly the kind of nerdy word (and music) humor I thrive on.

"la da dee didum

la da, da dum doo, diddle

dum doo la dee - do -

There, that's sufficient. I wrote a haiku for you.

Well I tried at least, and that's not so bad--

I'm working here!

Can that be said for you?"

Thanks! to this friend (the second one) and his linktastic knowledge of things that delight.

want the change

Probably the hardest task of all.

----

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame

Where everything shines as it disappears.

The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much

as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.

Is it safer to be gray and numb?

What turns hard becomes rigid

and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself like a fountain.

Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking

finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation

it did not think it could survive. And Daphne,

becoming a laurel,

dares you to become the wind.

(translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy;

taken from this fine book)

provided we stay brave enough

from "The Country of Marriage"

by Wendell Berry

III.

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

reminder: alone is okay

When I started living alone, it took some major emotional adjusting. I've grown to be okay with it, to love it in some ways, and to learn to live with it in others. I think we all need a little permission to be alone sometimes, though -- not lonely, just content being by our genuine selves.

I've posted this before, but I still need reminding.

" 'Cause if you're happy in your head, then solitude is blessed and alone is okay... And it doesn't mean you aren't connected, that community's not present. Just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it... You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it." - Tanya Davis

---

it's easy to forget

Long Winter
by Tim Nolan

So much I've forgotten
the grass

the birds
the close insects

the shoot—the drip—
the spray of the sprinkler

freckles—strawberries—
the heat of the Sun

the impossible
humidity

the flush of your face
so much

the high noon
the high grass

the patio ice cubes
the barbeque

the buzz of them—
the insects

the weeds—the dear
weeds—that grow

like alien life forms—
all Dr. Suessy and odd—

here we go again¬—
we are turning around

again—this will all
happen over again—

and again—it will—

capable flesh

The tender flesh itself

will be found one day

--quite surprisingly--

to be capable of receiving,

and yes, full

capable of embracing

the searing energies of God.

Go figure. Fear not.

For even at its beginning

the humble clay received

God's art, whereby

one part became the eye,

another the ear, and yet

another this impetuous hand.

Therefore, the flesh

is not to be excluded

from the wisdom and the power

that now and ever animates

all things. His life-giving

agency is made perfect,

we are told, in weakness--

made perfect in the flesh.

-- St. Irenaeus (c. 125-c.210),

adapted and translated by Scott Cairns

dharma

by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door

every morning

without a hat or an umbrella,

without any money

or the keys to her dog house

never fails to fill the saucer of my heart

with milky admiration.



Who provides a finer example 

of a life without encumbrance—

Thoreau in his curtainless hut 

with a single plate, a single spoon?

Ghandi with his staff and his holy diapers?



Off she goes into the material world

with nothing but her brown coat

and her modest blue collar,

following only her wet nose,

the twin portals of her steady breathing,

followed only by the plume of her tail.



If only she did not shove the cat aside

every morning
and eat all his food

what a model of self-containment she would be,

what a paragon of earthly detachment.

If only she were not so eager 

for a rub behind the ears,

so acrobatic in her welcomes,

if only I were not her god.

a classic

I've read this one in many lit classes over the years. Although it was written in the 17th century, it never fails to captivate me with its forceful language, driving rhythm, and the narrator's powerful desire for closeness -- even oneness -- with God.

---

Holy Sonnet XIV, "Batter My Heart"

by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

a major

by Mary Karr

I've come to see a dread-locked man

play Mozart like a demon (someone said) with angels

harrowing his back, or like a seraph

sought by succubi.

The black piano waits wide-legged, in boxer's pose.

It's a sarcophagus that stores

whole flocks of birds, banks of cirrus clouds,

Egyptian forest groves,

and a thousand metaphysical motes

to sting a watcher's eyes like sleet.

A corps in funeral dress lines up in rows,

but the piano holds the most tonight.

We gather on its rim and hunger towards it,

till the stage man props its jaw wide.

Then out strides this lion-headed man,

whom everyone can see the weather in. Then

the winds inhale, and the bows tilt at even angles

like the tiny masts of lifted sails.

Right away, the piano's notes unknot

some inner ropes in me, hoist some mainsheet,

loose in us some breeze, and with a broad wave

of the maestro's wand, we're off,

the notes skittering us along

like surf. The keys are black and bone and pose

a hurried order. When his lion's head

drops back, his face becomes a soft-edged mask

lifted in defiance of the night we came here

stalled in. See, my face is wet

I never haven't breathed so long. I've seen

a death with order, but in no way mean.

He's sprung our sternums wide

and freed us from our numbered seats.

We levitate as one and try to match

the thunder in his chest

with all our hands.

(for Awadagin Pratt)

for the wedded two

After a beautiful, at times hilarious, always touching wedding...

Hoping these two will get some good sleep these next days and weeks. :)

(A honeymoon is like a really long, awesome weekend, right?)

Weekends, Sleeping In
by Marjorie Saiser

No jump-starting the day,

no bare feet slapping the floor

to bath and breakfast.



Dozing instead
in
the nest
like,
I suppose,

a pair of gophers



underground

in fuzz and wood shavings.

One jostles the other

in closed-eye luxury.



We are at last

perhaps
what
we are:


uncombed,

unclothed,

mortal.



Pulse

and breath

and dream.

berryman

I will tell you what he told me

in the years just after the war

as we then called

the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said

you can do that when you're older

lose it too soon and you may

merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested

changing the usual order

of the same words in a line of verse

why point out a thing twice

he suggested I pray to the Muse

get down on my knees and pray

right there in the corner and he

said he meant it literally

it was in the days before the beard

and the drink but he was deep

in tides of his own through which he sailed

chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for

much older than I was he was in his thirties

he snapped down his nose with an accent

I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me

to paper my wall with rejection slips

his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled

with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence

that permitted everything and transmuted it

in poetry was passion

passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read

I asked how can you ever be sure

that what you write is really

any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure

you die without knowing

whether anything you wrote was any good

if you have to be sure don't write

W.S. Merwin, 1983

i'm a worm

Early Bird

by Shel Silverstein

Oh, if you're a bird, be an early bird

And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.

If you're a bird, be an early bird--

But if you're a worm, sleep late.

just a draft - original #1

morning with Lola and Lucy

It must have been their sharp peace
and silent receiving
of each fascinating thing

that the earth served—
scents on the breeze,
fresh growth at their feet.

I’m not skilled at hunting
the underbrush but
my native ears perked alike

at an audible shimmering high above—
the sound of salty foam
roiling on ocean sand.

Our senses sharply inhaled
a cirrus sky
filled by feathers and vapors.

All as one, they passed by –

a thin, pulsating sheet of wings
beating a shimmering lather
on a northward path.

My eyes lingered
with my mind
there

as I wished them back,
wished another wave
to wash over the beach of

my senses and remind me
how suddenly creation can surprise,
how fully nature’s favors can

please.

But my fine instructors
were already nose-down-

content again

with morning soil.

So I stilled my humanness

that wants what isn't

instead of loving what is

and returned
to the chilled,
punched steel

seat
where my body
rooted and welcomed

the task of watching
two dogs
sniff at the ground.

marriage is on the brain...

...and so are happiest wishes and congratulations to two wonderful couples--

four people with some of the kindest hearts I know.

----

The Kama Sutra of Kindness: Position Number 3

by Mary Mackey

It's easy to love

through a cold spring

when the poles

of the willows

turn green

pollen falls like

a yellow curtain

and the scent of 

Paper Whites

clots

the air



but to love for a lifetime

takes talent



you have to mix yourself

with the strange

beauty of someone

else

wake each morning

for 72,000
mornings in

a row so

breathed and

bound and 

tangled

that you can hardly

sort out

your arms

and 


legs



you have to

find forgiveness

in everything

even ink stains

and broken

cups



you have to be willing to move through

life

together

the way the long

grasses move

in a field

when you careen

blindly toward

the other

side



there's never going to be anything

straight or predictable

about your path

except the 

flattening

and the springing

back



you just go on walking for years

hand in hand

waist deep in the weeds

bent slightly forward

like two question

marks


and all the while it


burns 

my dear

it burns beautifully above

you

and goes on
burning

like a relentless

sun

-----------------------------

This post is part of a series in honor of National Poetry Month. I hope it brings you a little joy, a little peace, or just a little something you didn't know you were looking for. :)

Logos

by Mary Oliver

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?

If you say the right words, the wine expands.

If you say them with love

and the felt ferocity of that love

and the felt necessity of that love,

the fish explode into many.

Imagine him, speaking,

and don't worry about what is reality,

or what is plain, or what is mysterious.

If you were there, it was all those things.

If you can imagine it, it is all those things.

Eat, drink, be happy.

Accept the miracle.

Accept, too, each spoken word

spoken with love.

just walking around

by John Ashbery

What name do I have for you?

Certainly there is no name for you

In the sense that the stars have names

That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

An object of curiousity to some,

But you are too preoccupied

By the secret smudge in the back of your soul

To say much, and wander around,

Smiling to yourself and others.

It gets to be kind of lonely

But at the same time off-putting,

Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way,

The one that looped among island, and

You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.

And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.

There is light in there, and mystery and food.

Come see it. Come not for me but it.

But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

"all my stirring becomes quiet"...welcome, April + National Poetry Month

It's April again, National Poetry Month, and I've been hungering for some good words to sum up life lately -- and to take me far away from it. I'll be posting a poem a day, like last year, for whomever may enjoy it. Hope that means you. :)

Let's start with this one...

I

(from Sabbaths: Poems by Wendell Berry)

I go among trees and sit still.

All my stirring becomes quiet

around me like circles on water.

My tasks lie in their places

where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes

and lives a while in my sight.

What it fears in me leaves me,

and the fear of me leaves it.

It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.

I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear in it leaves it,

and the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,

mute in my consternations,

I hear my song at last,

and I sing it. As we sing

the day turns, the trees move.