POEMS -- FEBRUARY
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February 14, 2014
VALENTINE'S FULL MOON
I can live in a world where
I don't work.
But I can't work
In a world where
I don't live.
--Lessing
February 9, 2014
LLANTO
Plum, almond, cherry have come and gone,
the wisteria has vanished in
the dawn, the blackened roses rusting
along the barbed-wire fence explain
how April passed so quickly into
this hard wind that waited in the west.
Ahead is summer and the full sun
riding at ease above the stunned town
no longer yours. Brother, you are gone,
that which was earth gone back to earth,
that which was human scattered like rain
into the darkened wild eyes of herbs
that see it all, into the valley oak
that will not sing, that will not even talk.
--Philip Levine
The Simple Truth
February 27, 2013
IN MEMORIUM
JOHN CORDES POWERS
December 26, 1924 to February 27, 2013
The River of Life
Life springs forth by swiftly overflowing a resistant cliff--
It grows in strength supplied by streams of love,
tributaries of support and waves of learning--
The river wanders through sometimes quiet gentle waters
and sometimes through frighteningly swift waters--
Along the way meeting rocky resistance,
bubbling joy and unfathomed satisfaction--
All too soon it has passed -- gone from view, gone but not forgotten--
But -- Oh!
What journey it has been.
--Gary Goby, MD
February 21, 2013
ONE ART
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
--Elizabeth Bishop
February 28, 2012
SIMMERING
The day's last few patients
struggle from their rooms,
pause for pleasant small talk
with nurses, the leave me
feeling empty, hungry.
Forks of mole' chicken
follow hot rellano.
Downing the Negra beer
I stand up, pay and leave
with some other hunger.
Night's a goodie grocery
where I pull music, port
and memories from the shelf,
make poetry in dreams,
waken not hungry--yet.
-- If you live, your time will come
February 21, 2012
DON'T FORGET ADA
Ninety year old Ada walks in
alone, drops her weight on the orange chair--
loose skin and wrinkled blouse falling down
and out with her soft, old belly.
Don't want to wear this thing no more!
Sweat-smudged, bubble gum pink
fiberglass cast leaves behind her wrist
with no more thought than last hour's memories.
Just want to get back to my weaving...
Don't remember who put it on,
when or where.
Don't bother my mind with
the day or the President--
just want this off me.
Gotta get back to my weaving.
-- If you live, your time will come
February 14, 2012
Orchid Island
Let's, honey, moon
on that island
of my heart.
Yes, lover, soon
we'll find our wings
and depart
to a sainted isle
where mysteries'
miracles abound:
brave bloom of the wild
orchid--like you--
startling beauty found.
I delight in you:
just-born-bare body
bright in the moonlight,
then darting right through
the ocean waters
(you harbor inside!)
more gorgeous, too,
than all the snorkel fish
after a long boat ride.
We will marry every year,
and better still,
come together in a heartbeat
on that island
of two-made-three hearts.
-- If you live, your time will come
February 1, 2012
LAST LIGHT
With that extra hour of after-supper sun
daylight savings buys,
plod through dried cattle droppings
past the budding rose brush.
Freshly cut hilltop pine stump
reflects final minutes of sunlight
in its honey-crusted pitch.
A deer's mud-deep tracks lead to it.
Staccato bird poetry flies
through a melody of tumbling water
and the deep bass rumble
of down-shifting trucks.
Two mangy fireweed stalks throw
thin shadows on the pine perch
while a sunburst of yellow trilliium
defies the darkness forming behind it.
-- If you live, your time will come
February 27, 2011
Duffy
Duffy was my dog
He was my favorite, too
I remember when he was happy
he would roll around on the floor
He was funny, cute, fluffy, too
He barely ever barked at anyone
except the mailman, of course
If I could give him another life
that would be a blast, but
unfortunately I can't go back in the past
So last summer was a very sad summer
Duffy died. I've had him since
I was three, so it was hard
to say goodbye
Young or old we never knew
his age but soon he
had entered his final
stage.
--Larissa Van Ert
February 20, 2011
Petals
Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad,
early start.
Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the
leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one
is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry
on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.
February 14, 2011
Hinterhof
Stay near to me and I'll stay near to you--
As near as you are dear to me will do,
Near as the rainbow to the rain,
The west wind to the windowpane,
As fire to the hearth, as dawn to dew.
Stay true to me and I'll stay true to you--
As true as you are new to me will do,
New as the rainbow in the spray,
Utterly new in every way,
New in the way that what you say is true.
Stay near to me, stay true to me. I'll stay
As near, as true to you as heart could pray.
Heart never hoped that one might be
Half of the things you are to me--
The dawn, the fire, the rainbow and the day.
--James Fenton
(published in OUT OF DANGER)
February 13, 2011
Damn Black Funeral
Damn funeral, black everywhere.
It was all great heart, what people had to share.
But so about used to be--really hard to bear.
Goddamn funeral is what it is; is still hurtin'.
When people talk about me like that, I know I'm hurdlin'...
Why can't we do this on every tenth birthday?
Man, let the living hear all that good say!
Why save it for the funeral and the wake?
All that good stuff gone--make our hearts break
into tears, flowing faster than the wine.
Coulda made his soul sing, hearing all that poetry and praise.
Nothing wrong with praising a person who is still alive.
Every ten years, I say.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
February 10, 2011
Waking
There is nothing
and then there is everything at once,
a grand re-creation.
The recovery room hums like high tension wires
or a neon sign. Go ahead, stare.
It says: Isn't this a miracle
Isn't this a miracle
You have returned
from that vast sleep
during which you forgot the doctor's voice.
Count backward it said,
and you obeyed, as if you had a choice
how far or to what dream you'd spin;
the mask sickening, air thin.
You slid into death's false pocket
jingled like a change
to haggle the price of a grave--
or so it seemed.
You might as well behave--
anesthesia time is a nightmare place
of his steel hands, white-shrouded face.
Then armies of hummingbirds
buzz your veins. You hear a radio,
the clock's exaggerated tick.
You've been reborn to skin on sheets,
pain's fire doused by needle stick
The nurse's mother-face wavers before your eyes.
Waking is her truth; all the rest, white lies.
--Courtney Davis, RNC
(published in UNCHARTED LINES)
February 28, 2010
For The Record
The papal nuncio, John Burchard, writes calmly
that dozens of mares and stallions
were driven into a courtyard of the Vatican
so the Pope Alexander VI and his daughter,
Lucretia Borgia, could watch from a balcony
"with pleasure and much laughter"
the equine coupling going on below.
When this spectacle was over
they refreshed themselves, then waited
while Lucretia's brother, Caesar,
shot down ten unarmed criminals
who were herded into the same courtyard.
Remember this the next time you see
the name Borgia, or the word Renaissance.
I don't know what I can make of this,
this morning. I'll leave it for now.
Go for that walk I planned earlier, hope maybe
to see those two herons sift down the cliffside
as they did for us earlier in the season
so we felt alone and freshly
put here, not herded, not
driven.
-Raymond Carver
(published in A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL)
February 27, 2010
What Love Is
Across the kitchen table, we fight again.
I shout, It's MY future, leave the steak
my father grilled for me. Stomping up the steps,
I think of the veins bulging on his forehead,
the white collar he so desired tight around his neck.
Hungry, I sit on the landing, listen to him
gripe to my mother: The world won't
treat him half as well. From my height,
I watch him enter sunlight in the front hall,
peeling the foil off a small chocolate egg,
silent, meticulous. Glimmers of pity
fleck the white plaster, and wooden
floorboards, rising up through my disdain
solid as the house. Later, I go back down
to the kitchen, past the banister-posts
marking this stairway of lost chances.
He's slicing pears by the stove.
Our mean words linger like cooking smells
in the air between us. I mumble, I'm not going
upstairs anymore. His back muscles shake
under the knit shirt. Cut, cut, he works the blade,
jiggling his belted belly, pressed
against the counter. He turns, comes at me,
the knife still tight in his fist. Its flash
circles my head as we embrace.
--Peter Blair
(published in LAST HEAT)
February 26, 2010
Remembrance
Your hands easy
weight, teasing the bees
hived in my hair, your smile at the
slope of my cheek. On the
occasion, you press
above me, glowing, spouting
readiness, mystery rapes
my reason.
When you have withdrawn
your self and the magic, when
only the smell of your
love lingers between
my breasts, then, only
then, can I greedily consume
your presence.
--Maya Angelou
(published in AND STILL I RISE)
February 25, 2010
I Wish
I wish I had a lot of money.
I wish I had a house.
I wish I could meet my two TV friends.
I wish I was a pretty person.
I wish I could have a cat and a dog.
Maybe I could write to Santa and say,
Santa, I want it all.
--Alberta Lilley
(published in LONG NIGHT AHEAD)
February 24, 2010
The Coupling
During meals I used to watch them:
Her stirring and muttering,
Him spooning and sucking,
Both of them busy and undistractible,
Both stoking him with a concocted fuel
Of borscht and chunks of meat
And cucumber
And pumpernickel bread.
From their odd cooperation and intentness,
I knew his hunger was important.
All afternoon he would be in the cellar
Bent at the grinding wheel.
Sometimes I was allowed to stand and watch,
And while I saw him spark the knives to life,
I could always hear her thudding just above us
In her boxy shoes,
Canning her overripe cherries, thinking her slow thoughts.
I could not understand how they connected;
They seemed to have only their oldness in common.
Then once at a Bar Mitzvah
When he was flushed with unaccustomed wine,
Responding to a bout of dirty jokes
I heard him say with pride,
"When I was young I was a bull."
And I believed him,
Saw him black and sleek
Stamping out his demands in the tall grass.
The only time I ever heard her reminisce
It was about the farm in Russia
When she was a girl
And about the animals she left behind.
In particular, it was about a cow,
A cow with feelings "just like a person."
When she told me the story, she had cried,
And later I had cried when I recalled
The times I'd heard him say "old cow, old stupid cow"
About her underneath his breath.
But now, perhaps a little drunk myself,
I saw them in a field a century away,
Him snorting and erect with strength and need
Charging at her from behind,
Her grazing steadily on thick hoofs,
Not looking back,
Squatting slightly in her awkward way,
Bracing herself to take the full brunt of his love.
--Susan Astor
(published in DAME the University of Georgia Press)
February 23, 2010
The Storm
A perfect rainbow! a wide
arc low in the northern sky
spans the black lake
troubled by little waves
over which the sun
south of the city shines in
coldly from the bare hill
supine to the wind which
cannot waken anything
but drives the smoke from
a few lean chimneys streaming
violently southward
--William Carlos Williams
(published in THE WEDGE)
February 22, 2010
Madam Theodora
Madam Theodora takes my hand,
urgently. With precision twists it at
the wrist and stares intently as i unbend
my fisted fingers and capitulate
my sweaty palm. Behind her turbaned head
neon letters loop backwards, buzz
and blink off and on. Palms Read.
In the narrow room a polonaise
plays softly. A tiny corner sink drips
and Madam sees a journey over water.
Tonight, like every night, the subway yaws and creeps,
clacking home over the black, black river
I wonder about fortune, about life, and love redux...
But what can one expect for five bucks.
--Brooke Wiese
(published in AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD)
February 21, 2010
Communal Living
When we were young and immortal
what would we have said,
if an angel had come down
to our shack in Oregon's green
hills, as we warmed ourselves
beside the woodstove in a dark
soot-laden dawn, waiting for
Enid to make a pot of oatmeal,
Wayne to chop more wood;
if she waded her way among the piles
duffel bags, the psychedelic
watercolors, the cans of Bugler,
packs of Camels with rising suns,
waves of color and stars drawn on,
found us in overalls and hiking boots,
our long cotton paisley skirts,
hair down past the waist, our manes
blowing in the smoky early morning
as we rolled our first cigarettes
or weed, maybe someone put on The Band,
Jackie Lomax or Fresh Cream.
She would furl her wings, point and
say--you, dead at 23, a suicide; you,
medical school; you, a life of loss and
unemployment; you, a mother, activist
in Vermont; you, filmmaker in Russia;
you, one year of law school, one son,
then dead at 40, an unnamed virus.
Would we have tilted back our
uncombed heads and laughed?
--Alice Jones
(published in BLOOD AND BONE)
February 20,2010
The Doctor
Guilty, he does not always like his patients.
But here, black fur raised, their yellow-eyed dog
mimics Cerberus, barks barks at the invisible,
so this man's politics, how he may crawl
to superiors does not matter. A doctor must care
and the wife's on her knees in useless prayer,
the young daughter's like a waterfall.
Quiet, Cerberus! Soon enough you'll have a bone
or two. Now, coughing, the patient expects
the unjudged lie: "Your symptoms are familiar
and benign"--someone to be cheerfully sure,
to transform tremblings, gigantic unease,
by naming like a pet some small disease
with a known aetiology, certain cure.
So the doctor will and yes he will prescribe
the usual dew from a banana leaf; poppies and
honey too; ten snowflakes or something whiter
from the bole of a tree; the clearest water
ever, melting ice from a mountain lake;
sunlight from waterfall's edge, rainbow smoke;
tears from eyelashes of the daughter.
--Dannie Abse
(published in BLOOD AND BONE
edited by Angela Belli and Jack Coulehan)
February 19, 2010
Any Time
Vacation? Well, our children took our love apart:
"Why do you hold Daddy's hand?" "Susy's mother
doesn't have gray in her hair." And scenes crushed
our wonder--Sun Valley, Sawtooths, those reaches
of the Inland Passage, while the children took our
simple love apart.
(Children, how many colors does the light have?
Remember the wide shafts of sunlight, roads
through the trees, how light examines the road hour
by hour? It is all various, no simple on-off colors.
And love does not come riding west through the
trees to find you.)
"Daddy, tell me your best secret." (I have woven
a parachute out of everything broken; my scars
are my shield; and I jump, daylight or dark,
into any country, where as I descend I turn
native and stumble into terribly human speech
and wince recognition.)
"When you get old, how do you know what to do?"
(Waves will quiet, wind lull; and in that
instant I will have all the time in the world;
something deeper than birthdays will tell me all I need.)
"But will you do right?" (Children, children,
oh see that waterfall.)
--William Stafford
(published in THE WAY IT IS)
February 18, 2010
Sea Lullaby
The old moon is tarnished
With smoke of the flood,
The dead leaves are varnished
With colour like blood.
A treacherous smiler
With teeth white as milk,
A savage beguiler
In sheathings of silk.
The sea creeps to pillage,
She leaps on her prey;
A child of the village
Was murdered today.
She came up to meet him
In a smooth golden cloak,
She choked him and beat him
To death, for a joke.
Her bright locks were tangled,
She shouted for joy,
With one hand she strangled
A strong little boy.
Now in silence she lingers
Beside him all night
To wash her long fingers
In silvery light.
--Elinor Wylie
(published in THE PREMIER BOOK OF MAJOR POETS
edited by Anita Dore)
February 17, 2010
Curse One: The Wraith
You are a small shape of death crouched among leaves.
The twist of your red mouth is the torque of poison.
Tangle of leaves, spill of leaves, slow rot of leaves. . .
Misery, ruin, iniquity. You are the scuffling thing in dry grass.
Rodent, snail, the curly-legged spider, centipede, rat snake.
I see you by the back-hooded barbecue in November, brooding
like the smoke of burned meat. The fire in the coals gone out,
the sun hung low and weak in smoldering sky, cold
breath of winter. You are all smoke breath, grief, and conniving.
You are the alien thing invading my garden, a haunt, a plague,
lurking beyond light and warmth, there in the shadows wearing
death inside out, a curse on the sky. You are a spot, a flaw, a
blotch and a stain on the world you corrupt and I hate
you and fear you and look for you everywhere with dread.
--Cynthia Huntington
February 16, 2010
Tomorrow's Song
The USA slowly lost its mandate
in the middle and later twentieth century
it never gave the mountains and rivers,
trees and animals,
a vote.
all the people turned away from it
myths die; even continents are impermanent
Turtle Island returned.
my friend broke open a dried coyote-scat
removed a ground squirrel tooth
pierced it, hung it
from the gold ring
in his ear.
We look to the future with pleasure
we need no fossil fuel
get power within
grow strong on less.
Grasp the tools and move in rhythm side by side
flash gleams of wit and silent knowledge
eye to eye
sit still like cats or snakes or stones
as whole and holding as
the blue black sky.
gentle and innocent as wolves
as tricky as a prince.
At work and in our place:
in the service
of the wilderness
of life
of death
of the Mother's breasts!
--Gary Snyder
(published in TURTLE ISLAND)
February 14, 2010
Momma
Roses are red
Violets are blue,
You love me
And I love you, too.
--Larissa Van Ert
February 13, 2010
Orchids
They lean over the path,
Adder-mouthed,
Swaying close to the face,
Coming out, soft and deceptive.
Limp and damp, delicate as a young bird's tongue;
Their fluttery fledgling lips
Move slowly,
Drawing in the warm air.
And the night,
The faint moon falling through whitewashed glass,
The heat going down
So their musky smell comes even stronger,
Drifting down from their uossy cradles:
So many devouring infants!
Soft luminescent fingers,
Lips neither dead nor alive,
Loose ghostly mouths
Breathing.
--Theodore Roethke
(published in THE COLLECTED POEMS OF THEODORE ROETHKE)
February 12, 2010
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
--Dylan Thomas
February 11, 2010
The Edge of the Roof
I don't like it here, I want to go back.
According to the old Knowers
if you're absent from the one you love
even for one second that ruins the whole thing!
There must be someone...just to find
one sign of the other world in this town
would be enough.
You know the great Chinese Simurgh bird
got caught in this net...
And what can I do? I'm only a wren.
My desire-body, don't come
strolling over this way.
Sit where you are, that's a good place.
When you want dessert, you choose something rich.
In wine, you look for what is clear and firm.
What is the rest? The rest is mirages,
and blurry pictures, and milk mixed with water.
The rest is self-hatred, and mocking other people, and bombing.
So just be quiet and sit down.
The reason is--you are drunk,
and this is the edge of the roof.
--Rumi
(published in WHEN GRAPES TURN TO WINE
versions of Rumi, by Robert Bly)
February 10, 2010
The Grownup
All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all in fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.
And she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play,
transfiguring and preparing for the future,
the first white veil descended, gliding softly
over her opened face, almost opaque there.
never to be lifted off again, and somehow
giving to all her questions just one answer:
In you, who were a child once--in you.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
(published in THE SELECTED POETRY OF
RAINER MARIA RILKE edited and translated by
Stephen Mitchell)
February 9, 2010
Ophélie (Ophelia)
On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...
- In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.
For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.
The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.
The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
- A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.
II
O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!
- It was the winds descending from the great mountains of
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom
It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;
It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!
Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!
You melted to him as snow does to a fire;
Your great visions strangled your words
- And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!
III
- And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.
--Arthur Rimbaud
((published
in ARTHUR RIMBAUD, COLLECTED POEMS (1962)
- As
translated by Oliver Bernard)
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February 8, 2010
Song of the Highest Tower
O may it come, the time of love.
The time we'd be enamored of.
I've been patient too long,
My memory is dead,
All fears and all wrongs
To the heavens have fled.
While all my veins burst
With a sickly thirst.
O may it come, the time of love.
The time we'd be enamored of.
Like the meadow that is dreaming
Forgetful of cares,
Flourishing and flowering
With incense and tares,
Where fierce buzzings rise
Of filthy flies.
O may
it come, the time of love.
The time we'd be enamored of.
--Arthur Rimbaud
(published in A SEASON IN HELL
translated by Louise Vare`se)
February 7, 2010
Winter Love
Let us have winter loving that the heart
May be in peace and ready to partake
Of the slow pleasure spring would wish to hurry
Or that in summer harshly would awake,
And let us fall apart, O gladly weary,
The white skin shaken like a white snowflake.
--Elizabeth Jennings
(published inA BOOK OF LOVE POETRY)
February 6, 2010
Buddha Inside the Light
The core of every core, the kernel of every kernel,
an almond! held in itself, deepening in sweetness:
all of this, everything, right up to the stars,
is the meat around your stone. Accept my bow.
Oh, yes, you feel it, how the weights on you are gone!
Your husk has reached into what has no end,
and that is where the great saps are brewing now.
On the outside a warmth is helping,
for, high, high above, your own suns are growing
immense and they glow as they wheel around.
Yet something has already started to live
in you that will live longer than the suns.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
(published in SELECTED POEMS OF RAINER MARIA RILKE
translated from the German by Robert Bly)
February 5, 2010
White Flowers
Last night
in the fields
I lay down in the darkness
to think about death,
but instead I fell asleep,
as if in a vast and sloping room
filled with those white flowers
that open all summer,
sticky and untidy,
in the warm fields.
When I woke
the morning light was just slipping
in front of the stars,
and I was covered
with blossoms.
I don't know
how it happened--
I don't know
if my body went diving down
under the sugary vines
in some sleep-sharpened affinity
with the depths, or whether
that green energy
rose like a wave
and curled over me, claiming me
in its husky arms.
I pushed them away, but I didn't rise.
Never in my life had I felt so plush,
or so slippery,
or so resplendently empty.
Never in my life
had I felt myself so near
that porous line
where my own body was done with
and the roots and the stems and the flowers
began.
--Mary Oliver
(published in NEW AND SELECTED POEMS)
February 4, 2010
The Secret
Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.
I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me
(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even
what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,
the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,
and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that
a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines
in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for
assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
--Denise Levertov
February 3, 2010
The Kitty-Cat Bird
The Kitty-Cat Bird sat on a fence.
Said the Wren your Song isn't worth ten cents.
You're a Fake, you're a Fraud, you're a Hor-rid Pretense!
--Said the Wren to the Kitty-Cat Bird.
You've too many Tunes, and none of them Good:
I wish you would act like a bird really should,
Or stay by yourself down deep in the wood,
--Said the Wren to the Kitty-Cat Bird.
You mew like a Cat, you grate like a Jay:
You squeak like a Mouse that lost in the Hay,
I wouldn't be You for even a day,
--Said the Wren to the Kitty-Cat Bird.
The Kitty-Cat Bird, he moped and he cried.
Then a real cat came with a Mouth so Wide
That the Kitty-Cat Bird just hopped inside.
"At last I'm myself!"--and he up and died
--Did the Kitty--the Kitty-Cat Bird.
You'd better not laugh; and don't say, "Pooh!"
Until you have thought this Sad Tale through:
Be sure that whatever you are is you
--Or you'll end like the Kitty-Cat Bird.
--Theodore Roethke
(published in I AM! SAYS THE LAMB <1961>)
February 2, 2010
It
Sometimes we fit together like the creamy
speckled three-section body of the banana, that
joke fruit, as sex was a joke when we were kids,
and sometimes it is like a jagged blue comb of glass across my skin,
and sometimes you have me bent over as thick paper can be
folded, on the rug in the center of the room
far from the soft bed, my knuckles
pressed against the grit in the grain of the rug's braiding where they
laid the rags tight and sewed them together,
my ass in the air like a lily with a wound on it
and I feel you going down into me as
my own tongue is your cock sticking
out of my mouth like a stamen, the making and
breaking of the world at the same moment,
and sometimes it is sweet as the children we had
thought were dead being brought to the shore in the
narrow boats, boatload after boatload.
Always I am stunned to remember it,
as if I have been to Saturn or the bottom of a trench in the sea floor, I
sit on my bed the next day with my mouth open and think of it.
--Sharon Olds
(published in THE GOLD CELL)
February 1, 2010
Love...in You the Earth
Little
rose,
roselet,
at times,
tiny and naked,
it seems
as though you would fit
in one of my hands,
as though I'll clasp you like this
and carry you to my mouth,
but
suddenly
my feet touch your feet and my mouth your lips:
you have grown,
your shoulders rise like two hills,
your breasts wander over my breast,
my arms scarcely manages to encircle the thin
new-moon line of your waist:
in love you have loosened yourself like sea water:
I can scarcely measure the sky's most spacious eyes
and I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.
--Pablo Neruda
(published in THE CAPTAIN'S VERSES
translated by Donald D. Walsh)
February 28, 2009
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
(published in House of Light)
February 27, 2009
TOUGH AT TEN
Amelia, my father's mother,
lived too far from California to be Grandma.
Nebraska's distance stretched her title wider:
Grandmother 'Melia.
But it was into grandma's lap we'd slip
after two thousand miles on our Dodge's hard cushions.
All of ten, I really wanted to check out the bra section.
But excitement was running through me--I just had time
to tear and wipe with that cold, glossy Sears & Roebuck.
Guess uncle James was trying to cool me off
with direct-hit squirts of unpasteurized cow's milk.
Grandma 'Melia handed me towels to dry off,
then a lap-seat show of her photo album.
Even that fading black and white
showed her face in tactile contradiction:
mango fresh cheeks up to the rims
where two coal-rough eyes begin.
She holds her infant sister
one third her size: head above head
with electric fence eyes
daring, "get past here alive!"
"My Lord," I worried even then,
"was she ever given time to be ten?"
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Poet Speak)
February 26, 2009
ADDLED VERSE
When things have all gone bad to worse
And I find myself filled with curse
I set about onerous tasks first
then soothe my mind with addled verse.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo--Little Sneezes of
Profound Dittycism)
February 25, 2009
LIVING MOMENTS
Morning sun exposes the thin, cold sheet
snow spirit tossed on Big Sur ridge overnight.
I feel its chill reminder that even the dark hours
can be used to create wonder.
Silent as this rare Pacific Coast snow
I will soon leave without footprints,
droppings or bent grass and twig
left to disclose wintry nights lived here.
Like our whale-watching from the baths
you have had sightings of me: head down
and tail up before the dive, then spewing
like some Native American smoke signal.
I've no warm Baja waters to hurry to,
no dreams of rollicking with the newborn
mammal migrators. I have only wonder--
how do I look before taking a dive?
"There is no dive--only the jump, suspension in air,
acceleration, and powerful explosion of splash."
Speak to me more of those living moments!
But let me reply that even the whales dream.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Seeds on a Wind Ride)
February 24, 2009
ONLY FOR THIS
Sometimes, it seems, I live only for this:
Climbing soft shoulders, the early morning kiss
Heats, melts and tumbles into globes' abyss.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Create that Love that Love Creates)
February 23, 2009
UNIVERSES APART
Alan is a solitary lad.
Yes, a sailor once gone mad.
He spoke, as he smoked,
of Jesus--
as well of the words
people use to keep
themselves apart.
"I cannot say hello
I'll have you know.
It's a one-sided affair
whose initiation I cannot bear.
No, I cannot say
I'll enjoy this day."
Yet he told of a priest's
sermon: Love one another.
(then silence--thrice)
The gathered looked at each other
to feel if it's true,
to ask of the price.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
February 22, 2009
GABRIEL
I come home to the cottage.
I climb the balcony.
It's the archangel Gabriel
Waiting there for me.
He says: Boss, boss, cut the loss,
Don't take on so.
Don't get mad with Gabriel.
Let it go.
I go into the kitchen
To fix myself a drink.
It's the archangel Gabriel
Weeping by the sink.
He says: Boss, boss, cut the loss,
Don't take on so.
Don't get mad with Gabriel.
Let it go.
I say: You've been away in Magsaysay,
You've not clocked in all week;
You're as strong as an ox,
But you're work shy
With your head bowed low and your pleading eyes
And I'm too mad to speak.
I come home two hours later.
The archangel drops a tear.
He's sitting there in the same old chair
And he's drunk all the beer.
He says: Boss, boss, cut the loss,
Don't take on so.
Don't get mad with Gabriel.
Let it go.
I say: You've drunk yourself into outer space.
You're giving me one of those looks.
You're as wild as the moon in storm time
And I'd like to know the reason I'm
Supposed to keep you on the books.
Yes I should have known when I took you on
When you tumbled from the sky
That you're set in your ways and that' all.
You're a Gabriel and you've had a fall.
You can't change and nor can I
Gabriel
You can't change and nor can I.
--James Fenton
(published in Out of Danger)
February 21, 2009
DO NO HARM
A spider in the sink is stunned. The light.
My size. Big sucker, brown. The body
bulges. Otherwise, it's squat. If I wait
a few minutes without moving, it'll glide
over the dry porcelain, attending
to its needs. Why do these spiders appear?
This one must have dropped from the ceiling
on a sticky thread. It couldn't have been
exploring. Spiders don't, unless...looking
for water? Attracted to a new spot?
I don't think so. Out in the open sink,
vulnerable at any moment
to flood, this arachnid is as good as dead.
What kind of being? There is no way
to understand how it feels. It may eat
its own eggs. It hasn't friends. The sheen
of the porcelain means nothing to it.
Act without thought. I will turn the tap
to the right temperature and pull out
my razor. I could switch off the light and wait
for the spider to leave, or flick it up
with a Kleenex. But I don't. I let
the torrent loose and turn for a moment
to the shower, so I can't see the spider
struggling and sliding, as its whole life,
for all I know, flashes in front of it.
--Jack Coulehan, MD
(published in JAMA: Volume 292, No. 22)
February 20, 2009
OPEN HIGHWAY
Freedom is two hands:
One in a pocket,
Other in north wind;
Standing on two feet:
One in the soil,
Fellow on asphalt;
Blowing out mouth dry
With smoky taste;
Living in this mind--
That's not only mine.
--Tim Van Ert
February 19, 2009
SETTLE DOWN
Winter hands me hat and gloves
to remove beneath the maples,
place on my make-shift desk
and free fingers to scribble
soft, round moves like love.
With Galway Kinnell
bound at my side I step
through daffodils past tractor tires
up deer and human trail
to perch under heavy maple arms.
Strange cat screech stops me.
Across the overgrown road I look
into the abandoned auto shed.
As I imagine that feral
scaring holy terror into my cat
the cries cease. I hurry
over hoof prints to sit and read
of another man's perch,
every man's oatmeal.
Then watch the sun settle down.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Seeds on a Wind Ride)
February 18, 2009
FIVE FINGER GRASS
Bobbing smoothly on back your son rides into the clinic.
I imagine a papoose board hidden by your black hair
reaching down to touch his short-cropped sheen.
I'm surprised into the present as you lean
closer to boast he can dunk his little basketball!
Not his keen sense for deer behind rhododendrons,
or how he spots bobcat scat along the trail to Mad River.
Your great-grandfather once paused from cool coastal fishing
to trek feverishly into foothills where the medicine parents
taught him to find five finger grass,
which part to chew, and when to spit it out.
Only after his well-child visit ends
you confide your concerns of pounding chest
that barely keeps leaping heart from throat.
"Dreams are all nightmare."
I offer you a stick to chew on,
"Sometimes, at night, a man has finished
his labors, but his heart has not.
This energy can ride a man's spirit
like the wild plains-born pony."
Nodding respectfully, you raise
son up in your arms.
You feel your breast again
beating ribs proud and strong,
like the poised rider
of a plains mustang.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Mediphors)
February 17, 2009
RIVER BANK MEETING
Hard and careful saint,
less innocent of sin
than I am of grace,
stare downstream with me.
Float the Spree with me past co-eds
studying Goethe in the grass,
beyond guitar gleaming sweat
the shirtless gypsy let,
and toddler tucked in stroller
to pull mom from her house.
Now, let pour a story
I can reflect on to forget
having nothing to offer you
but these stranger stories we've met.
--Tim Van Ert
February 16, 2009
Trying to Name What Doesn't Change
Roselva says the only thing that doesn't change
is train tracks. She's sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery
by the side, but not the tracks.
I've watch one for three years, she says,
and it doesn't curve, doesn't break, doesn't grow.
Peter isn't sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
is a changed track. The metal wasn't shiny anymore.
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.
Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn't change.
Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.
The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of my brain,
it takes something different with it every time.
-- Naomi Nye
(published in Yellow Glove)
February 15, 2009
ASK FOR NOTHING
Instead walk alone in the evening
heading out of town toward the fields
asleep under a darkening sky;
the dust risen from your steps transforms
itself into a golden rain fallen
earthward as a gift from no known god.
The plane trees along the canal bank,
the few valley poplars, hold their breath
as you cross the wooden bridge that leads
nowhere you haven't been, for this walk
repeats itself once or more a day.
that is why in the distance you see
beyond the first ridge of low hills
where nothing ever grows, men and women
astride mules, on horseback, some even
on foot, all the lost family you
never prayed to see, praying to see you,
chanting and singing to bring the moon
down into the last of the sunlight.
Behind you the windows of the town
blink on and offf, the houses close down;
ahead the voices fade like music
over deep water, and then are gone;
even the sudden, tumbling finches
have fled into smoke, and the one road
whitened in moonlight leads everywhere.
-- Philip Levine
(published in The Simple Truth)
February 14, 2009
I WILL BE THERE
Setting sun tosses dozens of pink
rose buds across the sky
as my car slows on our drive.
White puffs of dandelion hope
settle into tentative stillness
like quivering lips silence.
Bee brushes black poppy pistil
clean of the sweet marrow
meant to fertilize a red tomorrow.
Pressed-wood door sweeps in
day's end inspiration
from across begonia blossoms.
Delicious daughter crush me welcome
with your petal-dropping embrace
and its flesh dew taste.
At the close of each long day
there's no place I'd rather bring
my pistil home to play!
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
February 13, 2009
SOMETHING ABOUT MAGIC
I just saw the last guest out the door--
Guess this dinner party's finally o'er.
Now it's late and I've worn myself out,
So I should be glad.
But, hell, I'm kickin' through these darkened rooms
Feeling only sad.
Energy so high makes me despair
Of finding that pitch again anywhere.
Maybe I should call ev'rybody up,
Do it again next week.
Then we'll all eat, drink and make merry--
Boogie cheek to cheek.
Well, I need to work next week--ev'ry day.
Ah, my practical side is having its say.
If only I could capture these special times
And lock 'em away.
Or is there something about magic won't let
You do it that way?
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
February 12, 2009
RIGHT INACTION
Saturday in the Arcata Brewery
a field of garter snakes with limbs
encircles in slithers the one woman
whose marble-perfect face rests
still as the wall's Ansel Adams.
"Reptile brains--two more hours
they'll be drunk and all
fall away from me,"
the barmaid determines.
She reminds me of Dirk's Doberman,
poised patrician of abandoned car,
seething motionless
on a passenger seat pillow
with lips drawn open
while the sedan's haggard body kneels
toward the flat, driver-side wheel.
Dirk values that used-up car
almost as much as his dog.
Trusts her territorial instincts
to keep secure car's future,
Doberman's--and his.
A heartening strength in knowing
these two females stand
with the few holding
bone-and-sinew knowledge
of what to do, when,
and with whom.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in The Sow's Ear Poetry Review)
February 11, 2009
BREAKTHROUGH
Silver surface invites me bend forward,
look beyond the briars--
and their gortex hiss of danger.
Luckily, not all that ditch water
frosted before freezing.
A small, clear portal faintly reflects my face
while displaying its drowned plantain
like the rosebud trapped in a paper weight.
Not here to keep things still,
my highlander hop delivers
right boot to that window.
Plate-glass thick ice gives a low moan
followed by a sharp screech.
My imagination smelled an adrenaline feast:
served by sudden gravity give-way
topped with electric bite of chilled water--
but because the solid water would not shatter,
all it got was X-ray insight to broken ankle
and this poem.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
February 10, 2009
HEARTS MURMUR
Before I opened my eyes
the day was given angular shape
by two crows' caws.
When I listened with my stethoscope
that shape was softened by the blowing
murmur of your heart.
I was sure the crows had
no news for me,
and would never have
guessed yours.
"I've known about that
murmur for twenty years.
It's my brother I'm sick about:
crashed in the Alps--frontal lobe.
Will he survive; how will I know?
These questions are not fair to you, doc.
I'm just so worried about him
I thought I'd call on you
for some reassuring words."
"Thank you. Nor do I
wish to live alone."
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
February 9, 2009
MY BOOKS WAIT IN THE BEDROOM
From this room's perspective
everything's aligned.
Clean counter edge points through
white kitchen door's slit
to just wide of the perpendicular
cinder block bookshelf
that holds photos and fantasies
pressing page-to-page.
Words are stacked there tightly
closed against themselves
until some inspiration comes
and pages fly open
with the sigh of unbound bellows,
like when I push open
your breathing thighs.
Step with me into room's hot summer.
Close the curtains, remove our clothes.
Riffle my pages with your moist breath
that opens me. Realign.
"Author...oh, God...author!"
I swear I hear you cry,
though my senses are not to be trusted
in the tumult of our sweat storm.
Feeling our sticky pages
close back against themselves,
my eyes open to a chaos of bookmarks--
solitary sentinels of unfinished stories.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Poetry Journal)
February 8, 2009
SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A MOTHERLESS CHILD
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
Long way from my home...
Sometimes I wish I could fly like a bird up in the sky.
Oh, sometimes I wish I could fly, fly like a bird up in the sky.
Sometimes I wish I could fly like a bird up in the sky.
Little closer to home...
Motherless children have a hard time.
Motherless children have such a hard time.
Motherless children have such a real hard time.
So far from home...
Sometimes I feel like freedom is near.
Sometimes I feel like freedom is here.
Sometimes I feel like freedom is so near.
But we're so far from home...
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
Baby, sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
Long way from home...
Sometimes I feel like it's close at hand.
Sometimes feel the Kingdom is at hand.
Sometimes I feel like Kingdom is now.
Oh, we're so far from home...
--Van Morrison
February 7, 2009
THE LEMONS
Forget the sun and the dizzy moths.
Forget the pieces of mockingbird that the cats have left by the side gate.
Forget the hose running under the honeysuckle:
the lemons are offering us holiness again.
They are making us go down on our knees to smell them.
They are making us think of old loves, to grieve over them.
They are singing every little song, they are conjuring every temptation.
They have been having sex with the oranges and tangerines, the yard
is rife with their pollens, they are sweeter than they even know.
They speak together. They are amazing me with their navels and nipples.
How they flaunt themselves on the spider-veined limbs all pained with thorn.
They are trying to make me lazy, to turn me against my simple work--
they do not want to be plucked from their own dreaming.
They are telling us again how they come each year, bringing secrets
from their other world, and how we are never able to decipher them.
How long now before we put up the aluminum ladder
and pull on the leather-palmed gloves? How long with the shape
and heft of lelmon voluptuous in my hand? How long
with the summer in its steep track, and the low cars cruising
out on the avenues, and the drone of the small airplanes
like bees over the far houses?
--Frank X. Gaspar
(published in
A Field Guide to the Heavens)
February 6, 2009
WAL-MART KOAN
Everything you want,
Gotta pay the price.
So you want nothing --
That'll cost plenty.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo:
Little Sneezes of Profound Dittycism)
February 5, 2009
EASE ON
Summer, with his escorts
blonde Spring and red-haired Autumn,
waltzes Winter's ball
awkward as all adolescence.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo)
February 4, 2009
BEFORE THE WORDS WERE SAID
I'm
just looking for the face you had
Before the world was made...
Your original face
Before time and space.
Van Morrison, Before the World Was Made
I took your criticisms to heart
like a dull-edged dagger;
slowly the blood river flowed by,
thickened.
With moist fingers I scooped it up
to make my blood pudding.
My strength returned.
Now the snow does not lie so deep
that I can't lumber on.
Spring rubs its hands warm to touch me
in the waiting valley.
What was it you said to me that night --
you heard no original voice?
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
February 3, 2009
CIRCUIT PRAYER
Kneel still as water in June's dry tempo.
Creek pauses to pool,
basks noonday warm.
A silt-bottom frog womb
pulses without ripple.
Stringy tadpole egg-sac wriggles.
Artful black pimples,
Houdinis in a bag,
escape to childhood:
big bang on pond-scum plane.
Great circle of nucleotide reminders,
convulsing rosary,
dips as a dowsing rod
pointing the way to
victims of life renewed.
Opening chess move of the innocent--
soft-bellied players lose
tails of planned surrender
to penitent hands cupped,
awarded prayer beads.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in SLIGHTLY WEST)
February 2, 2009 GOT MILK?
Tawny Roosevelt elk,
my fellow American immigrant,
I recognize your rump
drawn back in the morning fog
from forelegs washed by the Klamath.
I have been a river away from my herd
before a day's even gotten underway.
Those you would join impress
only with their massive passivity.
Your ponderously racked alpha--
stately, still and ten yards ahead--
sways me most to curious musing,
"Can these creatures possibly be
dumb as Holsteins?"
On my drive home you startle me again:
your alpha has led the tribe to settle
on a grassy roadside meadow
for an incongruous tourist photo op!
I smile broadly as I imagine
your leader's bemused look as a challenge,
"How now thin cows?"
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
February 1, 2009 FEBRUARY FIRST
Earth's wide Yakima Canyon yawns
dark in the corner of my sleepy view
now that the huskies' penned-up complaints
have snuffed out my dreams.
I rub my eyes
warm with resentment
I've been denied the unruffled sleep
of earth under its snow blanket.
A quail hen bobs up the hill
toward the exposed porch,
checks the seed dish lying there
empty but for shells.
Chill wind flaps one loose shutter.
Inside, white barn owls
make laps high in the rafters.
The chalk-powder lanes they drop
mark their pacing track.
To find on this first of February
even the birds restrained
sharpens my longing
for the first crocus flowering.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)