The Year Gone By

The Year - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.

Winter Solstice

H

Solstice II - Kathleen Jamie

Here comes the sun 

                       summiting the headland - pow!

straight through the windows of the 10.19

- and here's us passengers,

                     splendid and blinking

                                 like we're all re-born,

remade exactly, and just where we left off:

the students, the toddler, the tattoo'd lass,

the half-dozen roustabouts

                                   headed off-shore

                                            cracking more beers and more jokes.

Angus at midwinter

                                 or near as makes no odds -

faint shadows raxed

over fields of dour earth,

every farmer's fenceposts

                                    splashed with gold.

The Christmas Letter

The Christmas Letter - John M. Morris

Wherever you are when you receive this letter
I write to say we are still ourselves
in the same place
and hope you are the same.

The dead have died as you know
and will never get better,
and the children are boys and girls
of their several ages and names.

So in closing I send you our love
and hope to hear from you soon.
There is never a time
like the present. It lasts forever
wherever you are. As ever I remain.

Forecasts

This was the poem for today in the 'Poem for Every Day of the Year' anthology. I love how the dominant feeling of hope is subtly, but powerfully presented.


Forecasts - Jean Kenward

There are berries this year on the holly
it wasn't always so.
They may be simply a forecast,
forecast of snow.

This frost on the sill
I've seen it glitter with diamond light.
It' slippery too, the traveller must
watch his step tonight.

There's a moon as big as a melon
and far off, oh how far
flickering on the horizon
a fresh and different star.

In the heart of man is a coldness.
Through a crack in the stable door
there glimmers a new dominion.
Even ice can thaw.

Happy Ideas

 

Happy Ideas - Mary Szybist

I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel
                                                                                                                                                                                                    to a kitchen stool and watch it turn. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                —DUCHAMP

 

I had the happy idea to suspend some blue globes in the air

and watch them pop.

I had the happy idea to put my little copper horse on the shelf so we could stare at each other

all evening.

I had the happy idea to create a void in myself.

Then to call it natural.

Then to call it supernatural.

I had the happy idea to wrap a blue scarf around my head and spin.

I had the happy idea that somewhere a child was being born who was nothing like Helen or

Jesus except in the sense of changing everything.

I had the happy idea that someday I would find both pleasure and punishment, that I would

know them and feel them,

and that, until I did, it would be almost as good to pretend.

I had the happy idea to call myself happy.

I had the happy idea that the dog digging a hole in the yard in the twilight had his nose deep in

mold-life.

I had the happy idea that what I do not understand is more real than what I do,

and then the happier idea to buckle myself

into two blue velvet shoes.

I had the happy idea to polish the reflecting glass and say

hello to my own blue soul. Hello, blue soul. Hello.

It was my happiest idea.

Daily

To exalt in the routine of daily life - now that is a task

that poetry can easily accomplish. 

Daily - Naomi Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips
 
These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares
 
These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl
 
This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out
 
This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky
 
This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it
 
The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

Autumn Equinox

 

 

 

Happy Autumn Equinox!

 

 

Mabon - Annie Finch

 

for Mabon 

Fall Equinox 21 September 

 

Our voices press

from us

and twine

around the year's

fermenting wine

Yellow fall roars

Over the ground.

Loud, in the leafy sun that pours

Liquid through doors,

Yellow, the leaves twist down

as the winding

of the vine

pulls our curling

voices—

Glowing in wind and change,

The orange leaf tells

How one more season will alter and range,

Working the strange

Colors of clamor and bells

In the winding

of the vine

our voices press out

from us

to twine

When autumn gathers, the tree

That the leaves sang

Reddens dark slowly, then, suddenly free,

Turns like a key,

Opening air where they hang

and the winding

of the vine

makes our voices

turn and wind

with the year’s

fermented wine

One of the hanging leaves,

Deeply maroon,

Tightens its final hold, receives,

Finally weaves

Through, and is covered soon

in the winding

of the vine—

Holding past summer's hold,

Open and strong,

One of the leaves in the crown is gold,

Set in the cold

Where the old seasons belong.

Here is my crown

Of winding vine,

Of leaves that dropped,

That fingers twined,

another crown

to yield and shine

with a year’s

fermented wine.

September

 

The suddenness of September, captured here perfectly. 



September - Linda Pastan
it rained in my sleep
and in the morning the fields were wet
I dreamed of artillery
of the thunder of horses
in the morning the fields were strewn
with twigs and leaves
as if after a battle
or a sudden journey
I went to sleep in summer
I dreamed of rain
in the morning the fields were wet
and it was autumn
. . . and here is the power of poetry.

Song at the Beginning of Autumn

 'But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia...'

Autumn once again, almost. Of all the seasons, this is maybe the one richest in nostalgia.


Song at the Beginning of Autumn - Elizabeth Jennings

Now watch this autumn that arrives
In smells. All looks like summer still;
Colours are quite unchanged, the air
On green and white serenely thrives.
Heavy the trees with growth and full
The fields. Flowers flourish everywhere.

Proust who collected time within
A child's cake would understand
The ambiguity of this -
Summer still raging while a thin
Column of smoke stirs from the land
Proving that autumn gropes for us.

But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia. We give names -
Autumn and summer, winter, spring -
As though to unfasten from the mind
Our moods and give them outward forms.
We want the certain, solid thing.

But I am carried back against
My will into a childhood where
Autumn is bonfires, marble, smoke;
I lean against my window fenced
From evocations in the air.
When I said autumn, autumn broke.

Window

Window - Rumi

Your body is away from me
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.

From this window, like the moon
I keep sending news secretly.

                                     

A History of Glassblowing

 

RIP Matthew Sweeney 1952-2018, a poet who knew a lot about poetry's power to reshape the world.



A History of Glassblowing - Matthew Sweeney

The records show that in Shanghai
at the end of the Yuan Dynasty,
the year 1364, a glassblower blew
a mermaid that came to life, and swam
away. And in Cologne, in 1531, a team
of glassblowers blew an orchestra,
instruments and all, and these played.
Then on Hokkaido, in 1846, a blind
monk blew his own Buddha to pray to,
and the next day he was able to see.
In Natchez, in 1901, a glassblower
blew a paddleboat with gamblers in it,
one of them lying dead. And in Oaxaca,
in 1929, a small version of the Sierra
Madre was blown, with golddiggers
on its lower slopes, and the whole
town filled with gold. In Letterkenny,
in 1965, a woman blew a flock
of glass sheep, wool and all, each
of them with a tinkly baa. In 1993,
in Séte, the harbour glassblower
blew a lighthouse with its own light,
and in 2004, in Timisoara, three
glassies blew a new solar system
that they let float up and away.

Dirge

 

 

No, I am not resigned.

 

 

 

Dirge Without Music - Edna St Vincent Millay

 

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled

Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/dirge-without-music-by-edna-st-vincent-millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/dirge-without-music-by-edna-st-vincent-millay

Starry Starry night

 'This world was never meant for
one as beautiful as you...'

For Andy x 

Any epitaph seems like an understatement, but special people aren't easily described, or forgotten.

For someone who occupied a special place in my life for a while, but in my heart, has always resided.

To a dreamer, a seeker, a deep thinker and feeler, quick-witted and big-hearted, a gentle and beautiful soul: your presence meant more than you know.

Be at peace now, amongst the stars and the beautiful places only souls can know xx

 

Vincent (Starry Starry Night) - Don Mc Lean

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue

Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life, as lovers often do
But I could've told you Vincent
This world was never meant for
One as beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frame-less heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget

Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will 

In the Kingdom of Midas

In the Kingdom of Midas - Linda Pastan

If you follow the sun
from room to room,
wading in the pools
of light spilled
by that tawny,
molten river,

if you move all day
from east
to west, from kitchen
to study to bed,
by afternoon you'll see
the bedposts touched

and changed to sheaves of wheat,
and the children born
and nourished there will be
golden tongued
and golden headed.

For you the moon has always been
the pale,
homely sister.
You tell your rosary
in saffron beads of light,

and though one day
you'll drown
in shade, the sun
will leave its heavy coins
on your closed lids
forever.

Peonies

Saving the best till last - peonies! <3


Peonies -   Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities —
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

Hydrangeas

 

Blue Hydrangeas - Gillian Clarke

You bring them in, a trug of thundercloud,
neglected in long grass and the sulk
of a wet summer. Now a weight of wet silk
in my arms like her blue dress, a load
of night-inks shaken from their hair –
her hair a flame, a shadow against light
as long ago she leaned to kiss goodnight
when downstairs was a bright elsewhere
like a lost bush of blue hydrangeas.
You found them, lovely, silky, dangerous,
their lapis lazulis, their indigoes
tide-marked and freckled with the rose
of death, beautiful in decline.
I touch my mother’s skin. Touch mine. 

 

Wildflowers

'...For their fierce and unruly joy...' what a great description of wildflowers! And a perfect love poem too. 



Wildflowers - Linda Pastan

You gave me dandelions.
They took our lawn
by squatters’ rights—
round suns rising
in April, soft moons
blowing away in June.
You gave me lady slippers,
bloodroot, milkweed,
trillium whose secret number
the children you gave me
tell. In the hierarchy
of flowers, the wild
rise on their stems
for naming.
Call them weeds.
I pick them as I
picked you,
for their fierce,
unruly joy.

Rose

 

'Without her, how can we ever 

talk about what our hopes were...'

Ah, the rose.  The most beautiful of all flowers. Seems Rilke is in agreement according to this exquisite reflection. 

from The Roses - Rainer Maria Rilke

A single rose is every rose
and this one: irreplaceable,
perfect, a supple vocable
by the text of things enclosed.

Without her, how can we ever
talk about what our hopes were,
about the tender intervals
in this perpetual departure.

Let's not speak of you. Ineffable.
That is your nature.
Other flowers decorate the table
you transfigure.

We put you in a simple vase -
everything is mutable:
perhaps it's the same phrase,
but now sung by an angel.

Daisies

 

The quintessential summer flower.  

Daisy Time - Marjorie Pickthall

See, the grass is full of stars,

Fallen in their brightness;

Hearts they have of shining gold,

Rays of shining whiteness.

Buttercups have honeyed hearts,

Bees they love the clover,

But I love the daisies' dance

All the meadow over.

Blow, O blow, you happy winds,

Singing summer's praises,

Up the field and down the field

A-dancing with the daisies.

Lupins

I'm posting flower poems all this week to celebrate summer. 


Lupins - Seamus Heaney

They stood. And stood for something. Just by standing.
In waiting. Unavailable. But there
For sure. Sure and unbending.
Rose-fingered dawn's and navy midnight's flower.

Seed packets to begin with, pink and azure,
Sifting lightness and small jittery promise:
Lupin spires, erotics of the future,
Lip-brush of the blue and earth's deep purchase.

O pastel turrets, pods and tapering stalks
That stood their ground for all our summer wending
And even when they blanched would never balk.
And none of this surpassed our understanding.

Poppies

'...and that happiness,/when it's done right,/

is a kind of holiness,/palpable and redemptive...'

Mary Oliver makes a very powerful case here for the goodnesss in life. Our best weapon against the darkness? Happiness. Joy. Light.

Poppies - Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

Summer Dusk

Dusk in June - Sara Teasdale

Evening, and all the birds
In a chorus of shimmering sound
Are easing their hearts of joy
For miles around.

The air is blue and sweet,
The few first stars are white,--
Oh let me like the birds
Sing before night.

A Dreaming Week

 

A Dreaming Week  - Carol Ann Duffy

Not tonight, I’m dreaming
in the heart of the honeyed dark
in a boat of a bed in the attic room
in a house on the edge of the park
where the wind in the big old trees
creaks like an ark.

Not tomorrow, I’m dreaming
till dusk turns into dawn – dust, must
most, moot, moon, mown, down –
with my hand on an open unread book,
a bird that’s never flown…distantly
the birdsong of the telephone

Not the following evening, I’m dreaming
in the monocle of the moon,
a sleeping S on the page of a bed
in the tome of a dim room, the rain
on the roof, rhyming there
like the typed words of a poem.

Not the night after that, I’m dreaming
till the stars are blue in the face
printing the news of their old light
with the ink of space,
yards and years of black silk night
to cover my sleeping face.

Not the next evening, I’m dreaming
in the crook of midnight’s arm
like a lover held by another
safe from harm, like a child
stilled by a mother, soft and warm,
twelve golden faraway bells for a charm.

Not that night either, I’m dreaming
till the tides have come and gone
sighing all over the frowning sand,
the whale’s lonely song
scored on wave after wave of water
all the wet night long.

Not the last evening, I’m dreaming
under the stuttering clock,
under the covers, under closed eyes,
all colours fading to black,
the last of daylight hurrying
for a date with the glamorous dark.

 

Summer Solstice

Happy Summer Solstice! Wishing you lots of light and the energy of fire and flowers!


Summer Solstice Chant - Annie Finch

The sun, rich and open,
stretches and pours on the bloom of our work.

In the center of the new flowers,
a darker wing of flower

points you like a fire.

Point your fire like a flower.

Epitaph

 

 for Paul x May 20/2015


Epitaph on a Friend - Edward Burns

An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, the guide of youth;
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d;
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.

Let Go

 

 

 

o by the by - ee cummings

 

o by the by
has anybody seen
little you-i
who stood on a green
hill and threw
his wish at blue

with a swoop and a dart
out flew his wish
(it dived like a fish
but it climbed like a dream)
throbbing like a heart
singing like a flame

blue took it my
far beyond far
and high beyond high
bluer took it your
but bluest took it our
away beyond where

what wonderful thing
is the end of a string
(murmers little you-i
as the hill becomes nil)
and will somebody tell
me why people let go

 

For the Sake of Strangers

 

 'All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another..'

For The Sake Of Strangers - Dorianne Laux

No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another – a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms, a retarded child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself, from the thing that calls to me
as it must have once called to them –
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.

May

The perfect description of this month.  
 


Haiku - Matsuo Basho

Blossom time
suddenly everything
ablaze with light

Unable Are the Loved to Die

For Paul x



809 - Emily Dickinson

Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity—

Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.

April Song

 

April - Sara Teasdale

The roofs are shining from the rain.
The sparrows tritter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.

Yet the back-yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree–
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.

April

 

April - Mary Oliver

I wanted to speak at length about
the happiness of my body and the
delight of my mind for it was
April, a night, a
full moon and-

but something in myself or maybe
from somewhere other said: not too
many words, please, in the
muddy shallows the

frogs are singing.

It's April, it's Spring!

Hello April, hello Spring!

 
when faces called flowers - ee cummings

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)


when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)


when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

Spring Equinox

The right poem will always find you at the right time.
There is always a turning point.
There is always light. There is always love.

Happy Spring Equinox.


March 20 - Ted Kooser

How important it must be
to someone
that  I am alive, and walking,
and that I have written
these poems.
This morning the sun stood
right at the end of the road
and waited for me.

March Mindset

March 1912 - Natasha Trethewey                             

–Postcard, en route westward

At last we are near
breaking the season, shedding
our coats, the gray husk

of winter.  Each tree
trembles with new leaves, tiny
blossoms, the flashy

dress of spring. I am
aware now of its coming
as I’ve never been—

the wet grass throbbing
with crickets, insistent, keen
as desire.  Now,

I feel what trees must—
budding, green sheaths splitting—skin
that no longer fits.

Spring Moon

 

Indeed.

The Spring Moon -

How many miles away

Those orange blossoms!

                                      -Jack Kerouac

The Weight of Sweetness

 

The Weight of Sweetness - Li-Young Lee 

No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness.

Song, wisdom, sadness, joy: sweetness
equals three of any of these gravities.

See a peach bend
the branch and strain the stem until
it snaps.
Hold the peach, try the weight, sweetness
and death so round and snug
in your palm.
And, so, there is
the weight of memory:

Windblown, a rain-soaked
bough shakes, showering
the man and the boy.
They shiver in delight,
and the father lifts from his son’s cheek
one green leaf
fallen like a kiss.

The good boy hugs a bag of peaches
his father has entrusted
to him.
Now he follows
his father, who carries a bagful in each arm.
See the look on the boy’s face
as his father moves
faster and farther ahead, while his own steps
flag, and his arms grow weak, as he labors
under the weight
of peaches.

Turning

 

Turning - WS Mervin

Going too fast for myself I missed 

more than I think I can remember

almost everything it seems sometimes 

and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice when they stood

where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog

still young looking up and saying

Are you ready this time

 

Beginning

 

 

 

Beginning - James Wright

 

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.   

The dark wheat listens.

Be still.

Now.

There they are, the moon's young, trying

Their wings.

Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow

Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone

Wholly, into the air.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe

Or move.

I listen.

The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,

And I lean toward mine.

Moon Memories

I Sang - Carl Sandburg

I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
I sang
O reckless free-hearted
free-throated rhythms,
Even the moon remembers them
And is kind to me.

Wait

 

Wait - Galway  Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Truthseeker

 

seeker of truth - ee cummings

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here