Stumbling upon another poem

Stumbling upon another poem
while wading through all these daily
words, like warm tea on quiet
afternoon feeling like a respite.
Like an adolescent lost (again)...
If all the doors were open, there

would be more than mere 
associations.  All of us might have 
trouble from all the remembering.  
Lucy van Pelt; and of her father whose got
a reputation, a plane tree; also, others.
Here, a poem on water, on ocean, perhaps
in a jug, in a well.

To Drink

by Jane Hirshfield

I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink. 
I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek--
it is the same--
the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against cold glass,
the way a horse will lower
his long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift his head and look,
and drink again,
taking everything in with the water,
everything.

What I found

between pages of a book, a torn piece of newspaper
showing a foot on tip toe, perhaps dancing, and
nothing more; the two pages facing each other,
one telling What you need more of in your life, I think,
are some elephants, the other about finding brave.

Be favorable to bold beginnings, said Virgil
Easier said than done.  I'm still wary
from the last beginning.  Nevertheless, I've begun
a vigil: wait for the ally who believes
endings make beginnings necessary,
and who's plenty bold.  Enough not to worry

about how much to give, how much to withhold.
I held my breath and closed the book.




(after Centolella)

The Pacific

I am reading Thomas Centolella         a thin book of quiet         size only slightly larger than my palms         that hold in the same way         many things unsaid between bridges of things mundane         Yesterday         I had new eyeglasses to see more clearly and I bought                 her a ring         feeling not for the first time         Certainty         Arriving home         the little dog sick and a next-day appointment with the vet I hope we will not need         It rained heavily last night         sun shining briefly this morning         sweet         for the local roses someone from the office gave         for the garden I will have more time         next week while everyone else in this Christmas country         I hope to cross a sea         an ocean         with her to an island of migrating flocks         In the meantime there is an ocean's love         a happenstance at the exact same time Thomas Centolella writes The Pacific.



The Pacific



A thought has been rising and falling
in the grayness of the season, 
like a freighter in heavy fog,
appearing and disappearing:
How is it we never tire of dreaming
we can be autonomous as the sea?
Or be among the swimmers
holding their own against the undertow?
And the body surfers encourage us,
the way they submit to the powerful flux
and are buoyant, transported
by what could just as easily destroy them.

I keep thinking of that woman in Godard's
Two Or Three Things I Know About Her.
Real love, she said, leaves us changed afterwards.
What happens after that, she didn't say.
I remember you were grateful, as so many are
given the chance to move on to something better.
Fog lifting, the tide comes voluptuous as a great love,
and tastes bitter, like what comes after.
Stunning turbulence.  Like a brilliant smile
that keeps edging closer, and from which
I edge away.

from Flying Home

from Flying Home 

by Galway Kinnel


As this plane dragged
its track of used ozone half the world long
thrusts some four hundred of us
toward places where actual known people
live and may wait,
we diminish down in our seats,
disappeared into novels of lives clearer than ours,
and yet we do not forget for a moment
the life down there, the doorway each will soon enter:
where I will meet her again
and know her again,
dark radiance with, and then mostly without, the stars.

Very likely she has always understood
what I have slowly learned,
and which only now, after being away, almost as far away
as one can get on this globe, almost
as far as thoughts can carry - yet still in her presence,
still surrounded not so much by reminders of her
as by things she had already reminded me of,
shadows of her
cast forward and waiting - can I try to express:

that love is hard,
that while many good things are easy, true love is not,
because love is first of all a power,
its own power,
which continually must make its way forward, from night
into day, from transcending union always forward into difficult day.

And as the plane descends, it comes to me
in the space
where tears stream down across the stars,
tears fallen on the actual earth
where their shining is what we call spirit,
that once the lover
recognizes the other, knows for the first time
what is most to be valued in another,
from then on, love is very much like courage,
perhaps it is courage, and even
perhaps
only courage. Squashed
out of old selves, smearing the darkness
of expectation across experience, all of us little
thinkers it brings home having similar thoughts
of landing to the imponderable world,
the transoceanic airliner,
resting its huge weight down, comes in almost lightly,
to where
with sudden, tiny, white puffs and long, black, rubberish smears
all its tires know the home ground.

the young reader

What do I know about the irony 
of questions? The young self asked 
a long time ago.  What did you ask 

after reading the book?  He threw
the large questions at the sky
brightening in its blurry night

a kind of descending darkness
at the edges of soul.  Crime,
the phenomenon and the ontology

of it:  can one tiny be
wiped out by thousands 
of good deeds?

               But I was very very young, barely
into the hale storm of teens.
And in the quiet of clutching

a book and all the senses 
of life in it, saw the spectre 
within.

calm before storm

The people on this island who still remember
their indigenous science can tell
an impending storm is coming

feeling the absence of wind, despite all
sunshine, clarity, and birds.
The large ring around the moon tells them

remember remember remember to tell.
But the animals who need no remembering

sniff for wind, are listless and far 
from the pretence of sleep.  Blind, I can only

watch the forewarning swirling on the web.
A hurtle is restless, is angry, is coming. 

Remembering the count of one to ten,
I prune the sweet wilderness of trees.

A Whisper of Storm (a pastiche)

Three days of rain             Early sunrises             Early darks

On this listless December         On this island of rain
There is a whisper of a storm not half an ocean away

Nights the beggars pretend not to beg by carolling
The city gates have opened         The strays have come to stay


                                          *  *  *


I drove all the way to your neighbourhood and found
You were not yet home         Your new wife        The one I haven't met

She answered the door and knew my name
She looked different from the last two I've known

What leads you 
one woman to another?  

"I just dropped by.  Friday and thought maybe a couple of beers."
I drove around town


                                          *  *  *


Finally at 65         G will be leaving for Spain            to retire
We threw a celebration for her leaving or for her life        both

T made quiche
And after everything        we all had tea

Of course nobody really talks about leaving


                                         *  *  *

And

Adam wrote to Eve
"I am breathless and anxious and sick with dread and desire."



















 

And, lovely, learn by going where to go

Bright early morning drizzle, a brown mug of freshly brewed local coffee, papers on desk by an open window.  Somewhere in the corner of the front yard, the planted tomatoes are sprouting.  Until the time to go to the still bustling city that tries to keep itself still, to take the morning slow...

The Waking

by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

The Patience of Ordinary Things

The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider

 

It is kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thnking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

origins

In discourse analysis, some things understood are no longer gestured at aloud.

This morning I talked about patterns.  Residing in the conscious, subconscious, unconscious.  The cosmos itself, a pattern.  Little wonder there in the world of ideas.

When, at today's end of day, l lost my temper over crew inefficiency, there must have been a pattern.  What did I say?  That age did not matter.

I come home and one of the dogs let out before closing the day, I hit.  Where did it come from?  This ugly hand, this very ugly head when I become taut as guitar string.  

I know:  in hiding is a very angry young man.  Where did he come from?  Why?
Tonight in bed, she heard my thoughts, as I walked around them, echo on the walls.  

Was I not harsh enough?  Some colleagues remarked, too considerate.  Lash someone if need to. What do I know, what do I know?  When the waters are calm and the guitar strings 

are loose are beautiful, I close my eyes.  The end of day.

about Now

Life has been quiet lately.  The writing too, quiet.  And it must have been months now since I   last sat and truly patiently waited for what must come to come and be written.  I wanted, needed, to go for another residency, a long stretch of timelessness to be able to listen to write.  The noise of paperwork from the university and the field has kept me farther and farther away, to a kind of tone-deafness...

at the end of the year

All is quiet tonight, when the day that had begun gentle in its tenderness of sun is finally over, ending quietly the year that has been another brief, beautiful in its momentariness.

It is a slow walk to what is seen, in the heart's fearful, faithful eye, an inevitable end.  But how beautiful this slow walk is, that had begun as a run to the sun.  And now all is quiet tonight.  For another year of slow, beautiful walk to the seen unseen.

what the sun says does not say

What the sun says does not say
the morning is something else entirely

How gold is the golden this 
morning of your birth, another year again

unfolding.

the quiet of nothing

The time it takes to float on the surface
of things is equivalent to peace.
We do not insert bird for sorrow.
We do not make room for empty.

Sometimes I still dream of receiving
your letter now long gone.  
We have agreed to be quiet.
We have agreed
and distance have agreed with us.

in keeping with silence

In keeping with silence, the idea of
another city is no longer the same.
There is an absence that was once
not there, a kind of empty in the air.
No else knows of this, even though
surely there are those who feel
a certain trace on their skin. A damp
weight of memory that memory has
already forgotten the name.  Some-

times, when enough of us has gather
into a circle of remembering, we can
string together the beads of stories
recollected from dampness in the air.
Re-creating the city from another time.
From the days when we were young
once immortal in love.

folded in wind

some places are no longer the same.
the wind blows.
and the appearances say nothing.
all else are the same.

what draws the line between spaces?
one point to another.
past or present, here or there.
all else are the same.

there are erasures in time.  in space.
only the mind that bears knows.
the bearer and the burden.
all else are the same.

what can be done with traces?
that this pair of shoes is most likely
similar to what was once known.
all else are the same.

no one speaks anymore, weighed
down by the weight of explanations.
a ball lies at the center.
and no one dares to look

although some child 
within wants
to answer the beckon.
all else remain the same.

things i've given up

A number of things i've given up
having reached a time
of knowing 
not everything beneath the sky.
The birds know more.
And the sea mammals, even though
they are disappearing one by one.
From behind her counter, the secretary
must know something
the bosses don't.
And so the events of the world

turn and come around in patterns
appearing random.  Who can say?
All the physicists are trapped
in a world, the lawyers argue,
policy makers disagree.
Meanwhile, the news goes
on and on and the stray
dogs in third worlds die unburied.
That is not counting children.
And the men and women who leapt
at turnpikes without looking.
How does one take

their tea in the morning?
Someone delivers the paper
another sends a note.
I write her a letter, imaginary.
Some things i've given up,
some things not.

watching light on a pool of water

Morning finds me reminded of Rwanda
and senseless deaths
the news never runs out of
like fuel for the grand machinery 
of the world (what machinery?)
In a made-up place, quiet and serene
birds call and try find
ways on impersonal pavements
where bamboo is cultured to grow
and kindness a paid service.
Blue bowls of sky and water
meet in a dome.  
This make-believe peace.
Somewhere else a plane 
crashes and closed rooms are alive.
I wait for August, not admitting
anxiety for something brewing.

Last night was a waning moon
and two bottles of strong beer.
I sleep with restless listlessness.
To refuse to do.

east of the sun, west of the moon

Where will you go, love
when the late winds start to blow
dry leaves catch on your hair

Will you be facing the moon?

It is blue black 
the night of your thoughts
and buried deep in your chest

A flickering glow

The lovers have long disappeared
a trail of winding pebbles
where will you go, my love

Will you be facing the moon?

beating the sky

and what does it merit to try to fix the world?
the world remains unfixed.
whether it has become for the better or for worse
remains according only to the lens.
i have broken my rose lenses a long time ago
and these days i try only 
very very hard
to keep from being cynical
although truth be told
it is here, running in my bone morrows

and some days it is more potent
stronger than my senses
and i hate a good number of people
a good number of men
and maybe i am disappointed too
of the larger cosmos or of any grand design
if there be any
life's not fair, and that is that
who are we to complain
when always there is one
in a better or worse place

and maybe life's like that 
and maybe it's better to leave it like that
although for all the world i know
maybe it is better for those
who simply don't care







clc

The Kamasutra of Kindness (Position No. 3)

The Kamasutra of Kindness
Position No. 3



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




by Mary Mackey

Explaining Summer

On the first day of existence,
the sun chose us. And that was that.

He’s got a street address now
and a delinquent tax record.

Let me explain. I am lying to you
because it is cold where you are.

Cold and far and snow and darkness
and chilly hands. Or maybe not.

But such dichotomies are easier.
And who are you to stop living

multiple lives and occupations
in the snowstorms of my mind?

Teacher and farmer and secret poet.
I need to tell you I don’t love you.

I just need to stop falling in love
with you each time a cool breeze

rushes past the tips of my fingers.
Or revising another novel I will shred

in the hidden office behind my rib cage.
As if my entire body were a mob front.

But isn’t everything a front for something?
How, in my world, cold weather is nothing.

Only a history of you. Remember that talk?
The gulls? The Baskin Robbins in winter?

I said: Anger is almost always shame
in an existential crisis, writing poetry

in a café, shielding its notebook
from each passing stranger.

Oh, I might as well be talking to myself.
Besides, I theorize that you

will only read this in one of a thousand
possible universes. If not here, there.

Or in the warmth of my skull. Imagine that:
One goddamn poem for each world

in which our lives intersected.
Like hairs tangled in sunlight.

What’s not to like? What person
would say no to zipping from body

to body on some madman experiment,
taking notes on the many cuisines

of love, giving each of them names
like they were your children.

“Instead of love, why not sky?
A species of bird? Or the changing

climate of the heart?” I give up.
I am thinking of names now

as a breeze passes and I do not love you.
I am merely enjoying the cold

in the national park of myself.
As if the origin story of something

entirely unimportant were about to begin.
A new sub-breed of sparrows.

An alternative to happiness.
Curtains raising to a new color of sky.

by Gian Lao

After Chai's Photo

There is a photo of you eyes closed, on grass.
Neatly labeled "five minutes of sun."

The patch of grass could be anywhere
Here at the front yard, or back

Five yards or a kilometre away.
Sometimes it ceases to matter.

Sometimes does.  The photo is tagged
Oslo, Norway.  A world apart, also

Forgetfulness and consciousness away.
Your cat-lover friend who takes the photo

Hides behind the lens and bites
Into an apple.  And does not say.

that, too, does not have a name

The sky is the frosted kind of grey.  I do not get up from bed.  She planted a kiss before she left and now is gone.  Something urgent on email.  A large plane can be heard leaving for somewhere.  The calendar is full on the days to come.  But I want to slow down, to pause, to stop momentarily.  To wake again when it is bright and some part of my soul is ready.  There is a worm somewhere inside.  It manifests itself in the plants.  A part of a row in the garden died seemingly overnight.  She noticed this at the doorstep.  I hadn't even known.  The last I saw the entire row was green.  How did they wither and die?  The sturdy tropical green cuttings of which I do not even know the name?  The grass by them are dry and dead too.  What about the soil?  I am too tired to check.  I go back to bed and nurse something that, too, does not have a name.  A kind of wariness.  Is it fatigue?  A kind of passive-aggressive stress finally manifesting itself?

feet

The bedsheets are fresh.

After walking the dogs
on a clear windy night,
I prop up my feet
on the couch. Tired.

The dogs fall asleep again.

Tomorrow a long list
of things to do that
do not ever run out.
Sometimes you wonder
if they really 
are as important as 
they appear to be:
the immediate world
to crumble if undone.

Suppose one day I don't

move my exhausted feet 
return phone calls 
or make presences.
See without me
wheels still turn.

woman across sea

A sandbar connects us.  That disappears and appears according to the tide. We are two islands whose distance from each other bridgeable by whoever chooses to take the boat and paddle it across the shore.

father's eyes

tonight the dark sky murmurs thunder.
sometimes there is a brief light.
my brother-in-law asked 
me this afternoon, was i not coming 
to family dinner.  i said no
while helping load his truck
some things i was sending away.
i have been away too often too long
lately, i need quiet alone in the garden.
hours later, staying in with the dogs
and watching massacre in a game
of thrones, i remember the day.

and maybe it is good i did not come
for dinner.  some things are better
unresolved.  best unremembered, 
even though not forgotten.  these days,
in spite of trying, i am becoming
in a number of ways like the man.

floating on water

in between long tables of conversations about plights, i remember the open waters from a photo by sue, two dolphins meeting, closing distance.

the discussion of philosophy

is probably meant not for everyone.  some 
work for the next meal, and this is enough.
the barber whom i see more than the church
tells five reasons to live, in specific order:
college, work, marriage, kids, house.
a man of his world, he is.  tells about his rise
from employee to owner of the salon.
also how to conserve water,
through homebuilt-system of gallons and pipes.
the house needs everything, he says.
and i do not argue with him.  having respect 
for what he does, meticulously.  with heart.

the man does not know hugo or kant.
does not bother with art or phenomenology.
but he thinks not only of his next meal.
and values work.  and honesty.
and also his kids, two of them, whom
i haven't seen.  he probably meant them
when he talks of his house.

and we do talk about the weather, the expected
changes in it.  also the leaving and arriving
that i do, although we never get to specifics.
i do not know if he sees the blue 
of the clear blue sky in this country.
do not know if he thinks of the line
as both phenomenological palimpsest and
illusory divide of consciously built boundaries.

he may not think of these, or of feminism.
although
i think we all do.  between the hours of rain
and morning or the hours of stars and night.
with enough solitude, we all do

discuss philosophy and question
laws, existence, universe, our selves.