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.