little tree

little tree

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

--e.e. cummings

wild geese

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--Mary Oliver

xxx
we all love you.

(photo source)

west wall

West Wall

In the unmade light I can see the world
as the leaves brighten I see the air
the shadows melt and the apricots appear
now that the branches vanish I see the apricots
from a thousand trees ripening in the air
they are ripening in the sun along the west wall
apricots beyond number are ripening in the daylight.

Whatever was there
I never saw those apricots swaying in the light
I might have stood in orchards forever
without beholding the day in the apricots
or knowing the ripeness of the lucid air
or touching the apricots in your skin
or tasting in your mouth the sun in the apricots.

--W.S. Merwin

xxx
it's a gray day. have some sunshine.

(photo source)

hippos on holiday

Hippos on Holiday

is not really the title of a movie
but if it was I would be sure to see it.
I love their short legs and big heads,
the whole hippo look.
Hundreds of them would frolic
in the mud of a wide, slow-moving river,
and I would eat my popcorn
in the dark of a neighborhood theater.
When they opened their enormous mouths
lined with big stubby teeth
I would drink my enormous Coke.

I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing with the hippos,
which is the way it is
with a truly great movie.
Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?

--Billy Collins

xxx
happy birthday, luci. i wish you oodles and oodles of noodles.

late fragment

Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

--Raymond Carver

xxx
happy birthday marta.

appeal to the grammarians

Appeal to the Grammarians

We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we're capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we're ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,
The flat tire at journey's outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, "See, that's why
I don't like to eat outside."

--Paul Violi

xxx
happy birthday to the chief grammarian in my life.

you shall above all things be glad and young

you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and(in his mercy)your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

--e.e. cummings

xxx
happy birthday, querido.

what we need is here

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

--Wendell Berry

xxx
happy birthday mama llama. i love you.

a standing ground

A Standing Ground

However just and anxious I have been,
I will stop and step back
from the crowd of those who may agree
with what I say, and be apart.
There is no earthly promise of life or peace
but where the roots branch and weave
their patient silent passages in the dark;
uprooted, I have been furious without an aim.
I am not bound for any public place,
but for ground of my own
where I have planted vines and orchard trees,
and in the heat of the day climbed up
into the healing shadow of the woods.
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn
and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

--Wendell Berry

august

August

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

--Mary Oliver

green chile

Green Chile

I prefer red chile over my eggs
and potatoes for breakfast.
Red chile ristras decorate my door,
dry on my roof, and hang from eaves.
They lend open-air vegetable stands
historical grandeur, and gently swing
with an air of festive welcome.
I can hear them talking in the wind,
haggard, yellowing, crisp, rasping
tongues of old men, licking the breeze.

But grandmother loves green chile.
When I visit her,
she holds the green chile pepper
in her wrinkled hands.
Ah, voluptuous, masculine,
an air of authority and youth simmers
from its swan-neck stem, tapering to a flowery collar,
fermenting resinous spice.
A well-dressed gentleman at the door
my grandmother takes sensuously in her hand,
rubbing its firm glossed sides,
caressing the oily rubbery serpent,
with mouth -watering fulfillment,
fondling its curves with gentle fingers.
Its bearing magnificent and taut
as flanks of a tiger in mid-leap,
she thrusts her blade into
and cuts it open, with lust
on her hot mouth, sweating over the stove,
bandanna round her forehead,
mysterious passion on her face
as she serves me green chile con carne
between soft warm leaves of corn tortillas,
with beans and rice–her sacrifice
to here little prince.
I slurp form my plate
with last bit of tortilla, my mouth burns
and I hiss and drink a tall glass of cold water.

All over New Mexico, sunburned men and women
drive rickety trucks stuffed with gunny sacks
of green chile, from Belen, Beguita, Willard, Estancia,
San Antonio y Socorro, from fields
to roadside stands, you see them roasting green chile
in screen-sided homemade barrels, and for a dollar a bag,
we relive this old, beautiful ritual again and again.

-- Jimmy Santiago Baca

milkweed

Milkweed

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.

--James Wright

a sort of song

A Sort of Song

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
-- through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

--William Carlos Williams

the summer day

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

--Mary Oliver

xxx
this poem's final question redefined my life.

happy summer. happy father's day.

photo by reagan, i believe, in our backyard.

road's end

Road's End

The roads have come to their end now,
they don't go any farther, they turn here,
over on the earth there.
You can't go any farther if you don't want
to go to the moon or the planets. Stop now
in time, and turn to a wasp's nest or a cow track,
a volcano opening or a clatter of stones in the woods--
it's all the same. Something else.

They won't go any farther as I've said
without changing, the engine to horseshoes,
the gear shift to a fir branch
which you hold loose in your hand
--what the hell is this?

--Rolf Jacobsen
(translated by Robert Bly)

xxx
aquareagan and i are in vermont for the summer as a cabin counselor at a music camp. there are posts scheduled sporadically throughout the summer and paul may put something up once in a while. i'll be home from one of the most beautiful places in the world in august. take care.

love muchly.

a sonnet of the moon

A Sonnet of the Moon

Look how the pale queen of the silent night

Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,

And he, as long as she is in his sight,

With her full tide is ready her to honor.

But when the silver waggon of the moon

Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,

The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,

And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.

So you that are the sovereign of my heart

Have all my joys attending on your will;

My joys low-ebbing when you do depart,

When you return their tide my heart doth fill.

So as you come and as you do depart,

Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.

--Charles Best

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ok6/

morning poem

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

--Mary Oliver

xxx
happy birthday, gwen.

we real cool

We Real Cool

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

--Gwendolyn Brooks

the lanyard

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

--Billy Collins

xxx
happy mother's day.

beloved, let us once more praise the rain

Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...
And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

--Conrad Aiken

in blackwater woods

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

--Mary Oliver

anagrammer

Anagrammer

If you believe in the magic of language,

then Elvis really Lives

and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.

If you believe the letters themselves

contain a power within them,

then you understand

what makes outside tedious,

how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,

and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,

and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just rearrange things the right way

you’d find your true life,

the right path, the answer to your questions:

you’d understand how the Titanic

turns into that ice tin,

and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,

and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

--Peter Periera

tuned in late one night

Tuned in Late One Night

Listen - this is a faint station
left alive in the vast universe.
I was left here to tell you a message
designed for your instruction or comfort,
but now that my world is gone I crave
expression pure as all the space
around me: I want to tell what is....

Remember? - we learned that still-face way,
to wait in election or meeting and then
to choose the side that wins, a leader
that lasted, a president that stayed in?
But some of us knew even then it was better
to lose if that was the way our chosen
side came out, in truth, at the end.

It's like this, truth is: it's looking out while everything
happens; being in a place of your own,
between your ears; and any person
you face will get the full encounter
or your self. When you hear any news
you ought to register delight or pain
depending on where you really live.

Now I am fading, with this ambition:
to read with my brights full on,
to write on a clear glass typewriter,
to listen with sympathy,
to speak like a child.
I spot the neighbor’s dog scampering across the lawn
with my name in its mouth,
leaving me to wander through the house anonymously
and scour the telephone directory for an alias.

When I say my name out loud it sounds like
someone else’s, a character in a play who cheats
the hero and comes to a bad end, or an obscure
athlete lost in the deep encyclopedia of baseball.

When I try writing it down on paper
I find I have also lost my signature. My hand
feels retarded, unable to perform its inky trick,
that unmistakable, eerie, Arabic flourish.

Perhaps the dog was never given a name
and is now eating mine with pleasure
under a porch in the cool, lattice-shadowed dirt.

Perhaps late tonight I will hear the voice
of my neighbor as she stands at her back door,
hands cupped around her mouth, calling my name,
and I will leap the hedge and come running.

--William Stafford

all the true vows

All the True Vows

All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.

By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,

it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again.

--David Whyte

piano lessons

Piano Lessons

1



My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back

off to the side of the piano.

I sit up straight on the stool.

He begins by telling me that every key

is like a different room

and I am a blind man who must learn

to walk through all twelve of them

without hitting the furniture.

I feel myself reach for the first doorknob.



2



He tells me that every scale has a shape

and I have to learn how to hold

each one in my hands.

At home I practice with my eyes closed.

C is an open book.

D is a vase with two handles.

G flat is a black boot.

E has the legs of a bird.



3



He says the scale is the mother of the chords.

I can see her pacing the bedroom floor

waiting for her children to come home.

They are out at nightclubs shading and lighting

all the songs while couples dance slowly

or stare at one another across tables.

This is the way it must be. After all,

just the right chord can bring you to tears

but no one listens to the scales,

no one listens to their mother.



4



I am doing my scales,

the familiar anthems of childhood.

My fingers climb the ladder of notes

and come back down without turning around.

Anyone walking under this open window

would picture a girl of about ten

sitting at the keyboard with perfect posture,

not me slumped over in my bathrobe, disheveled,

like a white Horace Silver.



5



I am learning to play

"It Might As Well Be Spring"

but my left hand would rather be jingling

the change in the darkness of my pocket

or taking a nap on an armrest.

I have to drag him into the music

like a difficult and neglected child.

This is the revenge of the one who never gets

to hold the pen or wave good-bye,

and now, who never gets to play the melody.



6



Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano.

It is the largest, heaviest,

and most beautiful object in this house.

I pause in the doorway just to take it all in.

And late at night I picture it downstairs,

this hallucination standing on three legs,

this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile.

--Billy Collins

ode 314

Ode 314

Those who don’t feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don’t drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don’t want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
I want you to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

I’ve given up on my brain.
I’ve torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away.

If you’re not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,
and sleep.

--Rumi

a story that could be true

A Story That Could be True

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by--
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
"Who are you really, wanderer?"--
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
"Maybe I'm a king."

--William Stafford

on turning ten

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

--Billy Collins

xxx
today is my birthday. billy collins knows exactly how birthdays make me feel.

to earthward

To Earthward

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air
That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of- was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?
I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.
I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.
Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.
When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,
The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

--Robert Frost

xxx
robert frost is my birthday twin from new hampshire.

lines lost among trees

Lines Lost Among Trees

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.

They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic

I devised to hold them in place –
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in the back of our quiet house

with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.

So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of the syntax,
the jazz of the timing,

and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.

This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem –
not out into the world of strangers’ eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,

home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

--Billy Collins

xxx
happy birthday billy collins.

since feeling is first...

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

--e.e. cummings

xxx
happy spring.

oceans

Oceans

I have a feeling that my boat
Has struck, down there in the depths,
Against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing... Silence... Waves...

-- Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and we are standing now,
quietly in the new life?

--Juan Ramón Jiménez
(translated by Robert Bly)

xxx
photo by janet.

prayer

Prayer

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

--Galway Kinnell

you begin

You Begin

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

--Margaret Atwood

the healing time

The Healing Time

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say
Holy Holy.

--Pesha Joyce Gertler

it's heavy to drag, this big sack...

It's heavy to drag, this big sack of what
you should have done. And finally
you can't lift it any more.
Someone says, "Come on," and you
just look at them. Trees are waiting,
mountains. You never intended
that it should come to this.

But Now has arrived and is looking
straight at you, the way a lion does
when thinking it over, and anything
can happen. It's time for the cavalry
or maybe the Lone Ranger. But they
won't come. Maybe the music will
spill over and start it all again.
Maybe.

--William Stafford

forgotten language

Forgotten Language

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?

--Shel Silverstein

xxx
photo by darita. i'm pretty sure our caterpillar was a spicebrush swallowtail.

so you want to be a writer?

so you want to be a writer?

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

--Charles Bukowski

i go back to the house for a book

I Go Back to the House for a Book

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost car,
another knot in the string of time,
a good three minutes ahead of me —
a spacing that will now continue
for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I think I see him
a few people in front of me on a line
or getting up from a table
to leave the restaurant just before I do,
slipping into his coat on the way out the door.
But there is no catching him,
no way to slow him down
and put us back in synch,
unless one day he decides to go back
to the house for something,
but I cannot imagine
for the life of me what that might be.

He is out there always before me,
blazing my trail, invisible scout,
hound that pulls me along,
shade I am doomed to follow,
my perfect double,
only bumped an inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid —
I who went back to the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book.

--Billy Collins

let go of your worries..

Let go of your worries
and be completely clear-hearted,
like the face of a mirror
that contains no images.
If you want a clear mirror,
behold yourself
and see the shameless truth,
which the mirror reflects.
If metal can be polished
to a mirror-like finish,
what polishing might the mirror
of the heart require?
Between the mirror and the heart
is this single difference:
the heart conceals secrets,
while the mirror does not.

--Rumi

xxx
happy birthday marguerite.

winter's end

Winter's End

Once in a wood at winter's end,
The withered sun, becoming young,
Turned the white silence into sound:
Bird after bird rose up in song.
The skeletons of snow-blocked trees
Linked thinning shadows here and there,
And those made mummy by the freeze
Spangled their mirrors on cold air.
Whether they moved — perhaps they spun,
Caught in a new but known delight —
Was hard to tell, since shade and sun
Mingled to hear the birds recite.
No body of this sound I saw,
So glassed and shining was the world
That swung on a sun-and-ice seesaw
And fought to have its leaves unfurled.
Hanging its harvest in between
Two worlds, one lost, one yet to come,
The wood's remoteness, like a drum,
Beat the oncoming season in.
Then every snow bird on white wings
Became its tropic counterpart,
And, in a renaissance of rings,
I saw the heart of summer start.

--Howard Moss

xxx
i know that winter's not over. but in february, i'm allowed to be optimistic.

the love song of j. alfred prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun,
s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

				LET us go then, you and I,
				When the evening is spread out against the sky
				Like a patient etherised upon a table;
				Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
				The muttering retreats
				Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
				And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
				Streets that follow like a tedious argument
				Of insidious intent
				To lead you to an overwhelming question …
				Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
				Let us go and make our visit.
				In the room the women come and go
				Talking of Michelangelo.
				The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
				The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
				Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
				Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
				Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
				Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
				And seeing that it was a soft October night,
				Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
				And indeed there will be time
				For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
				Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
				There will be time, there will be time
				To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
				There will be time to murder and create,
				And time for all the works and days of hands
				That lift and drop a question on your plate;
				Time for you and time for me,
				And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
				And for a hundred visions and revisions,
				Before the taking of a toast and tea.
				In the room the women come and go
				Talking of Michelangelo.
				And indeed there will be time
				To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
				Time to turn back and descend the stair,
				With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
				[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
				My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
				My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
				[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
				Do I dare
				Disturb the universe?
				In a minute there is time
				For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
				For I have known them all already, known them all:—
				Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
				I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
				I know the voices dying with a dying fall
				Beneath the music from a farther room.
				So how should I presume?
				And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
				The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
				And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
				When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
				Then how should I begin
				To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
				And how should I presume?
				And I have known the arms already, known them all—
				Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
				[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
				It is perfume from a dress
				That makes me so digress?
				Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
				And should I then presume?
				And how should I begin? . . . . .
				Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
				And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
				Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
				I should have been a pair of ragged claws
				Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . .
				And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
				Smoothed by long fingers,
				Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
				Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
				Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
				Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
				But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
				Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
				I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
				I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
				And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
				And in short, I was afraid.
				And would it have been worth it, after all,
				After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
				Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
				Would it have been worth while,
				To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
				To have squeezed the universe into a ball
				To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
				To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
				Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
				If one, settling a pillow by her head,
				Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
				That is not it, at all.”
				And would it have been worth it, after all,
				Would it have been worth while,
				After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
				After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
				And this, and so much more?—
				It is impossible to say just what I mean!
				But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
				Would it have been worth while
				If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
				And turning toward the window, should say:
				“That is not it at all,
				That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . .
				No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
				Am an attendant lord, one that will do
				To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
				Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
				Deferential, glad to be of use,
				Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
				Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
				At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
				Almost, at times, the Fool.
				I grow old … I grow old …
				I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
				Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
				I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
				I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
				I do not think that they will sing to me.
				I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
				Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
				When the wind blows the water white and black.
				We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
				By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
				Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

--T.S. Eliot

xxx
this is in defense of all things beautiful.