tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12352078209015008442024-03-18T00:18:56.337-07:00Monday PoemEach Monday, a new poem selected by Sam Hitt, founder of Forest Guardians.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-63834577601216721762013-07-17T13:54:00.002-07:002013-07-17T13:54:47.490-07:00Book of Hours I,14. by Rainer Maria Rilke<br />
<b>I, 14</b><br />You see, I want a lot.<br />Maybe I want it all:<br />the darkness of each endless fall,<br />the shimmering light of each assent.<br /><br />So many are alive who don’t seem to care.<br />Casual, easy, they move in the world<br />as though untouched.<br /><br />But you take pleasure in the faces<br />of those who know they thirst.<br />You cherish those<br />who grip you for survival.<br /><br />You are not dead yet, it’s not too late<br />to open your depths by plunging into them<br />and drink in the life<br />that reveals itself quietly there.<br /><br /><br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours, 1905<br />translated from the German by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, 2005</span></i><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">There are moments<br />in moist love<br />when heaven<br />is jealous of what<br />we on earth <br />can do.<br /> -Hafiz</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-87425241295646637392013-06-26T11:37:00.004-07:002013-06-26T11:37:36.437-07:00Welcome Morning, by Anne Sexton<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />One of the last poems from the troubled soul of Anne Sexton, a clear-eyed rendering of her about-to-end-world and a note on joy, her infrequent but true companion. <br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br />
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<b>Welcome Morning</b><br /><br />There is joy<br />in all:<br />in the hair I brush each morning,<br />in the Cannon towel, newly washed,<br />that I rub my body with each morning,<br />in the chapel of eggs I cook<br />each morning,<br />in the outcry from the kettle<br />that heats my coffee<br />each morning,<br />in the spoon and the chair<br />that cry “hello there, Anne”<br />each morning,<br />in the godhead of the table<br />that I set my silver, plate, cup upon<br />each morning.<br /><br />All this is God,<br />right here in my pea-green house<br />each morning<br />and I mean,<br />though often forget,<br />to give thanks,<br />to faint down by the kitchen table<br />in a prayer of rejoicing<br />as the holy birds at the kitchen window<br />peck into their marriage of seeds.<br /><br />So while I think of it,<br />let me paint a thank-you on my palm<br />for this God, this laughter of the morning,<br />lest it go unspoken.<br /><br />The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,<br />dies young.<br /><br /> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Ann Sexton, from The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975</span></i><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-81182797516016197622013-06-03T11:21:00.002-07:002013-06-03T11:21:12.875-07:00The Gift, by William Stafford<br />
<b>The Gift</b><br /><br />Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one<br />that your life conceals, the one waiting outside<br />when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at<br />in her crochet design, the one almost found<br />over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.<br /><br />It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.<br />You get killed now and then, violated<br />in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)<br />You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait<br />and pray, and maybe good things come- maybe<br />the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.<br />You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.<br /><br />It's a balance, the taking and passing along,<br />the composting of where you've been and how people<br />and weather treated you. It's a country where<br />you already are, bringing where you have been.<br />Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,<br />turning the world, moving the air, calling,<br />every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours."<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>by William Stafford, from My Name is William Tell, 1992</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com102tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-19879925413817898282013-05-20T20:29:00.000-07:002013-05-20T20:29:30.012-07:00Retard Spoilage, by August Kleinzahler<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />Possibly the best poem about what's in the back of your refrigerator. <br />Kleinzahler's love sonnet to what we fear, fail to understand and try to kill -- the little things that run the world and make us who we are.<br />Please don't read at meal time.<br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br />
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<b>Retard Spoilage</b><br /><br />Animalcules heave their tackling,<br />ladders of polysaccharides,<br />onto the meatmilkshrimp&creamy emulsions,<br /><br />sticking like putrefactive Velcro.<br />The refrigerator switches on in the darkness,<br />a murmuring, perfervid sadhu close at hand.<br /><br />Turbidity, gases, a silky clouding over—<br />gray slime spreads across hot dog casings,<br />a sour reechiness transpires below.<br /><br />However much by day we shore up our defenses,<br />darling, over time they find their way back<br />to slowly assail our dwindling larder.<br /><br />Liquefaction, spoilage and rot—<br />mephitic flora spread apace,<br />leaving behind them a ropiness, butyric off-odors.<br /><br />Ludamilla's prize-winning kraut goes pink.<br />Fetor of broken proteins—<br />the drumstick fluoresces, alight with Pseudomonads.<br /><br />There has to be a music to it all,<br />I'm certain, if only one could hear it:<br />a Lilliputian string ensemble's low humming,<br /><br />an almost inaudible cicada surge,<br />earwax hissing in peroxide solution,<br />sausage frying in a distant room.<br /><br />Good, patient Leeuwenhoek of Delft,<br />having "partook of hot smoked beef, that was a bit fat,<br />or ham," of which he was most fond,<br /><br />suffered a grave ruction below<br />and so put to work his celebrated lens<br />that he might better examine his troubled stool<br /><br />and found there an animalcule, nay many,<br />but one especially, in the figure of an eel<br />that "bent its body serpent-wise,"<br /><br />"a-moving prettily," he made thorough note<br />in a letter to his estimable coequal, Robert Hooke,<br />and "as quick as a pike through water."<br /><br />Sleep, my angel, sleep,<br />though everywhere out there they are among us,<br />within, as well, wriggling deep,<br /><br />they prosper into our dark complement, and by us dwell<br />in perfect equipoise: your inviolate sweetness<br />amidst that which is vile&writhing&smells.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br />by August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off In Rapid City: Poems, New and Selected, 2008</i></span><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com90tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-46639920315074771752013-05-06T15:30:00.000-07:002013-05-06T15:30:04.170-07:00Planting A Sequoia, by Dana Gioia<br />
<b>Planting A Sequoia</b><br /><br />All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the<br /> orchard,<br /><br />Digging this hole, laying you into it, carefully packing<br /> the soil.<br /><br />Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it<br /> over the Pacific,<br />And the sky above us stayed the dull gray<br />Of an old year coming to an end.<br /><br />In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first<br /> son’s birth –<br />An olive or a fig tree – a sign that the earth has once<br /> more life to bear.<br />I would have done the same, proudly laying new<br /> stock into my father’s orchard.<br />A green sapling rising among the twisted apple<br /> boughs,<br />A promise of new fruit in other autumns.<br /><br />But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our<br /> native giant,<br />Defying the practical custom of our fathers,<br />Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an<br /> infant’s birth cord,<br />All that remains above earth of a first-born son,<br />A few stray atoms brought back to the elements.<br /><br />We will give you what we can – our labour and our<br /> soil,<br />Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail,<br />Nights scented with the ocean fog, days softened by<br /> the circuit of bees.<br />We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in<br /> western light,<br />A slender shoot against the sunset.<br /><br />And when our family is no more, all of his unborn<br /> brothers dead,<br />Every niece and nephew scattered, the house torn<br /> down,<br />His mother’s beauty ashes in the air,<br />I want you to stand among strangers, all young and<br /> ephemeral to you,<br />Silently keeping the secret of your birth.<br /><br /> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>by Dana Gioia, from The Gods of Winter, 1991</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-48393094405989250682013-04-30T12:47:00.000-07:002013-04-30T12:47:21.672-07:00The Supple Deer, by Jane Hirschfield<br />
<b>The Supple Deer</b><br />
<br />
The quiet opening<br />
between fence strands<br />
perhaps eighteen inches.<br />
<br />
Antlers to hind hooves,<br />
four feet off the ground,<br />
the deer poured through.<br />
<br />
No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.<br />
<br />
I don’t know how a stag turns<br />
into a stream, an arc of water.<br />
I have never felt such accurate envy.<br />
<br />
Not of the deer:<br />
<br />
To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Jane Hirschfield, from Come, Thief, 2011</span></i><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com134tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-69938347051228117012013-04-22T15:19:00.000-07:002013-04-22T15:19:09.792-07:00With Quevedo, In Springtime; by Pablo Neruda<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />Pablo Neruda called the Spanish Golden Age poet Francisco Quevedo (1580-1645) the greatest of them all, saying that reading his poems were a “lived experience” transcending words on a page.<br />With Quevedo, in Springtime was written as the gravely ill Neruda watched spring return while his own life reached its winter.<br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br />
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<b>With Quevedo, In Springtime</b><br /><br />Everything has flowered in<br />these fields, apple trees,<br />hesitant blues, yellow weeds,<br />and in green grass the poppies thrive.<br />The inextinguishable sky, the new air<br />of each day, the invisible shine within,<br />that gift of a wide and vast springtime.<br />But spring hasn’t come to my room.<br />Diseases, dubious kisses,<br />that stuck like the church’s ivy<br />to the black windows of my life,<br />and love alone is never enough, not even the wild<br />and expansive fragrance of spring.<br /><br />And to you, what can these mean now:<br />the orgiastic light, the evidence unfolding<br />like a flower, the green song<br />in the green leaves, the presence<br />of the sky with its goblet of freshness?<br />External spring, do not torment me,<br />unleashing wine and snow in my arms<br />corolla and battered bouquet of sorrow,<br />just for today give me the sleep of nocturnal<br />leaves, the night of the dead, the metals, the roots,<br />and so many extinguished springtimes<br />that awaken to life every spring.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>by Pablo Neruda, from Winter Garden, 2002<br />translated from the Spanish by William O’Daly</i></span><br /><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com66tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-49111785618210972932013-04-15T14:39:00.003-07:002013-04-15T14:39:52.793-07:00Saguaro, by Brenda Hillman<br />
<b>Saguaro</b><br />
<br />
Often visitors there, saddened<br />by the lack of trees, go out<br />to the promontory.<br /><br />Then, backed by the banded<br />sunset, the trail<br />of the Conquistadores,<br /><br />the father puts on the camera<br />the leather albatross<br />and has the children<br /><br />imitate saguaros. One<br />at a time they stand there smiling<br />fingers up like the tines of a fork<br /><br />while the stately saguaro<br />goes on being entered<br />by wrens, diseases, and sunlight<br /><br />The mother sits on a rock<br />arms folded<br />across her breasts. To her<br /><br />the cactus looks scared<br />its needles<br />like hair in cartoons.<br /><br />With its arms in preacher<br />or waltz position,<br />it gives the impression<br /><br />of great efforts<br />in every direction,<br />like the mother.<br /><br />Thousands of these grey-green<br />cacti cross the valley:<br />nature repeating itself,<br /><br />children repeating nature,<br />father repeating children<br />and mother watching.<br /><br />Later the children think<br />the cactus was moral,<br />had something to teach them,<br /><br />some survival technique<br />or just regular beauty.<br />But what else could it do?<br /><br />The only protection<br />against death<br />was to love solitude.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>by Brenda Hillman, from Fortress, 1989</i></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-50853073256798758152013-04-08T22:08:00.002-07:002013-04-08T22:08:14.119-07:00The Treasure, by Robinson Jeffers<br />
<b>The Treasure</b><br /><br />Mountains, a moment's earth-waves rising and hollowing; the<br /> earth too's an ephermerid; the stars—<br />Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in<br /> their summer, they spiral<br />Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing lives<br /> long, the whole sky's<br />Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulf<br /> before birth, and the gulf<br />After death is like dated: to labor eighty years in a notch of<br /> eternity is nothing too tiresome,<br />Enormous repose after, enormous repose before, the flash of<br /> activity.<br />Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were<br /> prologue and epilogue merely<br />To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is called<br /> life? I fancy<br />That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it;<br /> interjection, a jump of the breath at that silence;<br />Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe: as a man finding treasure<br /> says "Ah!" but the treasure's the essence;<br />Before the man spoke it was there, and after he has spoken he<br /> gathers it, inexhaustible treasure.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>by Robinson Jeffers, from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, 1925</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com761tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-57361005622676712912013-04-01T12:24:00.000-07:002013-04-01T12:24:08.291-07:00Notice, by Steve Kowit<br />
<b>Notice</b><br /><br />This evening, the sturdy Levis<br />I wore every day for over a year<br />& which seemed to the end in perfect condition,<br />suddenly tore.<br />How or why I don’t know,<br />but there it was—a big rip at the crotch.<br />A month ago my friend Nick<br />walked off a racquetball court,<br />showered,<br />got into his street clothes,<br />& half-way home collapsed & died.<br />Take heed you who read this<br />& drop to your knees now & again<br />like the poet Christopher Smart<br />& kiss the earth & be joyful<br />& make much of your time<br />& be kindly to everyone,<br />even to those who do not deserve it.<br />For although you may not believe it will happen,<br />you too will one day be gone.<br />I, whose Levis ripped at the crotch<br />for no reason,<br />assure you that such is the case.<br />Pass it on.<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Steve Kowit, from Mysteries of the Body, 1994</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-52327466517552061152013-03-18T11:09:00.002-07:002013-03-18T11:09:15.885-07:00The Anti-Preneur Manifesto, by Danielle Leduc <span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />We are not our resumés, nor will enlightenment be found combing through the online job market.<br />Danielle Leduc is one kid that gets it.<br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br />
<br />
<b>The Anti-Preneur Manifesto</b><br /><br />I don’t want to be a designer, a marketer, an illustrator,<br />a brander, a social media consultant, a multi-platform<br />guru, an interface wizard, a writer of copy, a technological<br />assistant, an applicator, an aesthetic king, a notable<br />user, a profit-maximizer, a bottom-line analyzer, a meme<br />generator, a hit tracker, a re-poster, a sponsored blogger,<br />a starred commentator, an online retailer, a viral relayer,<br />a handle, a font or a page. I don’t want to be linked in,<br />tuned in, ‘liked’, incorporated, listed or programmed.<br />I don’t want to be a brand, a representative, an<br />ambassador, a bestseller or a chart-topper. I don’t want<br />to be a human resource or part of your human capital.<br /><br />I don’t want to be an entrepreneur of myself.<br /><br />Don’t listen to the founders, the employers, the<br />newspapers, the pundits, the editors, the forecasters,<br />the researchers, the branders, the career counselors,<br />the prime minister, the job market, Michel Foucault or<br />your haughty brother in finance – there’s something else!<br /><br />I want to be a lover, a teacher, a wanderer, an assembler<br />of words, a sculptor of immaterial, a maker of instruments,<br />a Socratic philosopher and an erratic muse. I want to be<br />a community center, a piece of art, a wonky cursive script<br />and an old-growth tree! I want to be a disrupter, a creator,<br />an apocalyptic visionary, a master of reconfiguration,<br />a hypocritical parent, an illegal download and a choose-<br />your-own-adventure! I want to be a renegade agitator!<br />A licker of ice cream! An organizer of mischief! A released<br />charge! A double jump on the trampoline! A wayward<br />youth! A volunteer! A partner.<br /><br />I want to be a curator of myself, an anti-preneur, a person.<br /><br />Unlimited availabilities. No followers required. Only friends.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>by Danielle Leduc, from March/April 2013 Adbusters</i></span><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-69762039945597429612013-03-11T11:06:00.003-07:002013-03-11T11:06:35.311-07:00The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers- by Mary Oliver<b><br />The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers</b><br /><br />Who can guess the luna's sadness who lives so<br />briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone<br />longing to be ground down, to be part again of<br />something livelier? Who can imagine in what<br />heaviness the rivers remember their original<br />clarity?<br /><br />Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile<br />time with them. And I suggest them to you also,<br />that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life<br />be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as<br />you feel how it actually is, that we- so cleaver, and<br />ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained- are only<br />one design of the moving, the vivacious many.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>by Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings, 2012</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-79124033760599980942013-03-05T09:22:00.003-08:002013-03-05T09:22:43.685-08:00Three Times My Life Has Opened, by Jane Hirshfield<br />
<b>Three Times My Life Has Opened</b><br />
<br />
Three times my life has opened.<br />
Once, into darkness and rain.<br />
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts <br />
to remember each time it enters the act of love.<br />
Once, to the fire that holds all.<br />
These three were not different.<br />
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.<br />
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves<br />
like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.<br />
Neither are we different in what we know.<br />
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light<br />
stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,<br />
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Jane Hirshfield, from The Lives of the Heart, 1997</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-17395025020526818982013-02-25T12:59:00.001-08:002013-03-11T11:07:09.405-07:00I Went Into The Maverick Bar, by Gary Snyder<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />Disguise, escape and connection. Gary Snyder stepping back into the timeless time, embracing our tough old stars and the real work that beckons beyond the bluff.<br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br />
<br />
<b>I Went Into The Maverick Bar</b><br />
<br />
I went into the Maverick Bar<br />
In Farmington New Mexico.<br />
And drank double shots of bourbon<br />
backed with beer.<br />
My long hair was tucked up under a cap<br />
I’d left the earring in the car.<br />
<br />
Two cowboys did horseplay<br />
by the pool tables,<br />
A waitress asked us<br />
where are you from?<br />
a country-and-western band began to play<br />
“We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”<br />
And with the next song,<br />
a couple began to dance.<br />
<br />
They held each other like High School dances<br />
in the fifties;<br />
I recalled when I worked in the woods<br />
and the bars of Madras, Oregon.<br />
That short-haired joy and roughness-<br />
America- your stupidity.<br />
I could almost love you again.<br />
<br />
We left—onto the freeway shoulders-<br />
under the tough old stars-<br />
In the shadow of bluffs<br />
I came back to myself,<br />
To the real work, to<br />
“What is to be done.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island, 1974</span></i><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-37337189852698476922013-01-14T12:42:00.003-08:002013-01-14T12:42:21.855-08:00The Waterwheel, by Jalaluddin Rumi<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />On the mend from hacking cough and sore bones, likely picked up in East Texas protesting the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. <br />Friends, we're at that point between a climate on the edge and one that's over. So, stay together, raise a hue and cry, never look away and never, never forget what's at stake.<br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br />
<br />
<b>The Waterwheel</b><br />
<br />
Stay together, friends.<br />Don’t scatter and sleep.<br /><br />Our friendship is made<br />of being awake.<br /><br />The waterwheel accepts water<br />and turns and gives it away,<br />weeping.<br /><br />That way it stays in the garden,<br />whereas another roundness rolls<br />through a dry riverbed looking<br />for what it thinks it wants.<br /><br />Stay here, quivering with each moment<br />like a drop of mercury.<br /><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Jalaluddin Rumi, from The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition,<br />translated from the Persian by Coleman Barks, 2004</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-33366753181292570432012-03-05T10:15:00.003-08:002012-03-05T10:15:45.701-08:00Could Have, by Wislawa Szymborska<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) livedthrough "our worst century so far", according to ElizabethBishop, including the brutal Nazi occupation of her homeland and fourdecades of Stalinist rule. <br />When she died February 1, Katha Pollitt wrote in the Nation:"For Szymborska, it is always the one who matters—transient, blind,foolish, the plaything of chance that it miscalls destiny, but also urgent,insistent, full of its own meaning, alive."<br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br /><br /><br /><b>Could Have</b><br /><br />It could have happened.<br />It had to happen.<br />It happened earlier. Later.<br />Nearer. Farther off.<br />It happened, but not to you.<br /><br />You were saved because you were the first.<br /><br />You were saved because you were the last.<br /><br />Alone. With others.<br /><br />On the right. The left.<br /><br />Because it was raining. Because of the shade.<br /><br />Because the day was sunny.<br /><br />You were in luck -- there was a forest.<br /><br />You were in luck -- there were no trees.<br /><br />You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,<br /><br />a jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . .<br /><br />So you're here? Still dizzy from<br />another dodge, close<br /> shave, reprieve?<br /><br />One hole in the net and you slipped through?<br /><br />I couldn't be more shocked or<br />speechless.<br /><br />Listen,<br /><br />how your heart pounds inside me.<br /><br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Wislawa Szymborska, from View With a Grain of Sand, 1996<br />translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh </span></i><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-58357329977790584422012-02-20T10:55:00.000-08:002012-02-20T10:55:38.670-08:00Love Poem To America, by Catherine Pierce<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Mining the roots of America with Catherine Pierce, a feminine view from the Whitmanesque heights. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Oh my goodness, when do we catch our breath, how does this love story end?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Best,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Sam</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Love Poem To America</b><br />
<br />
America, teach me how to strut. Teach me<br />
how to whistle with two fingers<br />
in my mouth, how to pop off a bottle cap<br />
with my teeth. You’re the one I want<br />
<br />
to hate, with all your swagger and bravado,<br />
and of course you take me home<br />
every time. Who could resist? You’re the biggest,<br />
blondest movie star of all, the Mr. Universe<br />
<br />
of the millennium, your hands and feet<br />
and everything so strong and mindless,<br />
so rugged, yes. You’re buffalo blood and all things<br />
forbidden, the prizefighter who killed<br />
<br />
the favorite fair and square. In bed,<br />
you fell me like a redwood. I’m lost<br />
in your factory body – such perfect and grinding<br />
machinery. Oh, America, you’re gritty<br />
<br />
and glowing and I love the asphalt taste of you,<br />
your acid smell and your hunger and I love<br />
how, afterward, you roll over and snore<br />
like a locomotive before I even catch my breath.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">by Catherine Pierce, from Famous Last Words, 2008</span></i><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-5103926882624619782012-01-23T11:38:00.001-08:002012-01-23T11:39:03.825-08:00For The Sake Of Strangers, by Dorianne Laux<br />
<b>For The Sake Of Strangers</b><br />
<br />
No matter what the grief, its weight,<br />
we are obliged to carry it.<br />
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength<br />
that pushes us through crowds.<br />
And then the young boy gives me directions<br />
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,<br />
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.<br />
All day it continues, each kindness<br />
reaching toward another – a stranger<br />
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees<br />
offering their blossoms, a retarded child<br />
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.<br />
Somehow they always find me, seem even<br />
to be waiting, determined to keep me<br />
from myself, from the thing that calls to me<br />
as it must have once called to them –<br />
this temptation to step off the edge<br />
and fall weightless, away from the world.<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> by Dorianne Laux, from What We Carry, 1994</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-77262874126794501452012-01-16T13:51:00.001-08:002012-01-16T13:51:55.562-08:00The Way It Is, by William Stafford<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />William Stafford’s journey with words began most mornings before sunrise. This simple poem was written 26 days before he passed. The day before he wrote “Haycutters” and four days later on August 6, 1993 he wrote “November” in honor of Hiroshima Day.<br />One of his students, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, wrote, “In our time there has been no poet who revived human hearts and spirits more convincingly than William Stafford. There has been no one who gave more courage to a journey with words, and silence, and an awakened life.”</span><br /><br /><b>The Way It Is</b><br /><br />There’s a thread you follow. It goes among<br />things that change. But it doesn’t change.<br />People wonder about what you are pursuing.<br />You have to explain about the thread.<br />But it is hard for others to see.<br />While you hold it you can’t get lost.<br />Tragedies happen; people get hurt<br />or die; and you suffer and get old.<br />Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.<br />You don’t ever let go of the thread.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>By William Stafford, from The Way It Is, 1998</i></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com286tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-60348251275628899212012-01-09T13:26:00.000-08:002012-01-09T13:26:50.697-08:00Sitting In The Orchard, by Jelaluddin Rumi<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />Rumi imagining more, the taste and scent of reality. <br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br />
<br />
<b>Sitting In The Orchard</b><br /><br />A man sits in an orchard, fruit trees full<br />and the vines plump. He has his head<br />on his knee; his eyes are closed.<br /><br />His friend says, “Why stay sunk in mystical<br />meditation when the world is like this?<br />Such visible grace.”<br /><br />He replies, “The outer is an elaboration<br />of the inner. I prefer the origin.”<br /><br />Natural beauty is a tree limb reflected<br />in the water of a creek, quivering there, not<br />there. The growing that moves in the soul<br /><br />is more real than tree limbs and reflections.<br />We laugh and feel happy or sad over all this.<br /><br />Try instead to get a scent<br />of the true orchard. Taste the vineyard<br />within the vineyard.<br /><br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), from Rumi the Book of Love, 2003<br />translated from the Persian by Coleman Barks</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-68193886469577653962011-12-19T14:02:00.000-08:002011-12-19T14:02:23.556-08:00Topography, by Sharon Olds<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />Sharon Olds on the unification of a divided nation. This is my kind of politics. <br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br /><br /><b>Topography</b><br /><br />After we flew across the country we<br />got in bed, laid our bodies<br />delicately together, like maps laid<br />face to face, East to West, my<br />San Francisco against your New York, your<br />Fire Island against my Sonoma, my<br />New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho<br />bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas<br />burning against your Kansas your Kansas<br />burning against my Kansas, your Eastern<br />Standard Time pressing into my<br />Pacific Time, my Mountain Time<br />beating against your Central Time, your<br />sun rising swiftly from the right my<br />sun rising swiftly from the left your<br />moon rising slowly from the left my<br />moon rising slowly from the right until<br />all four bodies of the sky<br />burn above us, sealing us together,<br />all our cities twin cities,<br />all our states united, one<br />nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.<br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Sharon Olds, from The Gold Cell, 1987</span></i><br /><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-49603618984346703982011-12-05T09:52:00.001-08:002011-12-05T09:53:14.215-08:00Prayer, by James Armstrong<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">James Armstrong lived for a year in the middle of Lake Superior ("the blue that looks through us") at Isle Royale National Park.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I imagine him waking up on a winter morning to the emptiness and a wild beating heart. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Best,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Sam</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Prayer</b><br />
<br />
If we don’t believe in heaven, who reads the letters we mail there<br />
every evening?<br />
Children send most of them, kneeling by the bedpost<br />
imagining the universe under the care of a father<br />
who rumbles behind the newspaper<br />
smelling of cigarettes and Old Spice.<br />
To grow up is to lose one’s God at sea –<br />
better to lose one than be one.<br />
If you believe the world is perfect,<br />
think of Keats dying young.<br />
I never would have seen it if I hadn’t believed it,<br />
the saying goes. Somebody has to awaken us<br />
to the time of day it is when the earth is empty<br />
of any intention, or any human presence.<br />
<br />
And yet it is noon, and here you are – your blue headlands<br />
and swords, your wave-moistened silences.<br />
As if at the heart of things<br />
there were a heart.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>by James Armstrong, from Blue Lash, 2006</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-60188911464470770212011-11-14T10:37:00.001-08:002011-11-14T10:37:49.184-08:00Happiness, by Jane Kenyon<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hello Poets,<br />A surprise, a return, a remembrance. Warmth reappearing on cold fingers. Lentil stew, bread out of the oven, flickering flames on the burning log. <br />Bless you Jane Kenyon.<br />Best,<br />Sam</span><br /><br /><b>Happiness</b><br /><br />There’s just no accounting for happiness,<br />or the way it turns up like a prodigal<br />who comes back to the dust at your feet<br />having squandered a fortune far away.<br /><br />And how can you not forgive?<br />You make a feast in honor of what<br />was lost, and take from its place the finest<br />garment, which you saved for an occasion<br />you could not imagine, and you weep night and day<br />to know that you were not abandoned,<br />that happiness saved its most extreme form<br />for you alone.<br /><br />No, happiness is the uncle you never<br />knew about, who flies a single-engine plane<br />onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes<br />into town, and inquires at every door<br />until he finds you asleep midafternoon<br />as you so often are during the unmerciful<br />hours of your despair.<br /><br />It comes to the monk in his cell.<br />It comes to the woman sweeping the street<br />with a birch broom, to the child<br />whose mother has passed out from drink.<br />It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing<br />a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,<br />and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots<br />in the night<br /> It even comes to the boulder<br />in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,<br />to rain falling on the open sea,<br />to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.<br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />by Jane Kenyon from Otherwise, 1996</span></i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-35631401392361015412011-10-31T14:29:00.001-07:002011-10-31T14:29:57.178-07:00Warm Spell, by Bill Holms<br />
<b>Warm Spell</b><br />
<br />
A long November warm spell;<br />
all the blizzards still asleep.<br />
Bees hum unbelieving<br />
around still blooming flowers.<br />
Leaves, piled in compost heaps,<br />
move around uneasily.<br />
The dried branch bends down<br />
in warm wind,<br />
inviting them home again.<br />
<br />
People who haven’t spoken in years<br />
smile and greet each other in the street.<br />
Relatives forget old quarrels<br />
over family heirlooms.<br />
The town atheist admits that God exists;<br />
and the town drunk drinks coffee on his front porch.<br />
The Lutheran minister forgets<br />
St. Paul and the furrows<br />
vanish from around his mouth.<br />
Children are conceived in the open air<br />
under willow trees by the river.<br />
<br />
Like the life in the body,<br />
this cannot last, so everyone<br />
wastes time joyfully,<br />
not even remembering<br />
the old wounds they gave their spirit.<br />
The old man on the stoop<br />
in front of the beer joint<br />
remembers his first lover,<br />
and his toes begin dancing<br />
around inside his shoes.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>by Bill Holms, from The Dead Get By with Everything, 1990</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1235207820901500844.post-75059910330167999952011-10-17T15:30:00.000-07:002011-10-31T14:33:34.569-07:00Whispered Into The Ground, by William Stafford<br />
<b>Whispered Into The Ground</b><br />
<br />
Where the wind ended and we came down<br />
it was all grass. Some of us found<br />
a way to the dirt – easy and rich.<br />
When it rained, we grew, except<br />
those of us caught up in leaves, not touching<br />
earth, which always starts things.<br />
Often we sent off our own<br />
just as we’d done, floating that<br />
wonderful wind that promised new land.<br />
<br />
Here now spread low, flat on this<br />
precious part of the world, we miss<br />
those dreams and the strange old places<br />
we left behind. We quietly wait.<br />
The wind keeps telling us something<br />
we want to pass on to the world:<br />
Even far things are real.<br />
<br />
<i>by William Stafford, from Stories That Could Be True, 1977</i><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1