The Vacation by Wendell Berry

Great piece featured by Ted Kooser today~ and great advise for me as I get ready for my next big adventure. Taking the family to Italy/Sicily! WOO! So if you don't hear from me until June, you'll know why :)

 

American Life in Poetry: Column 425

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

If we haven’t done it ourselves, we’ve known people who have, it seems: taken a vacation mostly to photograph a vacation, not really looking at what’s there, but seeing everything through the viewfinder with the idea of looking at it when they get home. Wendell Berry of Kentucky, one of our most distinguished poets, captures this perfectly.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation. He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Wendell Berry, whose most recent book of poems is New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012. Poem reprinted from New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012, and used with permission of Wendell Berry and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

coal and chalk

we, entangled, are a chimney on a roof in a city charmed by night.
below us
lives a stretch of danger like crumbled cement,
corner-cut deals.

darkness has its way
of inviting

us to pull taller in the shadows. mark these choices
with coal and chalk.

legs on legs, before the lightning ...

the voices

downstairs. the voices. i lay awake to the voices. they crescendo in no particular time, die down slightly (i may close my eyes) erupt again. in a cadance they can't control. in a swirling tsunami of sound. they swell around me. they form a cocoon so that i may lose my skin. so i may wall myself in, shed my regrets, live vicariously through strange voices choosing a late hour. choosing to pet each others questionable decisions. i am becoming them. i am rocking ever so slightly to the hum. shadows on the walls dance wickedly, my naked little fears run away. i shed them overnight in this chysalis. in this safe haven humdrum silent bed fed by voices. pick up a storyline from a deep baritone, drift off as a narrator in a lengthy surrealist novel, one where sweet home is nothing but a painted highway running past an apartment filled with voices.

"Understanding Graphite" by Oonah V. Joslin

My dear friend and managing editor of EveryDayPoets.com Oonah Joslin won a recent postcard poem contest! Congrats Oonah! Read her work and check out EDP for some great everyday inspiration!

Read it here: Understanding Graphite

Drop leaves Faucet

Drop leaves Faucet
carefully -
slyly looking both ways
like a prisoner in a daring escape,
takes a breath
closes eyes,

Launches!

free falling bliss
to desperate reconsideration
wind pulls delicate skin
and all is quiet

Drop shatters into
a million shining sparks on a stainless steel
tundra,
Transforms into something infintely soft.

Take one last look, Drop, at a cold grey world and
drain toward something
altogether new

Arnold (reaching full sail)

I wonder how Arnold feels
on the Canton docks, drying his skin
after a windy cold winter.

He will be under a new moon tonight
streets lit up with
city haze alone.
He will be under the awning of Safeway
sketchbook clutched in one hand,
bottle in the other.

"Maybe," he says, "if I hadn't been drunk that day
I would have met Oprah before
she moved to Chicago and I could call her now
as a friend."

The harbor sways up to comment
but only trash reaches the dock. Far beyond,
other peoples' boats reach full sail
into the Bay.

#Poetry Friday

#Poetry round-up today! WOO! Some oldies I pulled randomly out of the hat. Remember - over 650 posts here. Make sure, on rainy days like today, you spend some time and look around :)

Finding Robert Zimmerman

the ex-stripper

Artist (My Mother on the Shore)

Sky cannot know Ground

All roads less traveled…

the yarn spinner

sunset while house-sitting

untitled (first spring nights)

to the pagoda at sunset

pavement pounding, slight sweat on a brow still pale from winter

to the top
of an ancient hill -
a pagoda

across its steps, you all lounge like
trees in heavy blossom
pink and white sky, our silky fragrant breaths
mingle with the orange glow

sinking
into a city skyline full of shadows
rowhomes full of secrets

"Burning the Book" by Ron Koertge

Hi friends, been in a creative slump recently but hoping to get back to writing soon. Busy busy but as the weather turns, hopefully, so will the ideas. Until then~ enjoy Ron Koertge's piece below. Wonderfully expressive imagery.


American Life in Poetry: Column 419

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

It pains an old booklover like me to think of somebody burning a book, but if you’ve gotten one for a quarter and it’s falling apart, well, maybe it’s OK as long as you might be planning to pick up a better copy. Here Ron Koertge, who lives in Pasadena, has some fun with the ashes of love poems.

Burning the Book

The anthology of love poems I bought
for a quarter is brittle, anyway, and comes
apart when I read it.

One at a time, I throw pages on the fire
and watch smoke make its way up
and out.

I’m almost to the index when I hear
a murmuring in the street. My neighbors
are watching it snow.

I put on my blue jacket and join them.
The children stand with their mouths
open.

I can see nouns—longing, rapture, bliss—
land on every tongue, then disappear.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Ron Koertge, whose most recent book of poems is Fever, Red Hen Press, 2006. Poem reprinted by permission of Ron Koertge. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

coffee! coffee!

stay my friend let's drink coffee! coffee!
mocha
latte!
espresso is so decisive
how it, with such tart precision,
pricks the senses up!

stay with me
tempt dreary hands with
a swirl of intent in a dreamy cloud of lengthening foam
if you look close
enough
i just know you'll see your future
bright! bright!

a day in the life (journel excerpt)

you and i
share a secret
much like the duo
playing guitar in the barber shop
long after
everyone else has gone.

read an article today how the great writers lived in miserable raining dark places which forced them to look inward. good thing it rains tonight. maybe some art, somewhere, is safe. as for me, i just don't know what to write anymore. i walked home in the rain on a Friday night clutching groceries and toilet paper, peering into windows where couples and families were eating together, where two were playing guitar to a freshly brushed floor, and i walked on. my sister - she questioned me - and i said, i may not know much but i do know alone. i do know it. and we, the blank page and i, settle in for a good chat as the moon snakes through the blinds ...

(taken from the red journal. 1.11.13)

"Living Tree" by Robert Morgan

LOVED this poem. Enjoy my friends! And your mission today: pass on the joy of poetry to one other person. Let's start a movement!

American Life in Poetry: Column 418
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Robert Morgan, who lives in Ithaca, New York, has long been one of my favorite American poets. He’s also a fine novelist and, recently, the biographer of Daniel Boone. His poems are often about customs and folklore, and this one is a good example.

Living Tree

It’s said they planted trees by graves

to soak up spirits of the dead

through roots into the growing wood.

The favorite in the burial yards

I knew was common juniper.

One could do worse than pass into

such a species. I like to think

that when I’m gone the chemicals

and yes the spirit that was me

might be searched out by subtle roots

and raised with sap through capillaries

into an upright, fragrant trunk,

and aromatic twigs and bark,

through needles bright as hoarfrost to

the sunlight for a century

or more, in wood repelling rot

and standing tall with monuments

and statues there on the far hill,

erect as truth, a testimony,

in ground that’s dignified by loss,

around a melancholy tree

that’s pointing toward infinity.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Robert Morgan, whose most recent book of poems is Terroir, Penguin Poets, 2011. Poem reprinted from The Georgia Review, Spring 2012, by permission of Robert Morgan and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

you are simply a light

and from this great height
stars shine above
and below.

those on a bridge (i know this logically, there must be a bridge)
are blurs of red and white in
such universal darkness.

i fly over you.

you - a pin prick of light,
a galaxy in and of yourself
many million miles away.

you call me weed

you call me weed,
growing between the bricks
below your suede, square feet

i am actually compulsive pushing,
insistent shoving

pest,

but long after you're gone
(taking all your
small-minded robots with you)
i'll remain. and i'll reclaim
what was mine all along.

Age 92

Age 92

92 and you
Bruise so fast, when catching
Your wife who
Dizzy and falling, desperately needed you.
And you were there.

You were there
During world wars,
During depression,
During the birth of two boys and one daughter,
Then seven grandchildren, now six, the
Loss imprinted
On the lines of your face.

This week is 92,
But you say, 38 ½ years have gone by
In a joke that is at least
Twice my age.

i am Nabokov's butterfly

paper thin wings grow in fantastic colors
behind my shoulder blades.
eye spots deepen on the tops of each
and wink when i fly.

settling quietly on a leaf in a forest in old Russia

there is a sudden net upon me,
Nabokov! oh how he
drains my life, pins down my wings ...
and with quiet precision,
i am immortal.

but the potential is there

This man i passed in his street level window
in his old-man blue and white striped underpants
plays guitar to sheet music propped up by useless
paper stacks. In my world flowers overstay their welcome
and die, casually, a little bit every day
and i swim among the petals, like beautiful regrets,
among the art and the lies ...
            but the potential is there
like the smell of garlic wafting from an overcrowded
kitchen pot ... this man finds a chord, i hear it from
a mile away and cry.

predator

i am
a predator
beside a frozen lake
masquerading as an ocean
[we are all so phony]
slinking up to frozen fingers of light
lips licked in luscious anticipation

one ship one mile out is
my only witness
and it is too frozen in place
to stop me, or care.

Koi Pond, Oakland Museum by Susan Kolodny

Been saving this one for awhile~ hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

American Life in Poetry: Column 403
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Among the most ancient uses for language are descriptions of places, when a person has experienced something he or she wants to tell somebody else about. Some of these get condensed and transformed into poetry, and here’s a good example, by Susan Kolodny, a poet from the Bay Area of California.

Koi Pond, Oakland Museum

Our shadows bring them from the shadows:
a yolk-yellow one with a navy pattern
like a Japanese woodblock print of fish scales.
A fat 18-karat one splashed with gaudy purple
and a patch of gray. One with a gold head,
a body skim-milk-white, trailing ventral fins
like half-folded fans of lace.
A poppy-red, faintly disheveled one,
and one, compact, all indigo in faint green water.
They wear comical whiskers and gather beneath us
as we lean on the cement railing
in indecisive late-December light,
and because we do not feed them, they pass,
then they loop and circle back. Loop and circle. Loop.
“Look,” you say, “beneath them.” Beneath them,
like a subplot or a motive, is a school
of uniformly dark ones, smaller, unadorned,
perhaps another species, living in the shadow
of the gold, purple, yellow, indigo, and white,
seeking the mired roots and dusky grasses,
unliveried, the quieter beneath the quiet.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Susan Kolodny from her first book of poems, After the Firestorm, Mayapple Press, 2011. Poem first appeared in the New England Review, Vol. 18, no. 1, 1997. Reprinted by permission of Susan Kolodny and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

3AM

a sudden chill -
         i own nothing.
not even this love
or sweat
or all the piles of regret
i accumulate
or the quiet dust
i lay with
or the way we framed
our bedroom.

i take nothing with me
save this
one last thought  -
your shadow leaving
is a distortion
of its former self.

twice my age

Shaded eyes
soulful,
under hot lights and sweating.

There, in the midst of Zeppelin blues and the crowd,
the ageless anticipation, the complicated thought of:
Screams from bodies trembling, hear those
soft six string moans,
microphone inhales and stifled words,
fevered hands grasping air
harmonica in crescendo
until the volume is unbearable, consumed.

We are so far; I know nothing of him.
We are so close; I see him there
leaning darkly beside the stairs.

[written when i was 20. revised here]

"The Cranes, Texas January" by Mark Sanders (Guest Post)

American Life in Poetry: Column 412
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Mark Sanders, who lives in Texas, is not only a good poet, but he’s an old friend to the poetry of my home ground, working hard as teacher, editor, and publisher to bring Great Plains poetry to the attention of readers across the country. Here’s an example of one of his poems.

The Cranes, Texas January

I call my wife outdoors to have her listen,
to turn her ears upward, beyond the cloud-veiled
sky where the moon dances thin light,
to tell her, “Don’t hear the cars on the freeway—

it’s not the truck-rumble. It is and is not
the sirens.” She stands there, on deck
a rocking boat, wanting to please the captain
who would have her hear the inaudible.

Her eyes, so blue the day sky is envious,
fix blackly on me, her mouth poised on question
like a stone. But, she hears, after all.
                                                 January on the Gulf,
warm wind washing over us,
we stand chilled in the winter of those voices.



American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Mark Sanders from his most recent book of poems, Conditions of Grace: New and Selected Poems, Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Mark Sanders and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

Congrats to my hometown heroes: The Baltimore Ravens

I just want to relive the moment again.
Ravens win!
Streets filling, dancing and chanting in a flurry of snowy excitement,
beads bouncing around my shoulders,
a beer here, a purple shot there...

and every time they mention Baltimore from that confetti-filled dome
a swell of noise ...

Relive the highs of every touchdown and anxiety of
"don't let this slip away, man don't let it slip away"

Relive 4 seconds giving way to
strangers high fiving, hugging,
all of us family in a city
known for grit and determination and connectedness as much as violence,
yes, we have a chip on our shoulder, yes we think the world is out to get us,
and yes,
last night... we were ON TOP OF THE WORLD.

believe in yourself
is the lesson

all drenched in a beautiful sea of purple.

(author is in the middle - we're number 1!)

"what i wish i knew" (from 2010)

If I had only known,
I would have taken your face gently in my hands
And pulled you close to kiss you
In that very second when I came to understand
How I loved you.

The past, and the very late night, speaks volumes;
I must listen.

full moon hidden by unseasonsal January haze

full moon, we shall have no w o r d s

tonight, all inhibitions obfuscated by your
veiled threats of rain

don't brush them off

keep certain eyes off long legs clicking on heels down the cracked city
sidewalk, look past
all these unforgivable glances
between us shadowy figures swapping sips behind the
loading dock, us strangers
stretching by a brick wall
new hands tingling under a cloak of
hazed obscurity

The Connection between Business and Poetry: Interview with Dana Goia

For those of us living in both worlds of business and art~ check out the following interview! I think you'll really enjoy it. 

The Connection Between Business & Poetry

--by Interview with Dana Goia by Knowledge@Wharton, Original Story, Jan 28, 2013
SELECTED PASSAGE:
Useem: Let me reverse the question. From your own experience, can business managers themselves benefit the other way around from poetry?

Gioia: Oh absolutely, but I think that my own theory on it may surprise people. I think that if you come into the business, with an arts background, you have a tremendously difficult time initially. This is because it's a very different world, it looks at problems differently and by and large, they don't necessarily respect your background.

For that reason, I did not let anyone I worked with know that I was a poet. This is because, let me ask you a question, if you had a poet working for you, wouldn't you check his or her addition? So privately I went through a very difficult time. That being said, as you rise in business, as you get out of the lower level staff jobs and the quantitative analysis, and you get into the higher level of problems, I felt that I had an enormous advantage over my colleagues because I had a background in the imagination, in language and in literature.

This is because once you get into middle and upper management, the decisions that you make are largely qualitative and creative. And, most people who do really well in the early quantitative stages are grossly unprepared for the real challenges of upper management, at least in marketing which was the industry that I was working in, marketing and product management.

Read the full piece.

But Only For Now (or now that i have a window)

Now that I have a window
I age faster.
I am a family member who
is already dead.
Sun sets: I watch the drop
to dirt grow faster every day.

I imagine it is me. I am the sun,
scorching orange fingernails
scratching at a dusky sky
trying to remain relevant and
sinking.

[What if, this time, there is no morning?]

Blushing hints of light. I am my great aunt reborn.
I am a promise that
the universe crackles at its tips
into yet another big bang.

Look at the man walking, cold breath rising.
Look at the trees bare to their necks.

It is winter…
but only for now.

on unemployment (revised)

I slide low down into my chair.

Looking at the phone Looking at the phone Looking at the phone ...

              Out my window, rain drops jump the asphalt alive, rain
              Pours so hard my world greys into one large cloud
              Shimmer and sliding freely. Trees shake and shudder.

Phone lies so still. I am
Waiting on the call Waiting on the call Waiting on the call Waiting on the call Waiting
 

remembering my grandfather

Remembering my grandfather today~ (from his obit, written by my uncle)

Charles (Chuck) F. Burrows was born August 15, 1915 in Cleveland, Ohio, to his parents Ethel M. and Harry O. Burrows of Shaker Heights. He graduated from Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland with a BS in Metallurgical Engineering in 1937 and a Masters Degree in Metallurgical Engineering in 1939. He was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity.

Thanks to a fortuitous trip to Baltimore, Chuck found the Glenn L Martin Company. The rapidly growing aircraft company was seeking young engineers and offered to hire Chuck on the spot. He started work there in December 1939 and watched the company grow to over 50,000 employees during the war and then downsize to 600 before he retired. Chuck spent a combined total of 45 years with the Martin Company, most of which was spent in the AMT (Advanced Manufacturing Lab). He retired from what was then called Martin Marietta in 1984.

During part of his career with the Glenn L. Martin Company, he worked at the Omaha, Nebraska plant from 1941-1945. There he worked on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb during WWII. He led a team to structurally test the bomb carrier assembly on the plane and had no idea at the time it was for an atomic bomb. At one point, he almost lost his life when a window exploded out of a B-29 during a pressure test, missing him by inches.

One of Chuck’s most notable achievements was the Granting of Patent for the Martin Hard Coating Process, which is still in use today.

Martin Hard Coating is a non-metallic oxide resistant coating applied to aluminum, which provides exceptional corrosion wear resistance. An excellent example of this technology can be found today in Analon Cookware. Chuck’s expertise in metal finishing techniques was world renowned and this was only one of many patents he was responsible for during his career as a metallurgist. Chuck was an avid member of and lecturer with the American Welding Society.

In the late 1950’s, Chuck started his own business, Metal Finishers, Inc., on Franklintown Road in Baltimore. His company was the first Alcoa-Certified, Martin Hard Coating licensee in Baltimore. The business grew to about 50 employees before aggressive union tactics eventually forced him out of business. With partner Bernie Bandelin, another metallurgist who worked and retired from Martin Marietta, Chuck also started B&B Services, a metals joining and consulting service.

Chuck owned his own airplane for many years, a 1940’s Ercoupe, which he flew all over the country. He had plenty of hair raising stories to tell of landing in corn fields, leaking fuel tanks, and flying without instrumentation. But this was before meeting the love of his life Florence, who gave him an ultimatum: her or the airplane…. Chuck chose wisely, and he and Flo were happily married for over 58 years.

Another major aspect of Chuck’s life was his passion for sports, in particular ice hockey and skating. He was on an ice hockey team destined for the 1940 Winter Olympics in Sapporo Japan; however, these games were cancelled due to the onset of World War II. Tough as nails, he had a hard slap shot and even stitched himself up on the sidelines in order to finish the game.

Chuck was an avid bowler in one of the oldest established men’s leagues in the country, the Drug Trade. He bowled over 50 years in that same league, with 20 of those years shared with his youngest son, Rick. Golf and tennis were other passions. He played as often as he could, especially after he retired. Chuck had an excellent short game, always giving friends and family a fit.

An active Shiner, Chuck was a member of the Waverly Lodge and a longtime member of the Boumi Temple Harem. He most often paraded in full Harem Costume. He and Flo attended all sorts of functions with the Shrine: dances, the famous Shrine Circus, and of course, the wild Shrine Conventions. Many longtime friends were made in the shrine.

Vacations with the family were cherished events that took place every summer starting out in Ocean City Maryland and eventually moving to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Playing with his grandchildren, golfing with the boys, playing horseshoes on the beach, relaxing with a newspaper, and going out to eat were Chuck’s favorite pastimes.

During his retirement, Chuck spent many hours building various woodworking projects that he enjoyed giving away at Christmas time. The family displays them proudly. He and Flo were also active members of St. Timothy’s Lutheran Church for over 50 years.

apocalypse (haiku)

sidewalks buckle, this
beginning is not an end,
circles, set us free.

apathy

apathy:
i don't care.
nothing matters.
we live, we die.
the dust continues its
domination, another
has the same existential crisis.
then he dies too.

my new year's resolutions are blue painted plates

My new years' resolutions are like blue painted plates my grandmother
used to collect with a scene in white and the year in large swooping font,
some (the favorites) hung across the top of the kitchen for display, others
stacked in the cabinets, laden with intentions of one day making it out.

When she died, we came in to clean the house and each took a plate,
mine, 1966, now sits growing dusty on a bookshelf.
I clean it every January 2.

Short Story (Baltimore City Paper Fiction Contest)

Hi lovelies!
Great news to share~ I received Third Place in the Baltimore City Paper Fiction Contest. This was my first go at fiction so I'm especially happy! :) Please take a read... short "teaser" is below.

So Much Closer and Far More Brilliant

He is late—and after finding his way up the wooden steps, the upstairs bar unfolds like those 2 A.M. roses handed out by Middle Eastern men for $1—roses that promise so much, then wilt and fall open with the slightest touch.
 
Still, he must admit, they do manage to bring smiles to pretty women at last call. He’s bought a few here and there—although it hasn’t brought him any closer to a girlfriend. No one seems interested in a paralegal who likes sonnets, much less someone who everyone (since first grade and the moment those thick glasses graced his small nose and magnified his already-big green eyes) calls “Owl”.

No one except for maybe Molly, but tonight is her goodbye party........READ MORE

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! 

Scandinavian Traditions (on Christmas Eve)

Christmas waits like gift wrap glowing warm beneath welcoming arms
of pine needles hanging heavy -
inside, table set waits by candlelight, and each flame preens
in the eyes of orange and blue Dala horses.

Soon, with guided hands, we set the course of helgdad frukt soppa.
Like cinnamon and cardamom from the svenske kringlor in the oven,
knotted just how our grandmother taught us, we breathe.

{poem from last year, slightly revised ... Merry Christmas poet friends!!}

Finally (the only truth)

Finally~
you say as night settles
for the progress of the day.

as soon as you're born

 you die a little

  every day, with every scraped knee

   and every time

    someone disappoints you

     or you break another heart.

all the blood of daily pin pricks pile like so many dried leaves
tossed by a breezy blood orange moon with eyes like a wise old owl.

Finally, you say.

Wipe a finger
across a dusty bookshelf full of old photographs
to feel the only truth
known to owls, and moons.

Christmas 1945 by Alice B. Johnson

Merry Christmas week to those who celebrate it -- this poem is from my great-grandmother Alice B. Johnson (from her book Where Children Live (1958))


Christmas 1945

This is the day, the Christmas day,
The world has waited for --
This is the dream men dreamed of home
For four long years and more.

This is the dream that brought them through
Bastogne and Bougainville --
Through jungle heat and frozen waste,
Beyond each numbered hill.

Hang up the holly, mistletoe,
And light the Christmas tree,
And dream tonight of Bethlehem --
Think not of Calvary.

Think not of crosses in a row
Or comrades resting there --
They sleep above the stars tonight,
Safe in a Father's care.

time to come together

It is a time to come together. Watch as the lights, even the littlest, show us how to shine -
hug your children, feel smoothness of such skin still without regret, disappointment, and
Know: the world will eventually end, yet we can hold hands with love in a moment
that will shine on and on as surely as moist breath and tears return to heaven as rain.


*for all those lost today in CT. our thoughts and love are with you.

untitled (darkened opportunities)

                              like the empty hollow
growl of a stomach hungry, i lean into the sound of arms wrapping around me
                              oh i love how shallow
these men can be when confronted by such shiny darkened opportunities

"Theater of Shadows" by Derek N. Otsuji

To say that I loved this would be an incredible understatement.... enjoy my friends!

American Life in Poetry: Column 402
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Shadow play is among the few free entertainments left, and it must go on delighting children all around the globe. Derek N. Otsuji lives in Hawaii, and here’s his reminiscence.

Theater of Shadows

Nights we could not sleep—
           summer insects singing in dry heat,
                       short-circuiting the nerves—

Grandma would light a lamp,
           at the center of our narrow room,
                          whose clean conspiracy of light

whispered to the tall blank walls,
            illuminating them suddenly
                     like the canvas of a dream.

Between the lamp and wall
           her arthritic wrists grew pliant
                     as she molded and cast

improbable animal shapes moving
           on the wordless screen:
                         A blackbird, like a mynah, not a crow.

A dark horse’s head that could but would not talk.
           An ashen rabbit (her elusive self)
                      triggered in snow

that a quivering touch (like death’s)
             sent scampering into the wings
                           of that little theater of shadows

that eased us into dreams.



American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Derek N. Otsuji. Reprinted from Descant, 2011, Vol. 50, by permission of Derek N. Otsuji and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

wearing a dress of the dead

wearing a dress of the dead, lipstick just a shade deeper than yesterday's
wear, my hair is longer, eyes lined blue, mind sharp, i have never felt such cathexis
for a polyester blend, it is she in my memory choosing this white clutch, she reminding

me of such joy in life with each swish of the bell of such brightly flowered dress,
she decorating all of me and preening like a grave site of daisies in fresh morning spring.

Rows of No Smoking Lights

Captain, turn off the seat belt sign
so only rows of no smoking lights run above.

Secure us passengers, upright us as
we wait in this obdurate silence.

Sleep eyes open to a hangover, dream
rocking against a tiny dark window.

Lighted wing belays the illusion, we are
underwater (again) in a primal world.

Feel this pressurized weight force
the lights to run on. Staring at

them blurs life into one long line
A long hallway I too will walk someday.



[revised from 2010 - about a plane ride home from Mexico to say goodbye to my dying grandmother]

Past Al Dente

Was it the way I was standing
Spoon in hand like a weapon,
Water boiling over with a hiss?

Howling insults and
Sauce bubbling red.
We reached this point slowly.

Silence, now, stove clean.
We sip wine without looking
Eat pasta cooked a minute
Past al dente.

Family Vacation by Judith Slater (American Life in Poetry)

Ah. This poem takes your hand and never lets go. Enjoy~

 

American Life in Poetry: Column 401

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

As children, many of us played after dark, running out to the border of the reach of light from the windows of home. In a way, this poem by Judith Slater, who lives in New York State, remembers the way in which, at the edge of uncertainty, we turned back.

Family Vacation

Four weeks in, quarreling and far

from home, we came to the loneliest place.

A western railroad town. Remember?

I left you at the campsite with greasy pans

and told our children not to follow me.

The dying light had made me desperate.

I broke into a hobbled run, across tracks,

past warehouses with sun-blanked windows

to where a playground shone in a wooded clearing.

Then I was swinging, out over treetops.

I saw myself never going back, yet

whatever breathed in the mute woods

was not another life. The sun sank.

I let the swing die, my toes scuffed earth,

and I was rocked into remembrance

of the girl who had dreamed the life I had.

Through night, dark at the root, I returned to it.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Judith Slater from her most recent book of poems, The Wind Turning Pages, Outriders Poetry Project, 2011. Reprinted by permission of Judith Slater and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving my American friends!!
I'm thankful for each and every one of you lovely readers.

Thanks for supporting me over the years (can't believe it's been multiple years!!)

Enjoy this festive haiku "Blessing of Hounds"
http://www.presssendpoetry.com/2010/11/blessing-of-hounds-fox-hunt-haiku.html 

in the way a pumpkin rots

in the way a pumpkin rots
from the inside out
pulp soft and weak
thick orange walls caving
in upon itself

such is my girl putting on her makeup slowly just inches from a mirror seeing only
more spots to cover

such is my girl
put out on a curb
thick skin unaware