I Meant to Do My Work Today
I meant to do my work today –
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand –
So what could I do but laugh and go?
~ Richard LeGallienne
When Will I Be Home?
When will I be home? I don’t know.
In the mountains, in the rainy night,
The Autumn lake is flooded.
Someday we will be back together again.
We will sit in the candlelight by the West window.
And I will tell you how I remembered you
Tonight on the stormy mountain.
Li Shang-Yin
The Infinite
This solitary hill has always been dear to me
And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of
The endless horizon
But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts
Endless spaces beyond the hedge,
An all encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet,
To the point that my heart is almost overwhelmed.
And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees
I compare its voice to the infinite silence.
And eternity occurs to me, and all the ages past,
And the present time, and its sound.
Amidst the immensity my thought drowns:
And to flounder in this sea is sweet to me.
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
~ David Wagoner
Against Hesitation
If you stare at it long enough
the mountain becomes unclimbable.
Tally it up. How much time have you spent
waiting for the soup to cool?
Icicles hang from January gutters
only as long as they can. Fingers pause
above piano keys for the chord
that will not form. Slam them down
I say. Make music of what you can.
Some people stop at the wrong corner
and waste a dozen years hoping
for directions. I can’t be them.
Tell every girl I’ve ever known
I’m coming to break her door down,
that my teeth will clench
the simple flower I only knew
not to give … Ah, how long did I stand
beneath the eaves believing the storm
would stop? It never did.
And there is lightning in me still.
~ Charles Rafferty
In the Company of Women
Make me laugh over coffee,
make it a double, make it frothy
so it seethes in our delight.
Make my cup overflow
with your small happiness.
I want to hoot and snort and cackle and chuckle. Let your laughter fill me like a bell.
Let me listen to your ringing and singing
as Billie Holiday croons above our heads.
Sorry, the blues are nowhere to be found.
Not tonight. Not here.
No makeup. No tears.
Only contours. Only curves.
Each sip takes back a pound,
each dry-roasted swirl takes our soul.
Can I have a refill, just one more?
Let the bitterness sink to the bottom of our lives. Let us take this joy to go.
~ January Gill O’Neill
Sorry for the delay folks – it was a late night and my prep time vanished faster than expected. Happy Belated Poem in Your Pocket Day!! How did you celebrate? What did you carry? I’d love to know.
Poem in Your Pocket Day was initiated in April 2002 by the Office of the Mayor in New York City, in partnership with the city’s Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education. In 2008, the Academy of American Poets took the initiative to all fifty United States, encouraging individuals around the country to participate. In 2016, the League of Canadian Poets extended Poem in Your Pocket Day to Canada.
This is what I’m carrying, thanks to Jenny for sharing this with me.
“The sky is never …”
The sky is never
the same shade twice
and neither is your heart.
The moon has never apologised
for hiding some nights
and neither should you.
The stars have never stopped shining
because someone wanted them to
and neither should you.
The earth has never stopped
moving, growing, evolving for anyone
and neither should you.
~ Nikita Gill
And two old favorites …
Dust
Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor —
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes —
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.
~ Dorianne Laux
Evil
Looks like what drives me crazy
don’t have no effect on you-
but I’m gonna keep on at it
till it drives you crazy, too.
– Langston Hughes
Holding the Light
for Kait Rhoads
Gather up whatever is
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled
in the waves or fallen
in flames out of the sky,
for it’s not only our
hearts that are broken,
but the heart
of the world as well.
Stitch it back together.
Make a place where
the day speaks to the night
and the earth speaks to the sky.
Whether we created God
or God created us
it all comes down to this:
In our imperfect world
we are meant to repair
and stitch together
what beauty there is, stitch it
with compassion and wire.
See how everything
we have made gathers
the light inside itself
and overflows? A blessing.
~ Stuart Kestenbaum
Every Poem Was a Secret
Every poem was a secret
struggle with himself,
every secret was a struggle,
a handwritten scrawl,
something joyous
or terrible,
a fragmentary
blood-soaked message
wrenched out of his body,
a longing for
some impossible harmony
tucked into a bottle
and tossed off the side of a cliff.
Reckless love poems, shocked elegies
drafted against death
looking for God–
some of them shattered
in desperation
on the rocks below,
but others, like this one,
bobbed away
on surging blue waves
for someone to find them.
~ Edward Hirsch
Tax Day Limericks!
The limerick’s callous and crude,
Its morals distressingly lewd;
It’s not worth the reading
By persons of breeding –
It’s designed for us vulgar and rude.
On the chest of a barmaid at Yale
Was tattooed the price of each ale
Whilst on her behind
For the sake of the blind
Was precisely the same, but in Braille.
There once was a fellow named Brian
Who was bitten one day by a lion.
He went on the prowl
And he started to growl,
But other than that he’s just fion.
~Mary Volk
There once was a young man from Lyme
Who married three wives at a time
When asked, “Why a third?”
He replied, “One’s absurd,
And bigamy, sir, is a crime!”
Under the spreading chestnut tree
The village smith he sat,
Amusing himself
By abusing himself
And catching the load in his hat.
There was a young lady of Spain
Who took down her pants on a train.
There was a young porter
Saw more than he orter,
And asked her to do it again.
Here are neatly turned odes of small span,
Much concerned with our bodily plan,
And the intercorporeal
Highly sensorial
Love-life of woman and man.
