The Poetry Playground

** will be back to correct this **

Numbers
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,they are willing to countanything or anyone:two pickles, one door to the room,eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition–add two cups of milk and stir–the sense of plenty: six plumson the ground, three more falling from the tree.
And multiplication’s schoolof fish times fish,whose silver bodies breedbeneath the shadowof a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,just addition somewhere else:five sparrows take away two,the two in someone else’s garden now.
There’s an amplitude to long division,as it opens Chinese take-outbox by paper box,inside every folded cookiea new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised by the gift an an odd remainder,footloose at the end:forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers’ call,two Italians off to the sea,one sock that isn’t anywhere you look
~ Mary Cornish

Poem

I’m inside the advancing light,
my hands are hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can’t get enough of the trees —
they’re so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I’m at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can’t smell the medicines —
carnations must be blooming somewhere.

It’s like this:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

~ Nazim Hikmet (translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)

The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came

 
The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,
it can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward, it can give

gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,

and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

~ Mary Oliver

Summer Rain

 
All night our room was outer-walled with rain.
Drops fell and flattened on the tin roof,
And rang like little disks of metal.
Ping! — Ping! — and there was not a pin-point of silence between them.
The rain rattled and clashed,
And the slats of the shutters danced and glittered.
But to me the darkness was red-gold and crocus-colored
With your brightness,
And the words you whispered to me
Sprang up and flamed — orange torches against the rain.
Torches against the wall of cool, silver rain!

~ Amy Lowell

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

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

For Keeps

 
Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.

~ Joy Harjo

Reading the Obituary Page
In starched dresses
with ribbons
in miniature jackets
and tiny ties
we would circle
the chairs
at birthday parties and
when the music
stopped, lunge
to be seated. One
by one we were welcomed
to hard ground
and empty air.

~ Linda Pastan