How to Read a Poem

What I want to say is
you can't rinse and stack a poem.
You have to let your hands
slip across the page.
Wrap the rhythm round your fist
and plunge into the lines.
Turn the words until the stains
of last night's tea are gone.
Get between the tines.
Feel the sharp knives inside the soapy sea.
Wash, rinse, and hold it to the light.
Let it shine like finest crystal.
I want to say
a poem must be scrubbed
before you place it on the shelf
like last night's news. 
Rub it. Read it clean;
Read it, feel it, repeat.

What the Net Holds

“the tongues of dying men / 

enforce attention like deep harmony.”

                                                                   —W. S. Shakespeare

One final time, we wait 

for you to speak the truth 

we know you knew.

Your dry tongue clicks,

lips like gaping fish.

Not air you strain

from or to, but the wish 

to speak of beauty, harmony, 

and truth. Too late.

We come too late in the day

for you to say, and yet we stay

suspended in the possibility

that the air we breathe

has molecules of you

dissolved and thrown 

against the deeply mortal reef.

When finally we leave,

our nets are filled, heavy with

the poetry we seek.

On being a poet

On being a poet 

It's awful, having nothing to say,

To sit silent like a toad,

Breathing in and breathing out.

Yet how pleased he seems

To sit, sun and shadows,

Breeze to stir the reeds.

Look how his sides heave,

A bellows of deep rhythms.

Nothing in the bright bead eyes

Of shame or want. No whipping 

For missed flies, regret or condemnation.

Only is. Only am. Only he,

Uncensored by his mind,

Free to breathe. Little Buddha, 

Free to be. 

Young and Easy

Yesterday was the birthday of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. It was the power of Thomas's poetry that snared me at seventeen. I've been lost in poems ever since. Now much older than he lived to be, I fool around at writing, but really, I'm just a great audience for real poets. 

Kerry at IGRT reminded me of Dylan Thomas's birthday, so I blame her for this:

YOUNG AND EASY

on reading Dylan Thomas in October

And so,

The gifts that sift and fall

On fallow ground

Grow old and spotted

As October's rose

Or the hand that holds them now.

Unyoked, you plow plant reap

Fine wheat.

Too soon, too young

You scatter, seed, outrun

The dying sun.

Still, the clock

Still, the  clock:

Back and forth

Settled, regular, like the heart.

Staccato notes

Dum dee, dum dee, dum dee

Patterned background chatter

Morning song that fades

With the scrape of shoes

Sight

SIGHT

I can't believe
How unobservant
You are,
He says.

The sky this morning
Rolls blue and grey
Except where the sun should rise,
Except where striations
Of purple, gold, and pink
Mute the light.

How could you
Not have noticed
That before,
He asks of something
So useful I cannot even see.

Meanwhile,
A tiny spider bounces 
The tightrope of his web
And hangs a moment upside down
To shinny past
A shining drop of dew.

You never pay attention,
He says.

To see the world in a grain of sand,
I tell him.

Meanwhile, the earth ticks
And spins around us
And holds eternity
In a web of many hues.

Waiting for Billy Collins

Billy nearly made us miss the famous Willow Manor Ball. Seems he's after those mice again!

Waiting for Billy Collins

Somewhere in the house
He is chasing a blind mouse
With a carving knife.

He'll mince it into words
And the pauses he has heard
In his head.

The caesuras, he would say
In his professeuric way,
Tell us how it should be read.

Still, he's flying round the room,
Chasing mice without a broom
Trading verses with the dead

Till he leaves this worthy cause,
Takes a breath and takes a pause,

Fills the silences we've heard
With a poet's every word.

On Looking at a Photo of Robert Frost

  

 On Looking at a Photo of Robert Frost

Who would have thought

     that Frost,

who looks

      in all the books

like some grand father,

 who cleaned the spring
      in spring

and stopped in winter woods --

who, looking at this white-haired

     gentle man

        
would ever think
     that he,

 who knew that walls

     can't stand,

but built them anyway,

this white haired gentle man --

who would have thought
      that even he,

would be acquainted

     with the night

like me?

 

No Words

NO WORDS



Blank Page,
     white and bare
          as winter.

Scant Words,
     black birds
          on crusted snow.

Poor Hearts
     beat wings
          in bony cages.

No Song
   to measure
          what the heart can hold.


I owe much of this poem to Zelda Fitzgerald, who said, "No one, not even a poet, can measure how much the heart can hold."  Pairing her quotation with the pictured quote from a Victorian poet might seem strange, but it makes perfect sense to me in light of the poem's subject. Thank you both, fair ladies.

about a sunflower

ABOUT A SUNFLOWER


I am  sitting tonight in front of the window
staring at the blackness staring back. A cozy scene:
a woman, seated at a worn wooden table, a bowl
of oranges and lemons in front of her, an arrangement
of cheerful plates on the wall behind, pen in hand,
her arm lying across a paper angled just so, big dark eyes
like holes in her face looking back from the glass.
All summer, I watched from this same seat
a sunflower, a tall hairy stem, pointy sepal arms,
hundreds of bumpy brown seeds, bursting
little teeth, little rows hoed in circles, a plinking
stone in a still brown pond,
bonneted, beribboned, turning this way
and that, reaching up a round child's face,
angling for her father, a heavy earthen mother,
finally falling beneath her weighty thoughts, beaten
by the rain, become a blinded skull, her eyes pecked out.
Examined from the ground up, imagined
from the sky down -- the worm's view, the crow's view,
in memory, the poet's view -- a blind reflection
in the glass tonight while the words can't find
where the woman fits in the scheme
of all these things.

In a Name

Argent's driving the Bus this week, and our challenge is to write a poem about a meeting. Meet contemporary American poet and two term Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins.

See the challenge and read the entries of other passengers here.


















IN A NAME

You'd think that by this time,
We'd be familiar--
Sweet William,
Wild Bill,
Maybe Billy Boy.
After all,
He's naked in the hallway,
Turning circles
Shuffling round the house.
Every night I sail with
Billy Collins.
And still it's Billy Collins, first and last.
I have known just Keats alone,
And Shelley. Shelley,
He's still three as in the past.
But as for my new lover
Billy Collins,
It's Billy first;
It's Billy Collins last.
Now I spend my nights with Billy Collins;
We're drinking tea and writing hard and fast.

Spinning Wonder

SPINNING WONDER

I'm showing you the poetry
In a silken strand that shoots
From tree to bush then waves
On the wind over the water and back
To land upon the branches of the trees,

And I'm thinking of this magic,"Let it be,"

While you try so hard, over and over
In that way you have of never letting go to sail
On strands of magic, to explain the science
Of spinning such a marvel to one who only wants 

To live her life in astonishment and wonder.

The Trouble with Poetry

Five-thirty in the morning
And I hear your footsteps
On the stairs like a reproach.
I'm reading poems, already wasting time,
While you, Captain of Industry, rub and scrub.
I'm First Mate of Indolence at six A.M.,
Anchored in the chair with Billy Collins.
What is it I should do?
Somebody stir the pot.
Somebody bring me a broom.

Appointments

The Poetry Bus this week, driven by Don't Feed the Pixies, challenges us to follow the signs (real or imagined) to wherever they take us. As I am reading Mary Oliver's, A Poetry Handbook, in which she talks about the importance of keeping appointments with your writing self, I've begun to think about following the signs to that place where I can do what I've set myself to do.

I will find it
Somewhere fair,
In rarified, clarified air,
The land and the house
And the room
Of my own.

It will be
A silky stop
Above the rocky crop;
A quiet refuge
That clamors
To be found.

It waits;
It watches the path
I tread,
The fallow past,
Its patience an ancient,
Beating, breathing thing.

I've appointments
There to keep,
Annointments hallowed, deep
In this meeting
And this resting place
For me.


Just a note: This wholly unsatisfactory piece is part of keeping appointments with myself. Good, bad, or indifferent, I will write.  While you're here, take a look at the two posts below this one. Practicing. Practicing.

In a Name and A Poet

The Poetry Bus is on the road with Jeanne Iris at the wheel! Jeanne's challenge, in part, is to ruminate on the origins of our names and see what comes to mind. Check Revolutionary Revelry to read the full challenge and see who else is aboard...and keep reading here to see my (very) weak takes on the prompt. We're among friends, right?


IN A NAME

Adam’s chin ran apple juice.

So what? Would Eden stand

If Eve had offered,

Say, unspellable potato?

Would grief be gone

Were Romeo called Capulet?

Would longing for a kinsman

Not put cankers on that rose?

A name is not a thing;

I am not etymology,

Though, By God, given half a chance,

I would be queen.

The name Karen is of Greek origin, a variant of the original name Catherine and means pure, clean. The name is often associated with queens, of whom Catherine of Alexandria, Katherine of Aragon, and Catherine the Great are most famous.


A POET

More than anything

I want to be,

Eye and heart and ear,

A poet.

I want to see

What others fail

To see;

I want to split

Myself open

And hear.

I want to be

A lake where

Shadows fleet.

I want to seine

Feelings through

My teeth;

I want to drain

Away the spillage

And the dross.

I want to drown

In the world’s

Loss.

I want to be,

More than anything,

A poet.

GRACE

The TFE Poetry Bus is up and running, leaving from Scotland this time, as Rachel Fox takes us on the first leg of the International Tour. Our challenge was to write a poem about one of our favorite words. This poem and the poem that follows, Serendipity, both were inspired by that challenge.

GRACE

Brace yourself

For a fall,

For a sparkling

Sprinkling of golden,

Whirling seeds,

A covering

Of cool geometry,

A misty morning coat

Of quenching rain.

Brace yourself

For a slaking

Of your thirst,

For fulfillment

Of yeasty yearnings

For the stir

Of summer soil,

For the touch

Of someone other,

For the gravid

Nourishment

Of life.

For what are you

But a cup to catch

The wonders

Of the world?

And what is this

But a libation

Poured in offering

To the earth?

So, brace your

Undeserving self

For the feel

Of freely granted

Grace,

Covering you

Like water

From Creation's Sacred Well.

The Blissful Seat

THE BLISSFUL SEAT

daylight

holds its breath

darkness

keep its secrets

still as death

creation blinks

the chuff of angel’s wing

plucks strings of song

from streaming ink

on chords of wind

glory dances in

the dying turn their faces

from the wall

they hear the call

of harp and timbrel

flute and pen

love letters

I want to

move my fingers

over your

smooth grammar

caress your

long vowels

wrap myself

in your

strong syntax

pull your

discourse

to my breast

fold you up

tuck you

in the pocket

of my heart

uncrease you

in the dark

decode you

over and over

again.