Spring

5

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
               fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
         beauty                  how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
         (but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
              thou answerest
them only with
                                spring)

E. E. Cummings

A Letter in October

Dawn comes later and later now,  
and I, who only a month ago
could sit with coffee every morning  
watching the light walk down the hill  
to the edge of the pond and place  
a doe there, shyly drinking,

then see the light step out upon  
the water, sowing reflections  
to either side—a garden
of trees that grew as if by magic—
now see no more than my face,  
mirrored by darkness, pale and odd,

startled by time. While I slept,  
night in its thick winter jacket  
bridled the doe with a twist
of wet leaves and led her away,
then brought its black horse with harness  
that creaked like a cricket, and turned

the water garden under. I woke,  
and at the waiting window found  
the curtains open to my open face;  
beyond me, darkness. And I,
who only wished to keep looking out,  
must now keep looking in.

Ted Kooser

Red Earth, and Pouring Rain

What He Said

What could my mother be

to yours? What kin is my father

to yours anyway? And how

Did you and I meet ever?

But in love

our hearts have mingled

as red earth and pouring rain.

 

Cempulappeyanirar

 

From the Tamil anthology "Kuruntokai"

Translated by A.K.Ramanujan, in"The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology".

Cempulappeyanirar wrote about 2000 years ago,  a poet of the Sangam age.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangam_literature

That emptiness between us

Given

And I carried to that emptiness
between us, the birds
that had been calling out
all night. I carried an old
bicycle, a warm meal,
some time to talk.

I would have brought
them to you sooner
but was afraid your own
hopelessness would keep you
crouched there. If you spring up,
let it not be against me

but like a weed or a
fountain. I grant you
the hard spine of your
childhood. I grant you
the frowning arc of this morning.
If I could I would grant you

a bright throat and even
brighter eyes, this whole hill
of olive trees, its
calmness of purpose.

Let me not forget
ever what I owe you.

I have loved the love
you felt for those gardens
and I would grant you
the always steadying
presence of seeds.

I bring to that trouble
between us a bell that might
blur into air. I bring the woods
and a sense of what lives there.

Like you, I turn to sunlight for
answers. Like you, I am
not sure where it has gone.

Joanna Klink

On the tidal mud, just before sunset

Daybreak

On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfish
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it as slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.

All at once they stopped,
and, as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity, they sank down
into the mud, faded down
into it and lay still, and by the time
pink of sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.

Galway Kinnell

Literature

"....individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and view the world from their perspective."

Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer

"Deep reading" is vigorous exercise for the brain and increases our real-life capacity for empathy

http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/03/why-we-should-read-literature/

Alive in both worlds at once

Wine Tasting

I think I detect cracked leather.
I'm pretty sure I smell the cherries
from a Shirley Temple my father bought me

in 1959, in a bar in Orlando, Florida,
and the chlorine from my mother's bathing cap.
And last winter's kisses, like salt on black ice,

like the moon slung away from the earth.
When Li Po drank wine, the moon dove
in the river, and he staggered after.

Probably he tasted laughter.
When my friend Susan drinks
she cries because she's Irish

and childless. I'd like to taste,
one more time, the rain that arrived
one afternoon and fell just short

of where I stood, so I leaned my face in,
alive in both worlds at once,
knowing it would end and not caring.

Kim Addonizio

Balance

Machines

Dearest, note how these two are alike;
This harpsichord pavane by Purcell
And the racer's twelve-speed bike.

The machinery of grace is always simple.
This chrome trapezoid, one wheel connected
To another of concentric gears,
Which Ptolemy dreamt of and Schwinn perfected,
Is gone. The cyclist, not the cycle, steers.
And in the playing, Purcell's chords are played away.

So this talk, or touch if I were there,
Should work its effortless gadgetry of love,
Like Dante's heaven, and melt into the air.

If it doesn't, of course, I've fallen. So much is chance,
So much agility, desire, and feverish care,
As bicyclists and harpsicordists prove

Who only by moving can balance,
Only by balancing move.

Michael Donaghy

The screened porch at dawn, the Milky Way, any comets in our yard

Fifty-Fifty

You can have the grackle whistling blackly
from the feeder as it tosses seed,

if I can have the red-tailed hawk perched
imperious as an eagle on the high branch.

You can have the brown shed, the field mice
hiding under the mower, the wasp’s nest on the door,

if I can have the house of the dead oak,
its hollowed center and feather-lined cave.

You can have the deck at midnight, the possum
vacuuming the yard in its white prowl,

if I can have the yard of wild dreaming, pesky
raccoons, and the roaming, occasional bear.

You can have the whole house, window to window,
roof to soffits to hardwood floors,

if I can have the screened porch at dawn,
the Milky Way, any comets in our yard.

Patricia Clark

Wintering

"Prior to his arrival Jean conducted a workshop on his marvellous poem ‘Wintering’ (below). I loved its internal music straight away, all those flinty ‘i’ sounds in the first stanza (‘picture’, ‘him’, ‘flitting’, ‘splints’, ‘rib’, ‘kindle’) setting up a spine of sound that pulses through the entire poem like returning waves of grief (‘listen’, ‘kitchen’, ‘calling’, ‘him’, ‘fizz’, ‘mizzle’, ‘things’, ‘winter’)."

This is exactly how I relate to poetry, I listen to its "internal music".  Thank you, Anthony Wilson.

Wintering

If I close my eyes I can picture him
flitting the hedgerow for splints
or a rib of wood to kindle the fire,

or reading the snow for whatever
it was that came out of the trees
and circled the house in the night;

if I listen I can hear him out
in the kitchen, scudding potatoes,
calling the cat in; if I breathe

I can smell the ghost of a fire,
a burning of leaves that would fizz
in the mizzle before snow.

There is in this house now
a stillness of cat fur and boxes,
of photographs, paperbacks, waste—

paper baskets; a lifetime
of things that I’ve come here
to winter or to burn.

There is in this world one snow fall.
Everything else is just weather.

Matthew Hollis, from Ground Water (Bloodaxe, 2004)

http://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2013/08/18/lifesaving-poems-matthew-holliss-wintering/

Hidden

So the unwanting soul
Sees what's hidden,

and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Mystery of all mysteries
The door to the hidden.

Tao Te Ching

Page 174, ‘Finding Beauty in a Broken World’, Terry Tempest Williams

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Beauty-Broken-World-Vintage/dp/0375725199

Bridge

"You know how hard I tried
to make a bridge, to make a tunnel
between the human and divine in both of us
between spirit and animal.
that I failed is beside the point."

Independence

Independence Day. Independence. Which so many are sceptical about. While so many are giving up their lives for what we take for granted. Remembering the old man at the Tibetan Refugee Camp.

Home

http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/2012/09/home.html

There’s no duck behind this couch

Spike Milligan: Goon, Loon, Manic Depressive Comic Genius

"His comic influences were Jacques Tati, WC Fields ("the voice of insincerity") and the Marx brothers.

"An example. Groucho was singing a love song to Margaret Dupont. She was a very tall woman. ‘I love you my dear I always will.’ Suddenly there’s a knock on the door. She says: ‘Duck behind the couch.’ So he went behind the couch and the husband came in, and Groucho stood up and said: ‘There’s no duck behind this couch.’

http://alternativestovalium.blogspot.in/2006/02/spike-milligan-goon-loon-manic.html

And may it be endlessly Saturday

The Other Life
i.m. Emily Riall

I want to wake up in a house
where the ghosts have recently departed,

persuaded to leave by prayer
infused with wordless singing,

its roomy silences punctuated
by waves and far-off bells.

I want to visit a village,
its market infecting the alleyways

with tables groaning with cheeses,
gossip and outdoor coffee,

where they call me my childhood nickname;
may I know and taste the air there,

a whiff of salt and apples
a backnote of conker and dog;

and may it be endlessly Saturday,
the bonfires yet to start drifting towards the blue.

Anthony Wilson

http://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/poems/