Poem of the Day

Here’s one from Robert Herrick, as he’s mentioned in Journey.

The Argument of His Book
By Robert Herrick

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, hock carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.
I write of youth, of love, and have access
By these to sing of cleanly wantonness.
I sing of dews, of rains, and, piece by piece,
Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris.
I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write
How roses first came red and lilies white.
I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
The court of Mab and of the fairy king.
I write of hell; I sing (and ever shall)
Of heaven, and hope to have it after all.

Current Tea: Tangawizi ginger (Kenyan black tea blended with pure ground ginger)

I just started reading Journey by James Michener and one of the characters is an aspiring poet. I’m a fan of this quote: His reverence for the songs of Sidney, Herrick and Waller was so profound that he doubted he could ever add to their flawless statements, but he did want to understand the sorcery whereby they had achieved their miracles. (Part One: Hope). The following poem was excerpted.

Go, Lovely Rose
By Edmund Waller

Go, lovely Rose—
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die—that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

I love the image created in this poem.

Rain
By Charles Bukowski

a symphony orchestra.
there is a thunderstorm,
they are playing a Wagner overture
and the people leave their seats under the trees
and run inside to the pavilion
the women giggling, the men pretending calm,
wet cigarettes being thrown away,
Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the
pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees
and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian
Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,
one man sits alone in the rain
listening. the audience notices him. they turn
and look. the orchestra goes about its
business. the man sits in the night in the rain,
listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn’t there?
he came to hear the
music.

I’m not really in a bad/sad enough mood to post this poem, but my file is running low and I’m in a hurry. I imagine my audience is used to depressing poetry anyway. (heh)

Elegy for the Dying Dog
By Daniel Anderson

Tomorrow he will die.
For now, though, see him drowsing in the shade.
A cardinal cracks the red whip of its flight.
Frail butterflies—the metalmark,
The spicebush swallowtail—are lobbed
Like painted tissue on the air.
The wind, as it might carve on fields of wheat,
Combs over his black coat. I’ve set him there
As water irises prepare
Their gold unfolding in the rain-fresh pond.
Last meal: Steamed rice. Grilled strips of steak.
Last lazy afternoon. Last hour
To watch the clouds drift like meringues,
To watch them blended into tones of peach
Then deepen to the dusky tints of plums.
One last command to heed or disobey,
But it’s not me who’s calling Virgil now,
It’s Death who’s calling, calling, calling,
And he comes.

It’s time we heard from Margaret Atwood again.

The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart
By Margaret Atwood

I do not mean the symbol
of love, a candy shape
to decorate cakes with,
the heart that is supposed
to belong or break;

I mean this lump of muscle
that contracts like a flayed biceps,
purple-blue, with its skin of suet,
its skin of gristle, this isolate,
this caved hermit, unshelled
turtle, this one lungful of blood,
no happy plateful.

All hearts float in their own
deep oceans of no light,
wetblack and glimmering,
their four mouths gulping like fish.
Hearts are said to pound:
this is to be expected, the heart’s
regular struggle against being drowned.

But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitous,
though no twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen,

and at night it is the infra-red
third eye that remains open
while the other two are sleeping
but refuses to say what it has seen.

It is a constant pestering
in my ears, a caught moth, limping drum,
a child’s fist beating
itself against the bedsprings:
I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?

Long ago I gave up singing
to it, it will never be satisfied or lulled.
One night I will say to it:
Heart, be still,
and it will.

Current Tea: Tangawizi ginger (Kenyan black tea blended with pure ground ginger)

For some reason we were talking about turtles tonight, and at least three of us had stories about turtles “escaping”, though we had no idea how. I decided that if I ever have a pet turtle, I’ll name him Houdini. This poem was in my file (after I found it at American Life in Poetry), so it seemed appropriate.

Houdini
By Kay Ryan

Each escape
involved some art,
some hokum, and
at least a brief
incomprehensible
exchange between
the man and metal
during which the
chains were not
so much broken
as he and they
blended. At the
end of each such
mix he had to
extract himself. It
was the hardest
part to get right
routinely: breaking
back into the
same Houdini.

Let’s make it a trio of poems from the Mitford books.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
By John Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Current Tea: Masala chai (Assam Indian black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and vanilla)

Here’s another I discovered through the Mitford books.

The Flower
By George Herbert

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivell’d heart
Could have recover’d greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chime of passing bell.
We say amiss
This or that is:
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

Oh, that I once past changing were,
Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring-shower,
My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline.
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
Where all things burn,
When Thou dost turn,
And the least frown of Thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my only Light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom Thy tempests fall at night.

These are Thy wonders, Lord of Love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

Current Tea: Tangawizi ginger (Kenyan black tea blended with pure ground ginger)

I discovered this poem through the Mitford books I read about a month ago. I suppose it’s been a suitable interval since I last posted something by Wordsworth. (heh)

Characteristic of a Favourite Dog
By William Wordsworth

On his morning rounds the Master
Goes to learn how all things fare;
Searches pasture after pasture,
Sheep and cattle eyes with care;
And, for silence or for talk,
He hath comrades in his walk;
Four dogs, each pair of different breed,
Distinguished two for scent, and two for speed.

See a hare before him started!
—Off they fly in earnest chase;
Every dog is eager-hearted,
All the four are in the race:
And the hare whom they pursue,
Knows from instinct what to do;
Her hope is near: no turn she makes;
But, like an arrow, to the river takes.

Deep the river was, and crusted
Thinly by a one night’s frost;
But the nimble Hare hath trusted
To the ice, and safely crost;
She hath crost, and without heed
All are following at full speed,
When, lo! the ice, so thinly spread,
Breaks—and the greyhound, DART, is overhead!

Better fate have PRINCE and SWALLOW—
See them cleaving to the sport!
MUSIC has no heart to follow,
Little MUSIC, she stops short.
She hath neither wish nor heart,
Hers is now another part:
A loving creature she, and brave!
And fondly strives her struggling friend to save.

From the brink her paws she stretches,
Very hands as you would say!
And afflicting moans she fetches,
As he breaks the ice away.
For herself she hath no fears,—
Him alone she sees and hears,—
Makes efforts with complainings; nor gives o’er
Until her fellow sinks to re-appear no more.

Must. sleep. now.

Slough
John Betjeman

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town—
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.

It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

This is another one I picked up when looking for poets only posted once before.

Candle-Flame
By Helena Coleman

Hast singed thy pretty wings, poor moth?
   Fret not; some moths there be
That wander all the weary night,
   Longing in vain to see
      The light.

Hast felt the scorching flame, poor heart?
   Grieve not; some hearts exist
That know not, grow not to be strong,
   And weep not, having missed
      The song.

I’m back from my trip, but feeling a bit under the weather (a stomach bug perhaps?) and not overly inspired to do anything but lie in bed. I don’t like it when the PotD is on hiatus, though, so here you are.

The Traveller
By John Berryman

They pointed me out on the highway, and they said
‘That man has a curious way of holding his head.’

They pointed me out on the beach; they said ‘That man
Will never become as we are, try as he can.’

They pointed me out at the station, and the guard
Looked at me twice, thrice, thoughtfully & hard.

I took the same train that the others took,
To the same place. Were it not for that look
And those words, we were all of us the same.
I studied merely maps. I tried to name
The effects of motion on the travellers,
I watched the couple I could see, the curse
And blessings of that couple, their destination,
The deception practised on them at the station,
Their courage. When the train stopped and they knew
The end of their journey, I descended too.

I’m leaving town today to visit my parents. As my mother has splendid gardens, I thought I’d share this poem. P.S. PotD might not appear again until after my trip (then again, it may).

The Garden Gate
By Jean L. Connor

You will not forget the pungency
of sage, nor the grace of pink oxalis.

Yield yourself. Let the night come,
for everything, in its turn,

has its going down to darkness.
Slip through the unlatched gate,

there, at dusk, the cottage garden,
fragrant, white, lies

trellised to the moon
and there the hermit thrush

sings, “Oh holy, holy-ah, purity,
purity-ee. Sweetly, sweetly.”

Listen, for without flute,
I sing a credo, too,

and as I sing my “Holy, holy,”
I offer my blind sight to you.

Current Tea: Clarksville cordial (Indian Korakundah Estate black tea with ginger, orange, & peach)

I found this one in my quest for poems by author’s I’d only posted once before.

Aubade
FOR JOSHUA MEHIGAN
By Dick Davis

These are the dawn thoughts of an atheist
Vaguely embarrassed by what looks like grace:
Though colors don’t objectively exist,
And have no form, and occupy no space,

So that the carpet’s sumptuous dyes must make
Bold arabesques untrue as Santa Claus,
And all Matisse’s pigments are a fake
Fobbed off on us by intellectual laws,

And neither Fauve nor Esfahan survive
The deconstructed physics of our seeing–
Still we consent, and actively connive
In their unreal adjustments to our being.

So the thin rhetoric we use to cope
With being so peculiarly here,
Which cannot but be based on baseless hope
And self-constructed images of fear,

Serves to interpret what we are, although
We hesitate to say that what it says
Refers to anything that we could know
Beyond the mind’s perpetual paraphrase…

And sensing that no quiddity remains
Outside the island sorceries of sense
(Queen Circe’s simulacra in our brains
That make and unmake all experience)

Still, still we long for Light’s communion
To pierce and flood our solitary gloom:
Still I am grateful as the rising sun
Picks out the solid colors of my room

Current Tea: Tangawizi ginger (Kenyan black tea blended with pure ground ginger)

Beers is better known for All Quiet Along the Potomac, but I found this poem of hers also.

Which Shall It Be?
By Ethyl Lynn Beers

Which shall it be? Which shall it be?
I look’d at John—John look’d at me
(Dear, patient John, who loves me yet
As well as though my locks were jet);
And when I found that I must speak,
My voice seem’d strangely low and weak:
“Tell me again what Robert said?”
And then I, listening, bent my head.
“This is his letter:

“‘I will give
A house and land while you shall live,
If, in return, from out your seven,
One child to me for aye is given.’”
I look’d at John’s old garments worn,
I thought of all that John had borne
Of poverty, and work, and care,
Which I, though willing, could not share;
I thought of seven mouths to feed,
Of seven little children’s need,
And then of this.

“Come, John,” said I,
“We’ll choose among them as they lie
Asleep”; so, walking hand in hand,
Dear John and I survey’d our band.
First to the cradle lightly stepp’d,
Where Lilian the baby slept,
A glory ‘gainst the pillow white.
Softly the father stooped to lay
His rough hand down in loving way,
When dream or whisper made her stir,
And huskily he said: “Not her!”

We stopped beside the trundle-bed
And one long ray of lamp-light shed
Athwart the boyish faces there,
In sleep so pitiful and fair;
I saw on Jamie’s rough, red cheek,
A tear undried. Ere John could speak,
“He’s but a baby, too,” said I,
And kissed him as we hurried by.

Pale, patient Robbie’s angel face
Still in his sleep bore suffering’s trace;
No, for a thousand crowns, not him,”
He whispered, while our eyes were dim.

Poor Dick! bad Dick! our wayward son,
Turbulent, reckless, idle one—
Could he be spared? “Nay, He who gave,
Bade us befriend him to the grave;
Only a mother’s heart can be
Patient enough for such as he;
And so,” said John, “I would not dare
To send him from her bedside prayer.”

Then stole we softly up above
And knelt by Mary, child of love.
“Perhaps for her ‘twould better be,”
I said to John, Quite silently
He lifted up a curl that lay
Across her cheek in willful way,
And shook his head, “Nay, love, not thee,”
The while my heart beat audibly.

Only one more, our eldest lad,
Trusty and truthful, good and glad—
So like his father. “No, John, no—
I can not, will not let him go.”

And so we wrote in courteous way,
We could not drive one child away,
And afterward, toil lighter seemed,
Thinking of that of which we dreamed;
Happy, in truth, that not one face
We missed from its accustomed place;
Thankful to work for all the seven,
Trusting the rest to One in heaven!

Current Tea: Tangawizi ginger (Kenyan black tea blended with pure ground ginger)

I love finding good poems about other poets/poems!

I Held A Shelley Manuscript
By Gregory Corso

My hands did numb to beauty
as they reached into Death and tightened!

O sovereign was my touch
upon the tan-inks’s fragile page!

Quickly, my eyes moved quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!

I would have taken the page
breathing in the crime!
For no evidence have I wrung from dreams—
yet what triumph is there in private credence?

Often, in some steep ancestral book,
when I find myself entangled with leopard-apples
and torched-skin mushrooms,
my cypressean skein outreaches the recorded age
and I, as though tipping a pitcher of milk,
pour secrecy upon the dying page.

Current Tea: Masala chai (Assam Indian black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and vanilla)

Ah, Eurydice, screwing everything up…

Eurydice
By Francis William Bourdillon

He came to call me back from death
To the bright world above.
I hear him yet with trembling breath
Low calling, “O sweet love!
Come back! The earth is just as fair;
The flowers, the open skies are there;
Come back to life and love!”

Oh! all my heart went out to him,
And the sweet air above.
With happy tears my eyes were dim;
I called him, “O sweet love!
I come, for thou art all to me.
Go forth, and I will follow thee,
Right back to life and love!”

I followed through the cavern black;
I saw the blue above.
Some terror turned me to look back:
I heard him wail, “O love!
What hast thou done! What hast thou done!”
And then I saw no more the sun,
And lost were life and love.

Current Tea: Clarksville cordial (Indian Korakundah Estate black tea with ginger, orange, & peach)

I snaked this one from American Life in Poetry.

Matinee
By Patrick Phillips

After the biopsy,
after the bone scan,
after the consult and the crying,

for a few hours no one could find them,
not even my sister,
because it turns out

they’d gone to the movies.
Something tragic was playing,
something epic,

and so they went to the comedy
with their popcorn
and their cokes,

the old wife whispering everything twice,
the old husband
cupping a palm to his ear,

as the late sun lit up an orchard
behind the strip mall,
and they sat in the dark holding hands.

Current Tea: chai rooibos (rooibos, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla and lemongrass)

Talk about living in your father’s shadow…

Full well I know—my friends—ye look on me
By Hartley Coleridge

Full well I know—my friends—ye look on me
A living specter of my Father dead—
Had I not bourne his name, had I not fed
On him, as one leaf trembling on a tree,
A woeful waste had been my minstrelsy—
Yet have I sung of maidens newly wed
And I have wished that hearts too sharply bled
Should throb with less of pain, and heave more free
By my endeavor. Still alone I sit
Counting each thought as miser counts a penny,
Wishing to spend my pennyworth of wit
On antic wheel of fortune like a zany:
You love me for my sire, to you unknown,
Revere me for his sake, and love me for my own.

Current Tea: Clarksville cordial (Indian Korakundah Estate black tea with ginger, orange, & peach)

It’s Friday, and Fridays usually make me feel free.

Free
By Mary Carolyn Davies

   Over and over
      I tell the sky:
      I am free—I!

   Over and over I tell the sea:
      —I am free!

   Over and over I tell my lover
      I am free, free!
   Over and over.

But when the night comes black and cold,
I who am young, with fear grow old;
And I know, when the world is clear of sound,
I am bound—bound.

Current Tea: (iced) plum passion (cinnamon and plums)

Oh, how I love Naomi Shihab Nye! It never fails to amaze me how she can take a simple and/or unremarkable object/image/etc. and turn it into something beautiful and meaningful. I don’t even use a flour sifter and I love this poem!

Sifter
By Naomi Shihab Nye

When our English teacher gave
our first writing invitation of the year,
Become a kitchen implement
in 2 descriptive paragraphs, I did not think
butcher knife or frying pan,
I thought immediately
of soft flour showering through the little holes
of the sifter and the sifter’s pleasing circular
swishing sound, and wrote it down.
Rhoda became a teaspoon,
Roberto a funnel,
Jim a muffin tin
and Forrest a soup pot.
We read our paragraphs out loud.
Abby was a blender. Everyone laughed
and acted giddy but the more we thought about it,
we were all everything, in the whole kitchen,
drawers and drainers,
singing teapot and grapefruit spoon
with serrated edges, we were all the
empty cup, the tray.
This, said our teacher, is the beauty of metaphor.
It opens doors.
What I could not know then
was how being a sifter
would help me all year long.
When bad days came
I would close my eyes and feel them passing
through the tiny holes.
When good days came
I would try to contain them gently
the way flour remains
in the sifter until you turn the handle.
Time, time. I was a sweet sifter in time
and no one ever knew.

Current Tea: Diva blend (Ceylon black tea with hints of hazelnut and chocolate)

I’ve never actually read Robinson Crusoe, which is a little sad, really…

Robinson Crusoe’s Story
By Charles Edward Carryl

The night was thick and hazy
When the ‘Piccadilly Daisy’
Carried down the crew and captain in the sea;
And I think the water drowned ‘em;
For they never, never found ‘em,
And I know they didn’t come ashore with me.

Oh! ’twas very sad and lonely
When I found myself the only
Population on this cultivated shore;
But I’ve made a little tavern
In a rocky little cavern,
And I sit and watch for people at the door.

I spent no time in looking
For a girl to do my cooking,
As I’m quite a clever hand at making stews;
But I had that fellow Friday,
Just to keep the tavern tidy,
And to put a Sunday polish on my shoes.

I have a little garden
That I’m cultivating lard in,
As the things I eat are rather tough and dry;
For I live on toasted lizards,
Prickly pears, and parrot gizzards,
And I’m really very fond of beetle-pie.

The clothes I had were furry,
And it made me fret and worry
When I found the moths were eating off the hair;
And I had to scrape and sand ‘em,
And I boiled ‘em and I tanned ‘em,
Till I got the fine morocco suit I wear.

I sometimes seek diversion
In a family excursion
With the few domestic animals you see;
And we take along a carrot
As refreshment for the parrot,
And a little can of jungleberry tea.

Then we gather as we travel,
Bits of moss and dirty gravel,
And we chip off little specimens of stone;
And we carry home as prizes
Funny bugs, of handy sizes,
Just to give the day a scientific tone.

If the roads are wet and muddy
We remain at home and study,—
For the Goat is very clever at a sum,—
And the Dog, instead of fighting,
Studies ornamental writing,
While the Cat is taking lessons on the drum.

We retire at eleven,
And we rise again at seven;
And I wish to call attention, as I close,
To the fact that all the scholars
Are correct about their collars,
And particular in turning out their toes.

Current Tea: winter dreams (black tea with chocolate flavoring and peppermint leaves)

I like the variety in this poem. I had to laugh at part 6, because my test for good service in a restaurant is the status of my water glass. I, too, drink a lot of water and I’ve been asked, on more than one occasion, if my glass had a hole in it. If I’m with my father, he will often ask if they will leave the pitcher and sometimes they won’t. Honestly, it would be easier on them if they did…

Water
By Sherman Alexie

1.

I know a woman
who swims naked
in the ocean
no matter the season.

I don’t have a reason
for telling you this (I never
witnessed her early morning
dips into the salt) other than
to let you know that I once found
the thought of her nudity erotic

but now can only imagine
the incredible cold, how I would want
to cover her body with my coat
and tell her how crazy she is
for having so much faith
in two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

2.

While reading a mystery novel (I
don’t remember the title), I

dropped a cup of hot tea
into my lap. Third degree burns

on my thighs, penis, and scrotum. I
still have the scars and once told

a white woman they were the result
of a highly sacred Spokane Indian adulthood ceremony.

3.

I knew a man
who drowned in three inches of water.

Rain collected
in a tire track.

His family and friends accuse me
of making light

of his death, but I insist
on my innocence. Lord, I think

his death is tragic, possibly epic
the first and last act

of a reservation opera, and I wish
I could use his name here, make him

remembered, but I am forbidden
from doing so by tribal laws

that are more important than any poem.
But I want to give him a name

that means what I say, and I so I name him
Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Noah, Adam.

4.

Boo tells me, “Whenever I feel depressed or lonely
I drink a glass of water and immediately feel better.”

5.

In the unlikely event of a water landing
you can use your seat cushion as a floatation device.

I worry about this.

I wonder if the puny cushion can possibly support
my weight. I am a large man. In the unlikely event

of a water landing, you can use your seat cushion
as a floatation device. Of course, we don’t crash.
We land safely. We always land safely. And Ha! Ha!
the flight attendant tells the disembarking passengers
to drive safely away from the airport because driving is
so much more dangerous, statistically speaking, than flying.

I want to slap her across the mouth, statistically speaking.

In the unlikely event of a water landing, you can use
your seat cushion as a floatation device. I am suddenly afraid
of gravity so I take my seat cushion off the plane. I steal
the damn thing and run through the airport, chased
by an ever increasing number of security people,
men and women, so I’m glad this airport has progressed
beyond an antiquated notion of gender roles. But wait,

I have no time to be liberal, I have to run fast, so I do run fast
with that seat cushion pressed tightly against my chest.
I cannot run fast enough in such an awkward position
as I am a large man with large hands. I cannot easily hide.
I cannot blend into the crowd. I cannot duck behind
the counter of the Burger King and ask for your order, your order, your order.

Oh, in the event of a water landing, you can use your seat cushion
as a floatation device, and here I am, running, and praying as I run,
every step shouting Lord, Lord, Lord, every other step whispering

amen, amen, amen.

6.

At the restaurant, I ask the waiter to leave the pitcher of water
because I drink lots of water.

I can’t do that, he says.

Why not? I ask.

Because we never leave the pitcher, he says.

Not once? I ask.

Never, he says, have we ever left a whole pitcher of water, not once
in the entire history of this restaurant. It is impossible for us to do so.
It is inconceivable for us to even consider such a thing. Who knows
what would happen if we set such a precedent?

7.

When I was seven, I took swim lessons at the YMCA
from three beautiful teenagers who all seemed like women to me.

They hugged me when they saw me waiting in line
to see JAWS at the Fox Theater in downtown Spokane.

Where are those girls now? Somewhere, they are being women.

Do they remember teaching me how to swim? Do they
recognize my face when they pick up the local newspaper
or see my photograph on the back of my latest book?

Oh, strange, strange ego.

Here, I’ve decided I want them to love me from afar. I want them
to regret their whole lives because they were once sixteen year old
swimmers who never stopped to passionately kiss
the seven year old me, as I floated
from the deep end of the pool back to the shallow.

8.

My brother, the big one, says, “It ain’t water
unless it’s got some Kool-aid in it.”

9.

My wife, the Hidatsa Indian, grew up in Southern California
with a swimming pool. Wow!

Her father, the trickster, called relatives back home
in North Dakota. Called them in late December
when trees were exploding in the high plains cold.
Called them and said, He held the phone up to the air, toward
the empty pool, because it was too cold to swim in December, even
in Southern California, but the North Dakota Indians didn’t know
any better, so they were jealous and happy at the same time.

My wife, just a child then of five or ten or eighteen years old,
heard the slurred laughter of her father, the drunk, and
maybe he would laugh and get off the phone and be charming
or maybe he would be the cruel bastard, but there was no way
of knowing until he got off the phone, so she’d sit in her room
with a glass of water on the windowsill, oh, she’d be praying
to that glass of water, oh, she’d be praying
like everything was two parts broken heart and one part hope.

Current Tea: ginseng chai (a zesty blend of American ginseng, ginger, cardamom, pepper, and green tea)

A poem about music for my music-loving friend, Heather.

Music
By Charles Baudelaire

Music doth uplift me like a sea
Towards my planet pale,
Then through dark fogs or heaven’s infinity
I lift my wandering sail.

With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee,
And through the cordage wail,
I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me
Beneath her sombre veil.

I feel the tremblings of all passions known
To ships before the breeze;
Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown

I pass the abysmal seas
That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair
Of my despair!

Current Tea: Masala chai (Assam Indian black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and vanilla)

I spent some time yesterday bolstering my poetry file with poems by poets whose work I’d only shared once.

Gradual Clearing
By Amy Clampitt

Late in the day the fog
wrung itself out like a sponge
in glades of rain,
sieving the half-invisible
cove with speartips;
then, in a lifting
of wisps and scarves, of smoke-rings
from about the islands, disclosing
what had been wavering
fishnet plissé as a smoothness
of peau-de-soie or just-ironed
percale, with a tatting
of foam out where the rocks are,
the sheened no-color of it,
the bandings of platinum
and magnesium suffusing,
minute by minute, with clandestine
rose and violet, with opaline
nuance of milkweed, a texture
not to be spoken of above a whisper,
began, all along the horizon,
gradually to unseal
like the lip of a cave
or of a cavernous,
single, pearl-
engendering seashell.

I discovered a poem by Kim Addonizio in Santa Fe a couple years ago, but I’d never sought out more until now. I love the imagery in this one.

The Sound
By Kim Addonizio

Marc says the suffering that we don’t see
still makes a sort of sound—a subtle, soft
noise, nothing like the cries of screams that we
might think of—more the slight scrape of a hat doffed
by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back
to let a lovely woman pass, her dress
just brushing his coat. Or else it’s like a crack
in an old foundation, slowly widening, the stress
and slippage going on unnoticed by
the family upstairs, the daughter leaving
for a date, her mother’s resigned sigh
when she sees her. It’s like the heaving
of a stone into a lake, before it drops.
It’s shy, it’s barely there. It never stops.

Somehow I don’t think this story will end well…

The Old Witch in the Copse
By Frances Cornford

I am a Witch, and a kind old Witch,
There’s many a one knows that—
Alone I live in my little dark house
With Pillycock, my cat.
A girl came running through the night,
When all the winds blew free:—
“O mother, change a young man’s heart
That will not look on me.
O mother, brew a magic mead
To stir his heart so cold.”
“Just as you will, my dear,” said I;
“And I thank you for your gold.”
So here am I in the wattled copse
Where all the twigs are brown,
To find what I need to brew my mead
As the dark of night comes down.
Primroses in my old hands,
Sweet to smell and young,
And violets blue that spring in the grass
Wherever the larks have sung.
With celandines as heavenly crowns
Yellowy-gold and bright; All of these,
O all of these,
Shall bring her Love’s delight.
But orchids growing snakey green
Speckled dark with blood,
And fallen leaves that curled and shrank
And rotted in the mud,
With blistering nettles burning harsh
And blinding thorns above;
All of these, O all of these
Shall bring the pains of Love.
Shall bring the pains of Love, my Puss,
That cease not night or day,
The bitter rage, nought can assuage
Till it bleeds the heart away.
Pillycock mine, my hands are full
My pot is on the fire.
Purr, my pet, this fool shall get
Her fool’s desire.

After a number of blissful, sunny days, we’re having a whopper of a thunderstorm. That always puts me in a bad mood, so I thought I’d share this one as a reminder of summer.

Summer
By John Clare

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,
For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,
And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,
And love is burning diamonds in my true lover’s breast;
She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair,
And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair;
I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest,
And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast.

The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of May,
The merry bee is trampling the pinky threads all day,
And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest
In the whitethorn bush where I will lean upon my lover’s breast;
I’ll lean upon her breast and I’ll whisper in her ear
That I cannot get a wink o’sleep for thinking of my dear;
I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away
Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day.

Current Tea: Tangawizi ginger (Kenyan black tea blended with pure ground ginger)

Is it bad that I laughed at this?

Henry King
WHO CHEWED BITS OF STRING, AND WAS EARLY CUT OFF IN DREADFUL AGONIES
By Hilaire Belloc

The Chief Defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of String.
At last he swallowed some which tied
Itself in ugly Knots inside.

Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
‘There is no Cure for this Disease.

Henry will very soon be dead.’
His parents stood about his Bed
Lamenting his Untimely Death,
When Henry, with his Latest Breath,

Cried ‘Oh, my Friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires…’
With that, the Wretched Child expires.

Current Tea: Nutcracker tea (black tea blended with apple bits, orange peels, currants, cinnamon, almond flakes, cloves, and safflowers)

I like this poem because I’ve definitely felt lazy before, and (somewhat ironically) it made me feel better about myself.

Blues
By Elizabeth Alexander

I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, ’til
my face is creased and swollen,
’til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father’s money.

To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.
To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.
There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.

I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V’s of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.

Current Tea: Lemon myrtle (iced)

Henry Alford falls in the category of only being featured once before in the PotD. I found this one at Sonnet Central, so of course I had to go find more info on Epimenides.

Epimenides
By Henry Alford

He went into the woods a laughing boy;
Each flower was in his heart; the happy bird
Flitting across the morning sun, or heard
From wayside thicket, was to him a joy:
The water springs that in their moist employ
Leaped from the banks, with many an inward word
Spoke to his soul, and every leaf that stirred
Found notice from his quickly-glancing eye.

There wondrous sleep fell on him: many a year
His lids were closed: youth left him, and he woke
A careful noter of men’s ways: of clear
And lofty spirit: sages, when he spoke,
Forgot their systems; and the worldly-wise
Shrunk from the gaze of truth with baffled eyes.