Poem of the Day

My mother made my sisters and I take swimming lessons and we hated them. My downfall was the breaststroke. Still can’t do it. I did learn how to dive at swimming lessons. At our pool, I always just kind of leaned forward until I fell in. However, I couldn’t do that at lessons because the pool had a gutter running around the inside edge and I was afraid my feet would hit it. So I learned to push off and actually dive in the water. On the last day we were allowed to jump off the diving boards and I really wanted to jump off the high dive. Sadly, I was too much of a chicken and never did it. I can’t remember if I climbed to the top and weenied out, or if I just never went up there. I’ve not really regretted it, though.

Red Cross Lessons at City Park Pool
By Melody Lacina

My mother never learned to swim, so we did,
my sisters and me, every summer
for two weeks. It was always early morning,
always cloudy. At the gate
someone dressed in something warm droned
name after name, getting most of them wrong.
They made us take showers
without heat. They made us wait
huddled on the deck, blue-lipped,
until our teachers said
get in. My oldest sister was
a natural, even took lifesaving and
synchronized swimming. She learned to sink
to music, one leg up like a periscope.
My other sister had a steady stroke.
I was afraid of the deep end
the summer I got Connie. Connie stood
dry on the lip of the pool, mean towel
cinched at her waist. Dark glasses shrouded
her eyes that could have been looking anywhere.
They were looking for mistakes.
I dreamed of the ten-foot maker, the diving boards
like knives. I said I was sick.
My mother said nothing. But next day
she tugged me from bed, determined.
Connie was still by the deep end.
To here, she said. The pool was a mouth
that could swallow me. I pressed
myself down the ladder, pried my fingers
from the rungs. Would my arms forget
everything? Connie watched me swim
past what I couldn’t do. To here.

Two of my friends are Lorca fans and I can’t recall which one of them shared this with me. At any rate, I’m glad they both encouraged me to read Lorca’s work!

Night of Sleepless Love
By Federico García Lorca

We two, the night ahead, the full moon looming:
I began to weep while you laughed.
Your scorn became a god, and my complaints
were little doves and moments in a chain.

We two, the night ahead, crystal of pain,
and you wept over deep and distant things.
My sorrow was a clump of agony
resting on your fragile heart of sand.

The dawn drew us together on the bed.
Our mouths were waiting near the frozen spout
of blood that spilled forth in an endless flow.

The sun came through the shuttered balcony
and the coral of life opened its branch,
and settled here upon my shrouded heart.

I just received this in a comment on another poem of Kavanagh’s. I appreciate the suggestion and thought I’d share the poem.

On Raglan Road
By Patrick Kavanagh

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay—
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that’s known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay—
When the angel woos the clay he’d lose his wings at the dawn of day.

This is another poem sent to me by a friend. While I don’t necessarily feel the way the speaker does, I like the way she describes her feelings.

Graveyard at Hurd’s Gulch
By Dorianne Laux

His grave is strewn with litter again,
crumpled napkins, a plastic spoon, white
styrofoam cup tipped on its side, bright
half-moon of lipstick on the rim.
I want to scold her for the mess she’s left,
the flattened grass and squashed grapes,
but I’ve seen her walking toward the trees,
her hollow body receding, her shadow
following behind. I’m the intruder,
come not to mourn a specific body
but to rest under a tree, my finger tracing
the rows of glowing marble,
the cloud-covered hips of the hills.
I always take the same spot,
next to the sunken stone that says MOTHER,
the carved dates with the little dash between them,
a brief, deep cut, like a metaphor for life.
Does she whisper, I wonder, to the one
she loves, or simply eat and sleep, content
for an hour above the bed of his bones?
I think she brings him oranges and secrets,
her day’s torn and intricate lace.
I have no one on this hill to dine with.
I’m blessed. Everyone I love is still alive.
I know there is no God, no afterlife,
but there is this peace, the granite angel
with the moss-covered wings whose face
I have grown to love, her sad smile
like that sadness we feel after sex,
those few delirious hours when we needed nothing
but breath and flesh, after we’ve flown back
into ourselves, our imperfect heavy bodies,
just before that terrible hunger returns.

Here’s another one sent by a friend. I think it’s a great poem, and I’m especially impressed with the use of the word sidereal (spoken like a true word nerd, I know).

Dance
By Kim Addonizio

When you are finally, magically, able to clone
yourself into several identical women,

so that each one can move toward a man
who’s been waiting for his turn

to come around for the first time, or maybe again,
won’t you be happy then,

all of you together in a lustrous ballroom,
each woman wearing her distinguishing number,

the judges scoring everyone the same, music spilling
from the bandstand, the men thrilled

to be near you, each one whispering
a different pet name, each one polishing

with his black shoes a perfect circle of floor
while he raises you up, holding your

hips in his hands, gazing at you with his brown
or mottled green eyes, looking down

with his startling blue ones, taking you into a corner
then spinning you out toward the center

where the light from the mirrorball
splinters over your skin, sidereal

as your sequined dress, and you feel
as complete as you’ll ever feel,

moving through all your true and beautiful lives
while the real one pales.

I’m rather surprised that I haven’t posted this before. I was on a huge Civil War kick a while ago (that abated, but didn’t die). I’m currently listening to the audio recording of Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation (and loving it!), so I was inspired to share Howe’s very well known poem. This is the version published in Atlantic Monthly in 1862, according to this site. (I vastly prefer this version to John Brown’s Body.)

Battle Hymn of the Republic
By Julia Ward Howe

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
          His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
          His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
          Since God is marching on.”

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
          Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
          While God is marching on.

I just finished reading Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus, and it took me a long time (due to lengthiness, not lack of interest). Throughout the book, the main character refers to and quotes poems from RLS’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, which was a staple for me while I was growing up (my mother has a beautifully illustrated edition). This poem was included at the end. I will admit that I don’t remember it from my childhood.

The Dumb Soldier
By Robert Louis Stevenson

When the grass was closely mown,
Walking on the lawn alone,
In the turf a hole I found
And hid a soldier underground.

Spring and daisies came apace;
Grasses hid my hiding-place;
Grasses run like a green sea
O’er the lawn up to my knee.

Under grass alone he lies,
Looking up with leaden eyes,
Scarlet coat and pointed gun,
To the stars and to the sun.

When the grass is ripe like grain,
When the scythe is stoned again,
When the lawn is shaven clear,
Then my hole shall reappear.

I shall find him, never fear,
I shall find my grenadier;
But, for all that’s gone and come,
I shall find my soldier dumb.

He has lived, a little thing,
In the grassy woods of spring;
Done, if he could tell me true,
Just as I should like to do.

He has seen the starry hours
And the springing of the flowers;
And the fairy things that pass
In the forests of the grass.

In the silence he has heard
Talking bee and ladybird,
And the butterfly has flown
O’er him as he lay alone.

Not a word will he disclose,
Not a word of all he knows.
I must lay him on the shelf,
And make up the tale myself.

This one was shared by a friend.

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Boundaries
By Linda Pastan

In Monet’s Water Lilies,
willows dissolve into
flowers dissolve into water,
and form becomes a dream
in purples and blues
without scent or story.
Consider the death of boundaries,
the way sight dissolves
the moment just before sleep
overtakes us. The way
a man can disappear
inside a woman. I remember
a day of ruffling waters
when we sailed west
in your creaky boat.
We steered for the horizon—
that penciled-in line between
ocean and sky, then watched
as it receded ahead of us.
The night my mother died
there were cells in her body
that didn’t notice. For a while
the moons of her nails kept rising,
the hair kept growing from the apex
of her widow’s peak.
Now by a barbed-wire fence
that divides two countries,
the invisible roots of an old tree
spread their living network
underground, in all directions.

My parents left today, after a week and a half visit. This time my father: painted his workbench (which he constructed on a previous visit) and pegboard (for all the tools), studied the operation of and installed a new filter for the Aprilaire system, hung some artwork, plowed/shoveled much snow, and assisted my mother with dog training (my dog). He’s my favorite man of the house.

Man of the House
By David Wagoner

My father, looking for trouble, would find it
On his hands and knees by hammering on walls
Between the joists or drilling through baseboards
Or crawling into the attic where insulation
Lay under the leaks like sleeping-bags.

It would be something simple as a rule
To be ingenious for, in overalls;
And he would kneel beside it, pouring sweat
Down his red cheeks, glad of a useful day
With something wrong unknown to the landlord.

At those odd times when everything seemed to work
All right, suspiciously all right like silence
in concrete shelters, he’d test whatever hung
Over our heads: such afternoons meant ladders,
Nails in the mouth, flashing and shaking roofs.

In safety shoes going down basement stairs,
He’d flick his rewired rearrangement of lights
And chase all shadows into the coalbin
Where they could watch him, blinking at his glare.
If shadows hadn’t worked, he would have made them.

With hands turning to horn against the stone
He’d think on all fours, hunch as if to drink
If his cold chisel broke the cold foundation
And brought dark water pulsing out of clay,
Wrenching at rows of pipes like his cage-bars.

He made them creak in sockets and give way,
But rammed them back, putting his house in order.
Moonlight or rain, after the evening paper,
His mouth lay open under the perfect plaster
To catch the first sweet drop, but none came down.

Here’s a short one that made me laugh.

With Reservations
By Naomi Stroud Simmons

He preens his plumes while strutting proud,
determined to impress her.
He is the darling of the crowd
that dashing fancy dresser.
But she can always change his tune
and minor key his song.
She will concede he hung the moon,
but says he hung it wrong.

I’ve really liked the poems of Charles Simic’s that I’ve read. I like that he says so much with a relative sparseness of language. I’m too tired to say anything more coherent than that. Enjoy!

The Inner Man
By Charles Simic

It isn’t the body
That’s a stranger.
It’s someone else.

We poke the same
Ugly mug
At the world.
When I scratch
He scratches too.

There are women
Who claim to have held him.
A dog follows me about.
It might be his.

If I’m quiet, he’s quieter.
So I forget him.
Yet, as I bend down
To tie my shoelaces,
He’s standing up.

We caste a single shadow.
Whose shadow?

I’d like to say:
“He was in the beginning
And he’ll be in the end,”
But one can’t be sure.

At night
As I sit
Shuffling the cards of our silence,
I say to him:

“Though you utter
Every one of my words,
You are a stranger.
It’s time you spoke.”

This one is from I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko. I love the idea of learning to read being akin to unlocking a secret. It’s so hard to remember not being able to read and I can’t say that I have memories of learning, so it’s nice to read this take on it.

Teaching Myself to Read
By Karen Fiser

From the first only saying
made things real. I climbed up word
for word the cliff face of all
four-year-old sorrows, reading
the signs in a heavy sky:
PABST. JAX. COKE. The marvel
was that these big neon signs
(unlike the small signs of home
trouble brewing) could be read.
I’d drag my father’s heavy
books down to the floor and hold
Last Man Off Wake Island close
to my eyes for hours. Inching
my finger across magic
black rows, I longed to unlock
the secret syntax and just
read myself out of this world.

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo at work lately and endless discussions of what “the company” needs to do to be “top of the industry”. However, all I see is petty politics and lack of communication/cooperation. It’s frustrating and I certainly view my current situation as a “job” and not a “vocation”, though I continue to do my “job” to the best of my ability. That has nothing to do with this poem, really. I think that we could all take a lesson from the last line to gain some perspective on life.

Vocation
By William Stafford

This dream the world is having about itself
includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,
a groove in the grass my father showed us all
one day while meadowlarks were trying to tell
something better about to happen.

I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,
and there a girl who belonged wherever she was.
But then my mother called us back to the car:
she was afraid; she always blamed the place,
the time, anything my father planned.

Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain,
the meadowlarks, the sky, the world’s whole dream
remain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,
helpless, both of them part of me:
“Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.”

In an effort not to tank on my good PotD record (since I started posting again), here’s a quick one before I fall into bed. (I thought it was appropriately named.)

Before Sleep
By Moshe Dor (translated by Barbara Goldberg)

            1.

Before sleep Baba arranges extra
blankets on her feet. “The weight,”
she explains, “will keep me
from flying.” Walnut trees
hold still in the garden.

            2.

Baba sleeps, her cheek pressed
to the pillow, her hair flowing.
In the garden walnut trees
turn silvery.

            3.

In silence I shall steal
to her bedside, dismantle
the burdens of her life, then turn
my back and tiptoe away. Baba
is flying, above walnut trees, above
wandering souls. She soars
higher than milky ways and choirs
of seraphim. When she returns,
her hair will be heavy
with the dust of stars.

We’ve been seeing quite a bit of wildlife (goldfinches, juncos, nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals, blue jays, a hawk, and two deer) around here today, so I thought I’d post this one, which I’ve had in my file for a while. It’s from Piercy’s collection The Moon Is Always Female.

The perpetual migration
By Marge Piercy

How do we know where we are going?
How do we know where we are headed
till we in fact or hope or hunch
arrive? You can criticize,
the comfortable say, you don’t know
what you want. Ah, but we do.

We have swung in the green verandas
of the jungle trees. We have squatted
on cloud-grey granite hillsides where
every leaf drips. We have crossed
badlands where the sun is sharp as flint.
We have paddled into the tall dark sea
in canoes. We always knew.

Peace, plenty, the gentle wallow
of intimacy, a bit of Saturday night
and not too much Monday morning,
a chance to choose, a chance to grow,
the power to say no and yes, pretties
and dignity, an occasional jolt of truth.

The human brain, wrinkled slug, knows
like a computer, like a violinist, like
a bloodhound, like a frog. We remember
backwards a little and sometimes forwards,
but mostly we think in the ebbing circles
a rock makes on the water.

The salmon hurtling upstream seeks
the taste of the waters of its birth
but the seabird on its four-thousand-mile
trek follows charts mapped on its genes.
The brightness, the angle, the sighting
of the stars shines in the brain luring
till the inner constellation matches the outer.

The stark black rocks, the island beaches
of waveworn pebbles where it will winter
look right to it. Months after it set
forth it says, home at last, and settles.
Even the pigeon beating its short whistling
wings knows the magnetic tug of arrival.

In my spine a tidal clock tilts and drips
and the moon pulls blood from my womb.
Driven as a migrating falcon, I can be blown
off course yet if I turn back it feels
wrong. Navigating by chart and chance
and passion I will know the shape
of the mountains of freedom, I will know.

People just seem to love writing about Emily Dickinson. I can think of at least two poems I’ve posted before on the subject. I’m still snickering over this one, though.

Emily Dickinson’s To-Do List
Sum-Sum-Summertime
By Andrea Carlisle

Monday
Figure out what to wear—white dress?
Put hair in bun
Bake gingerbread for Sue
Peer out window at passersby
Write poem
Hide poem

Tuesday
White dress? Off-white dress?
Feed cats
Chat with Lavinia
Work in garden
Letter to T.W.H.

Wednesday
White dress or what?
Eavesdrop on visitors from behind door
Write poem
Hide poem

Thursday
Try on new white dress
Gardening—watch out for narrow fellows in grass!
Gingerbread, cakes, treats
Poems: Write and hide them

Friday
Embroider sash for white dress
Write poetry
Water flowers on windowsill
Hide everything

I have to hand it to Sylvia Plath. If I didn’t know she was the author, I’d assume a poem entitled Tulips would actually be about flowers/nature/happiness/etc. Now I’m a tiny bit afraid of tulips…

Tulips
By Sylvia Plath

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free—
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddling, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

This poem is so incredibly cute. I got it from a delightful anthology edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko called I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You. There are quite a few more from that collection that I’ve added to my file.

How to Hug Your Three-Year-Old Daughter
By Paul B. Janeczko

Be prepared
to be quick.

The hug may come
when you expect it least:
you’re carrying a cup of hot coffee
   answering her call sleepy eyed
      lifting bread from the oven.

The hug may come
around your knees
before she darts off
or from behind
as you stoop
to fish the remote
from beneath the couch.

Don’t be afraid
to ask for one.
Get down on your knees.
Spread your arms
to improve her aim.
Close your eyes.
Let her eager abruptness
startle you.
Grin.
Remember:
tomorrow is prompt.

Be prepared
to be quick.

Have I mentioned I love Naomi Shihab Nye? Once or twice, perhaps… Anyway, I love this poem because it imbues a simple subject (a pencil) with more significance than I would have thought possible. Also, as a nerdy chemist, I prefer writing in pencil when I’m doing calculations because I often have to make adjustments and/or corrections. (Not quite as romantic as Nye’s reasoning, I’m sure.)

Always Bring a Pencil
By Naomi Shihab Nye

There will not be a test.
It does not have to be
a Number 2 pencil.

But there will be certain things—
the quiet flush of waves,
ripe scent of fish,
smooth ripple of the wind’s second name—
that prefer to be written about
in pencil.

It gives them more room
to move around.

Today, short and (not so) sweet.

You fit into me
By Margaret Atwood

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

Here’s another reader-suggested poem. I’m going to try and devote some time today to bolstering up my file, but first I must plow/shovel the 6″ of snow we got last night and bake a cheesecake. Suddenly, I wish I could just sit around reading poetry all day…

Tension
By Billy Collins

Never use the word suddenly just to create tension.
-Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias
outside in the garden,
and suddenly I was in the study
looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,
you planted the last petunia in the flat,
and I suddenly closed the dictionary
now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

A moment later, we found ourselves
standing suddenly in the kitchen
where you suddenly opened a can of cat food
and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.

I observed a window of leafy activity
and beyond that, a bird perched on the edge
of the stone birdbath
when suddenly you announced you were leaving

to pick up a few things at the market
and I stunned you by impulsively
pointing out that we were getting low on butter
and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.

Who could tell what the next moment would hold?
another drip from the faucet?
another little spasm of the second hand?
Would the painting of a bowl of pears continue

to hang on the wall from that nail?
Would the heavy anthologies remain on the shelves?
Would the stove hold its position?
Suddenly, it was anyone’s guess.

The sun rose ever higher in the sky.
The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map
when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch
where I closed my eyes and without any warning

began to picture the Andes, of all places,
and a path that led over the mountains to another country
with strange customs and eye-catching hats,
each one suddenly fringed with colorful little tassels.

I wouldn’t say that my life is entirely under control yet, but I do really miss the PotD and I have read some poetry lately and got some for Christmas, so hopefully I can stay on the ball. We’ll start with a reader-suggested poem for today.

Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour
By Wallace Stevens

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.