Poem of the Day

Too tired to think straight. Luckily, I have another one from my poetry pal.

Not Only Fire
By Wendy Brown-Báez

How did I emerge from your rib
the very one I slept against next
to your heartbeat, curled and certain.

How did you unfold me
like a paper flower on its long stem
petal by petal, bent back

into deepening color with each
press, until at last the surprised
mouth that did not know until this

moment how much it longed to
drink from yours, the fiery tongue
that tweaks my nerves into flame

those long rolled r’s filling
my senses with liquid joy.
How did you emerge out from my

small gesture of sympathy, the tears
I cupped to my heart like a string of
pearls, mine alone, out from the loss

of the oyster. How he moistened the grit
day by day in their underwater depths,
how I learned the way

to pry him open.

I’m reading Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry, about his life as a bookman, and he told a story about a woman who had 400 letters from Ezra Pound. So I consulted The Voice That is Great Within Us and here we are…

Salutation
By Ezra Pound

O generation of the thoroughly smug
   and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
   and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
   and do not even own clothing.

Here’s another one from The Voice That is Great Within Us, which is remaining next to my laptop and bailing me out continually.

The Moon
By Robert Creeley

Earlier in the evening the moon
was clear to the east,
over the snow of the yard
and fields—a lovely

bright clarity and perfect
roundness, isolate,
riding as they say the
black sky. Then we went

about our businesses of the
evening, eating supper, talking,
watching television, then
going to bed, making love,

and then to sleep. But before
we did I asked her to look
out the window at the moon
now straight up, so that

she bent her head and looked
sharply up, to see it.
Through the night it must
have shone on, in that

fact of things—another
moon, another night—a
full moon in the winter’s
space, a white loneliness.

I came awake to the blue
white light in the darkness,
and felt as if someone
were there, waiting, alone.

My poetry pal sent this. For some reason I thought it was The Secret of Books and was confused until about the fourth stanza when I thought to look at the title again. (HA!) You can tell where my mind goes… The poem is from Laux’s The Book of Men.

The Secret of Backs
By Dorianne Laux

Heels of the shoes worn down, each
in its own way, sending signals to the spine.

The back of the knee as it folds and unfolds.
In winter the creases of American-made jeans:
blue denim seams worried to white threads.

And in summer, in spring, beneath the hems
of skirts, Bermudas, old bathing suit elastic,
the pleating and un-pleating of parchment skin.

And the dear, dear rears. Such variety! Such
choice in how to cover or reveal: belts looped high
or slung so low you can’t help but think of plumbers.

And the small of the back: dimpled or taut, spiny or not,
tattooed, butterflied, rosed, winged, whorled. Maybe
still pink from the needle and the ink. And shoulders,

broad or rolled, poking through braids, dreads, frothy
waterfalls of uncut hair, exposed to rain, snow, white
stars of dandruff, unbrushed flecks on a blue-black coat.

And the spiral near the top of the head—
peek of scalp, exquisite galaxy—as if the first breach
swirled each firmament away from that startled center.

Ah, but the best are the bald or the neatly shorn, revealing
the flanged, sun-flared, flamboyant backs of ears: secret
as the undersides of leaves, the flipside of flower petals.

And oh, the oh my nape of the neck. The up-swept oh my
nape of the neck. I could walk behind anyone and fall in love.

Don’t stop. Don’t turn around.

I read this one in The Voice That is Great Within Us, edited by Hayden Carruth.

Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit
By Wallace Stevens

If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the rooms and on the stair,

Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato’s ghost

Or Aristotle’s skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;

As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.

It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.

It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.

If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolness,

A vermilioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.

I found this one at The Poetry Foundation. I’m looking at my sweet dog, who neither sings nor listens with discernment. Despite this, she is the cutest dog in the world and I utterly adore her. P.S. She’s especially cute when she’s letting out little dog snores, as she is now. Tired pup…

Dog Music
By Paul Zimmer

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.
My big dog sang with me so purely,
puckering her ruffled lips into an O,
beginning with small, swallowing sounds
like Coltrane musing, then rising to power
and resonance, gulping air to continue—
her passion and sense of flawless form—
singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.
We joined in many fine songs—”Stardust,”
“Naima,” “The Trout,” “My Rosary,” “Perdido.”
She was a great master and died young,
leaving me with unrelieved grief,
her talents known to only a few.

Now I have a small dog who does not sing,
but listens with discernment, requiring
skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.
I sing her name and words of love
andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.
Sometimes she is so moved she turns
to place a paw across her snout,
closes her eyes, sighing like a girl
I held and danced with years ago.

But I am a pretender to dog music.
The true strains rise only from
the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,
these melodies best when the moon is up,
listeners and singers together or
apart, beyond friendship and anger,
far from any human imposter—
ballads of long nights lifting
to starlight, songs of bones, turds,
conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,
things settled long before our birth.

We read Special Orders by Edward Hirsch for my poetry discussion group, which met at my house yesterday. There were mixed feelings in the group about this poem. I really liked it because it made me remember being dropped off at our local library when I was a child. I could have spent days in there, but I’m pretty sure my mother restricted it to hours. Those were the days. Fat chance I’d leave a 7-year-old alone in a public library these days…

I just started reading Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry. Shockingly, he was not exposed to books as a young child and in fact, his family’s house contained no books that he can remember.

Branch Library
By Edward Hirsch

I wish I could find that skinny, long-beaked boy
who perched in the branches of the old branch library.

He spent the Sabbath flying between the wobbly stacks
and the flimsy wooden tables on the second floor,

pecking at nuts, nesting in broken spines, scratching
notes under his own corner patch of sky.

I’d give anything to find that birdy boy again
bursting out into the dusky blue afternoon

with his satchel of scrawls and scribbles,
radiating heat, singing with joy.

My poetry pal sent me Red Suitcase for my birthday, and I revisited it (like an old friend) this morning.

Words When We Need Them
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Before this early moment,
another, ripe with rain,
the scent of its own full shape.

Each day the rooster
we have never seen
raises the first greeting
and darkness which holds us
in its loose pocket all night
sets us down.

Now we walk,
waking up rooms,
switching on lights.
Into the breath,
wordless but ripe
with all possible words,
messages not yet gathered
or sent.

Morning looms,
more friend than
the best friend.

We could still say.

I called in “snow” today. The blizzard was just starting when I got up at 5am, so I went back to bed. It stopped around 4pm and I spent a little over an hour clearing my driveway and deck. When I discovered today’s poem at The Poetry Foundation, it was obviously meant to be posted today. Of course, my days of hovering over the radio listening for closures are no more, but I did have two cups of tea.

Snow Day
By Billy Collins

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with—some will be delighted to hear—

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

Happy Birthday to me.

You loved me not at all, but let it go
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

You loved me not at all, but let it go;
I loved you more than life, but let it be.
As the more injured party, this being so,
The hour’s amenities are all to me—
The choice of weapons; and I gravely choose
To let weapons tarnish where they lie;
And spend the night in eloquent abuse
Of senators and popes and such small fry
And meet the morning standing, and at odds
With heaven and earth and hell and any fool
Who calls his soul his own, and all the gods,
And all the children getting dressed for school…
And you will leave me, and I shall entomb
What’s cold by then in an adjoining room.

A poetry pal gave me The Voice That Is Great Within Us, edited by Hayden Carruth. I found this one at random. The last stanza is amazing.

Welcome the Wrath
By Stanley Kunitz

Poor john, who joined in make of wrong
And guessed no guile, dare I complain?—
Of practice to endure the heart unstrung,
The waiting at the door too long,
Winter, wages, and self-disdain.

Endure? That is the dialect of love,
The greenhorn of the est, my late companion,
No straggling crossfoot half-alive
Back to his country, with crazy sleeve
Flopping, like a shot pinion.

Let him endure. I’ll not: not warp my vision
To square with odds; not scrape; not scamp my fiber,
Though pushed by spoilers of the nerves’ precision,
Bothered by caterpillars of suspicion,
Hired by speculators in my gut and labor.

Wrath has come down from the hills to enlist
Me surely in his brindled generation,
The race of the tiger; come down at last
Has wrath to build a bonfire of my breast
With one wet match and all man’s desolation.

This has been a terrible week so far (it’s only Tuesday - wah!) and I’m rather cranky. I opened up What Have You Lost? and this was what I found.

Avalanche
By David B. Prather

This is the snow belt.
This is the snow that falls
fretful as the flicker
of our eyes when we dream.
This is were people ache
along the road in their vehicles,
cursing each and every member
of the road crew
by name. This is the pin oak
in the front lawn shivering
all night, and sometimes
all day. This is the habit
of watching clouds
throughout the afternoon,
hoping it’ll hold off
till we make it home.
This is the trickle of water
in the bathroom and kitchen
to keep the pipes from freezing.
This is the shucking sound
of neighbors out with their snow
shovels, people so thick
with clothing, and still
so cold. This is day after day
of school cancellations, and hoping
for once it would never end.
This is the old man
who sees angels dying
with he weather, and the old woman
who keeps putting him back to bed.
This is the joy of stillness,
and the sadness of solitude.
This is the snow belt.
This is the belief
that everything has a reason,
even the tiny pain
that creeps through our shoes
and into our toes.

Today’s poem comes from The Poetry Foundation. Until the end, it’s a perfect description of last Friday, the second of two days with high temperatures in the 50s. The next day the temp plummeted below freezing, and has yet to rise. Plus, I had to shovel my driveway this morning. Check back in two months to see if my winter is over yet.

Late February
By Ted Kooser

The first warm day,
and by mid-afternoon
the snow is no more
than a washing
strewn over the yards,
the bedding rolled in knots
and leaking water,
the white shirts lying
under the evergreens.
Through the heaviest drifts
rise autumn’s fallen
bicycles, small carnivals
of paint and chrome,
the Octopus
and Tilt-A-Whirl
beginning to turn
in the sun. Now children,
stiffened by winter
and dressed, somehow,
like old men, mutter
and bend to the work
of building dams.
But such a spring is brief;
by five o’clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,
the wet dogs barking
at nothing. Far off
across the cornfields
staked for streets and sewers,
the body of a farmer
missing since fall
will show up
in his garden tomorrow,
as unexpected
as a tulip.

Happened across this one online. This morning (when it was still dark), the moon was gorgeous, two days past full.

Song for Ishtar
By Denise Levertov

The moon is a sow
and grunts in my throat
Her great shining shines through me
so the mud of my hollow gleams
and breaks in silver bubbles

She is a sow
and I a pig and a poet

When she opens her white
lips to devour me I bite back
and laughter rocks the moon

In the black of desire
we rock and grunt, grunt and
shine

Not exactly subject matter to which I can relate, but I was surprised by the contrast of the lovely language describing the rather unpoetic scene.

Playboy
By Richard Wilbur

High on his stockroom ladder like a dunce
The stock-boy sits, and studies like a sage
The subject matter of one glossy page,
As lost in curves as Archimedes once.

Sometimes, without a glance, he feeds himself.
The left hand, like a mother-bird in flight,
Brings him a sandwich for a sidelong bite,
And then returns it to a dusty shelf.

What so engrosses him? The wild decor
Of this pink-papered alcove into which
A naked girl has stumbled, with its rich
Welter of pelts and pillows on the floor,

Amidst which, kneeling in a supple pose,
She lifts a goblet in her farther hand,
As if about to toast a flower-stand
Above which hovers an exploding rose

Fired from a long-necked crystal vase that rests
Upon a tasseled and vermilion cloth
One taste of which would shrivel up a moth?
Or is he pondering her perfect breasts?

Nothing escapes him of her body’s grace
Or of her floodlit skin, so sleek and warm
And yet so strangely like a uniform,
But what now grips his fancy is her face,

And how the cunning picture holds her still
At just that smiling instant when her soul,
Grown sweetly faint, and swept beyond control,
Consents to his inexorable will.

After somewhat jokingly saying that my sweet Penny should act as a muse for a poetry pal looking for a subject, I was rewarded with today’s poem. Written within the last 24 hours, it’s already received accolades.

Cute. Penny simply inspires everybody she touches.
—Carina’s co-worker

That Penny “doggerel” is awesome. What a hoot!
—Carina’s sister

A Doggerel for Penny
By Ann Putnam

She rules the roost at “Penny” Lane.
(Carina’s learned to hop it.)
And if you start to scratch her ears,
don’t ever plan to stop it.

With her nose she’ll nudge
’til you pet, pet, pet.
Piggy and Ella
she’ll quite forget.

But you won’t mind
as you scratch, scratch, scratch.
Her affection
is quite a catch!!!!

Here’s another one from What have you lost?

Ghazal (For William Stafford)
By David Keefe

I will follow my master and in the soft quiet
become a morning poet.

Listening to the world, all its questions
between today and tomorrow.

For a match starts a fire, a shout to a mountain
sometimes starts an avalanche.

The grey line of the road ahead embraces us;
yet we can still be lost in our own life.

When many people offer to be your guide,
perhaps it is because your father couldn’t reach you.

I’m feeling old and crotchety and gloomy today.

Youth and Calm
By Matthew Arnold

‘Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There’s nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it hath the hope to come,
One day, to harbour in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath—
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell:
Calm’s not life’s crown, though calm is well.
‘Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But ’tis not what our youth desires.

My dear Oscar taught me a new word today!

Hélas
By Oscar Wilde

To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance—
And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?

My lovely aunt and uncle gave me What have you lost?, poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. I absolutely love her poetry and I’m quite interested to read what she chooses to read (and/or share).

What Great Grief Has Made the Empress Mute
NY Times Headline
By June Jordan

Because it was raining outside the palace
Because there was no rain in her vicinity

Because people kept asking her questions
Because nobody ever asked her anything

Because marriage robbed her of her mother
Because she lost her daughters to the same tradition

Because her son laughed when she opened her mouth
Because he never delighted in anything she said

Because romance carried the rose inside a fist
Because she hungered for the fragrance of the rose

Because the jewels of her life did not belong to her
Because the glow of gold and silk disguised her soul

Because nothing she could say could change the melted music of her space
Because the privilege of her misery was something she could not disgrace

Because no one could imagine reasons for her grief
Because her grief required no imagination

Because it was raining outside the palace
Because there was no rain in her vicinity

                                                   —dedicated to The Empress Michiko
                                                                   and to Janice Mirikitani

I’m going out of town for the weekend. I’ll try to post the PotD, but it may not happen.

Travel
By Robert Louis Stevenson

I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow;—
Where below another sky
Parrot islands anchored lie,
And, watched by cockatoos and goats,
Lonely Crusoes building boats;—
Where in sunshine reaching out
Eastern cities, miles about,
Are with mosque and minaret
Among sandy gardens set,
And the rich goods from near and far
Hang for sale in the bazaar;—
Where the Great Wall round China goes,
And on one side the desert blows,
And with the voice and bell and drum,
Cities on the other hum;—
Where are forests hot as fire,
Wide as England, tall as a spire,
Full of apes and cocoa-nuts
And the negro hunters’ huts;—
Where the knotty crocodile
Lies and blinks in the Nile,
And the red flamingo flies
Hunting fish before his eyes;—
Where in jungles near and far,
Man-devouring tigers are,
Lying close and giving ear
Lest the hunt be drawing near,
Or a comer-by be seen
Swinging in the palanquin;—
Where among the desert sands
Some deserted city stands,
All its children, sweep and prince,
Grown to manhood ages since,
Not a foot in street or house,
Not a stir of child or mouse,
And when kindly falls the night,
In all the town no spark of light.
There I’ll come when I’m a man
With a camel caravan;
Light a fire in the gloom
Of some dusty dining-room;
See the pictures on the walls,
Heroes fights and festivals;
And in a corner find the toys
Of the old Egyptian boys.

I found this poem at the William Stafford Archives and I haven’t spent much time with it yet. On first reading it strikes me as the kind of poem I could revisit and discover new things every time.

The Thought Machine
By William Stafford

Its little eye stares “On” in its forehead
by its maker’s name. They say it anticipates
its memories and holds “Eureka!” tight
in little wheels so sure that all steel
hardens when incorporated in it.
The only Please it knows is, Be Correct;
but it can tolerate mistakes.

You tell your troubles to it, how your letters
all came back with no acknowledgment
and all you wanted was assurance all was known.
It tugs its collar; its little eye glows on.
You tell about the woman at the corner
ringing the bell to bring Jesus and his weather.
That is long ago.

You tell of the hill that never attracted the deer;
you think it frightened them, a fear place,
where you always had to go to listen—it was
for your town and for the world; it was for…—
and you are back there, listening again:
the little eye goes kind; the forehead
has the noble look that hill had.

And the world whirls into vision; in Tibet
a prayer wheel turns for you; an Eskimo
by such a northern fire lives that you live so,
touching only important things;
you see that all machines belong;
the deer are safe;
a letter has reached home.

This one is from Diving into the Wreck.

Translations
By Adrienne Rich

You show me the poems of some woman
my age, or younger
translated from your language

Certain words occur: enemy, oven, sorrow
enough to let me know
she’s a woman of my time

obsessed

with Love, our subject:
we’ve trained it like ivy to our walls
baked it like bread in our ovens
worn it like lead on our ankles
watched it through binoculars as if
it were a helicopter
bringing food to our famine
or the satellite
of a hostile power

I begin to see that woman
doing things: stirring rice
ironing a skirt
typing a manuscript till dawn

trying to make a call
from a phonebooth

The phone rings unanswered
in a man’s bedroom
she hears him telling someone else
Never mind. She’ll get tired.
hears him telling her story to her sister
who becomes her enemy
and will in her own time
light her own way to sorrow

ignorant of the fact this way of grief
is shared, unnecessary
and political

This one comes from American Life in Poetry. Whether or not it was meant this way, I take it very tongue-in-cheek. I don’t own an mp3 player, nor do I particularly care for earbuds. Though I would love to have music all the time, I can’t help but think about how much I would miss (good and bad). Also, people who use them as an excuse to be totally unaware of their surroundings (and often rude and/or inconsiderate) really annoy me.

Earbud
By Bill Holm

Earbud—a tiny marble sheathed in foam
to wear like an interior earring so you
can enjoy private noises wherever you go,
protected from any sudden silence.
Only check your batteries, then copy
a thousand secret songs and stories
on the tiny pod you carry in your pocket.
You are safe now from other noises made
by other people, other machines, by chance,
noises you have not chosen as your own.
To get your attention, I touch your arm
to show you the tornado or the polar bear.
Sometimes I catch you humming or talking to the air
as if to a shrunken lover waiting in your ear.

Another one shared by my poetry pal.

Redaction
By Carmen Giménez Smith

We make dogma out of letter writing: the apocryphal story
of Lincoln who wrote angry letters he never sent. We wait for letters
for days and days. Someone tells me I’ll write you a letter
and I feel he’s saying you’re different than anyone else.
Distance’s buzz gets louder and louder. It gets to be a blackest hole.
I want the letter about the time we cross the avenue, and you reach
for my hand without looking—I am afraid I’m not what you want.
We float down the street as if in the curve of a pod
and the starry black is like the inside of a secret. We’re drunk.
The streetlight exposes us which becomes the deepest
horror. Yes. End the letter like that, so it becomes authorless.
Then the letter might give off secrets: acid imbalances that detonate.

I went looking for a football poem since it’s Super Bowl Sunday, and I found this. Not what I had in mind, but I liked it enough to post it anyway. If you’re interested, you can listen courtesy of Garrison Keillor. Go Pack!

Poetics
By Howard Nemerov

You know the old story Ann Landers tells
About the housewife in her basement doing the wash?
She’s wearing her nightie, and she thinks, “Well, hell,
I might’s well put this in as well,” and then
Being dripped on by a leaky pipe puts on
Her son’s football helmet; whereupon
The meter reader happens to walk through
and “Lady,” he gravely says, “I sure hope your team wins.”

A story many times told in many ways,
The set of random accidents redeemed
By one more accident, as though chaos
Were the order that was before creation came.
That is the way things happen in the world:
A joke, a disappointment satisfied,
As we walk through doing our daily round,
Reading the meter, making things add up.

It’s snowing again. I thought perhaps if I found a poetic depiction of snow, I’d be less depressed. It didn’t work, but I’ll post it anyway. Bah!

The Snow-Storm
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

In honor of NOT having to shovel this morning (thank goodness, I can barely move)… a poem about snow!

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
By Emily Dickinson

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?

Seriously, I need to get some of Mark Strand’s collections!

The Remains
By Mark Strand

I empty myself of the names of others.
I empty my pockets, I empty my shoes and leave them beside
the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family
album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

Here’s one sent by my poetry buddy. Now I’m going to bed and hoping I don’t wake up tomorrow morning feeling crippled from shoveling snow.

Closer
By Wendy Brown-Báez

Because the night is sweet
and you are close, I lean into
the caress of your voice, I lean
my heart right against
yours

Perfect symmetry
of one plus one
is no more than
the beat of my heart
in you, the pulse
of your rhythm
in me.

I would have chosen this one for the title alone.

An Obsessive Combination of Onotological Inscape, Trickery and Love
By Anne Sexton

Busy, with an idea for a code, I write
signals hurrying from left to right,
or right to left, by obscure routes,
for my own reasons; taking a word like writes
down tiers of tries until its secret rites
make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS
can amazingly and funnily become STAR
and right to left that small star
is mine, for my own liking, to stare
its five lucky pins inside out, to store
forever kindly, as if it were a star
I touched and a miracle I really wrote.