David Wagoner: After the Point of No Return

David Wagoner

After that moment when you've lost all reason
for going back where you started, when going ahead
is no longer a Yes or No, but a matter of fact,
you'll need to weigh, on the one hand, what will seem,
on the other, almost nothing against something
slightly more than nothing and must choose
again and again, at points of fewer and fewer
chances to guess, when and which way to turn.

                                                                 

Stephen Crane: Black Riders XXVIII

XXVIII


"Truth," said a traveller,
"Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
"Often have I been to it,
"Even to its highest tower,
"From whence the world looks black."

"Truth," said a traveller,
"Is a breath, a wind,
"A shadow, a phantom;
"Long have I pursued it,
"But never have I touched
"The hem of its garment."

And I believed the second traveller;
For truth was to me
A breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom,
And never had I touched
The hem of its garment.

               --Stephen Crane,
                   from Black Riders and Other Lines

Rae Armantrout: Advent

(Image Credit: Charles Bernstein/PennSound)

Advent

In front of the craft shop,
a small nativity,
mother, baby, sheep
made of white
and blue balloons.

        *

Sky
        god
                girl.

Pick out the one
that doesn't belong.

          *

Some thing

close to nothing
                         flat
from which,

fatherless,
everything has come.

    --Rae Armantrout

Thomas Hardy: The Oxen

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

--Thomas Hardy

Chaucer: We goon wrong ful often, trewely

(Chaucer, from the Ellesmere Manuscript)

We witen nat what thing we preyen heere;
We faren as he that dronke is as a mous.
A dronke man woot wel he hath an hous,
But he noot which the righte wey is thider,
And to a dronke man the wey is slider.
And certes, in this world so faren we;
We seken faste after felicitee,
But we goon wrong ful often, trewely.

Surely we do not know exactly what we pray for; we behave like a man as drunk as a mouse. A drunk man knows very well that he has a home, but he does not know the right way to it; in addition, the road is slippery for a drunk man. Certainly, in the world we behave similarly. We try hard for happiness, but we very often go wrong.

--Chaucer, “The Knight’s Tale.” His Middle English verse, followed by R. M. Lumiansky’s prose modern English translation

Christian Wiman: I Sing Insomnia

I sing insomnia

                          to the minor devils

prowling alleys

                         of my mind

loneliness’s lipsticked leer

                                            fear

no fix can ease

                         envy sipping bile

I make a lullaby

                           to make myself

into a sleeper

                      of the faith

awake

             my little while

alive

         without a why

                    --Christian Wiman, from Every Riven Thing

Ada Limon: What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use

If you like poetry and are not subscribed to Ted Kooser's column you are missing a weekly treat. Reprinted with permission.

American Life in Poetry: Column 445

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE 

Sit for an hour in any national airport and you’ll see how each of us differs from others in a million ways, and of course that includes not only our physical appearances but our perceptions and opinions. Here’s a poem by Ada Limón, who lives in Kentucky, about difference and the difficulty of resolution. 

What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use 

All these great barns out here in the outskirts,

black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass.

They look so beautifully abandoned, even in use.

You say they look like arks after the sea’s

dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,

and I think of that walk in the valley where

J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,

No. I believe in this connection we all have

to nature, to each other, to the universe.

And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,

low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,

and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,

woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.

So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,

its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name

though we knew they were really just clouds—

disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

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American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Ada Limón, whose most recent book of poems is Sharks in the Rivers, Milkweed Editions, 2010. Poem reprinted from Poecology, Issue 1, 2011, by permission of Ada Limón and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

The Skeptic

The Skeptic

this poem wanted

to be written

l   o   n   g   h   a   n   d

do you see what i did there

making my poem self-aware

as if things become

more believable

by little tricks

of consciousness

i don’t believe

my own tricks

no i’m not truly skeptical

since i have an inflexible

belief in doubt

--------------------------

dVerse MeetingtheBar night, hosted by poet Brian Miller. Brian has us paring down to essentials, crafting stories of 55 words, no more, no less. I suppose mine might be more anti-story than story, but it goes that way sometimes. Check out all the great poets posting tonight, and maybe write a poem of your own to share. Happy Birthday, Brian!

It Is Enough

Anna got me thinking about willing, wishing, answering the call in her great post on dVerse Meeting the Bar. I put a few lines together, but nothing seemed to fit the prompt as well as this older poem, slightly reworked. My apologies to the few who may have already read this one. 

It Is Enough

I heard my share

of sermons, serving

time on straight-backed

pews, begrudging each

moment lost

                     to eternity.

My elders sat willingly           

in expectation

of heavenly reward, glad

to leave all worldly affairs,

glad to rest weary bones

if only for a moment.

They meant well.

I see that now, now

that my own bones

need rest, now that

I hope beyond all hope

to be free in the divine.

But we will never

decipher the mystery, try

as we might. Will we?

All we have from him

we already know,

written bold:

do not kill,

do not steal,

do unto others.

We stumble over what

we do not have: the

in-between-the-lines,

shrouded, incomprehensible,

written in sand, faint

markings that lead us

to belief or despair. I believe

it is enough to want

to believe. It is enough.

Maureen Ash: Church Basement

Ted Kooser is not only a great poet, he is also a great judge of poetry. This is one of the finest poems I've read in a while. Copied with permission from ALiP.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to American Life in Poetry. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 424

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

It’s a difficult task to accurately imagine one’s self back into childhood. Maybe we can get the physical details right, but it’s very hard to recapture the innocence and wonder. Maureen Ash, who lives in Wisconsin, gets it right in this poem.




Church Basement

The church knelt heavy

above us as we attended Sunday School,

circled by age group and hunkered

on little wood folding chairs

where we gave our nickels, said

our verses, heard the stories, sang

the solid, swinging songs.

It could have been God above

in the pews, His restless love sifting

with dust from the joists. We little

seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting

to grow toward the light.

Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside,

an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp-

edged shadows back to their buildings, or

how the winter air knifed

after the dreamy basement.

Maybe the day we learned whatever

would have kept me believing

I was just watching light

poke from the high, small window

and tilt to the floor where I could make it

a gold strap on my shoe, wrap

my ankle, embrace

any part of me.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Maureen Ash. Reprinted by permission of Maureen Ash. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.

Two Lines from Wiman's "One Time"

(Image credit: http://www.canyondechelly.net/)

To believe is to believe you have been torn
from the abyss, yet stand waveringly on its rim.

                                              --Christian Wiman, "One Time" from Every Riven Thing

More Emerson: There Are Doubts

It stands in [the Sceptic's] mind that our life in the world is not of quite so easy interpretations as churches and schoolbooks say. He does not wish to take ground against these benevolences, to play the part of the devil's attorney, and blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him. But he says, There are doubts.

--R. W. Emerson, from "Montaigne; or, the Sceptic"

The Answer

For Three Word Wednesday. Prompt words calm, rattle, know.
Also submitted to dVerse--better late than never. 

The Answer

Long nights,

restless turning, too many

rattling thoughts.

I rise from my bed

wrapped in blackness;

the dark house holds

no comfort. Out

of doors, I walk the

uncultivated field, footsteps

muffled by the long

damp grass, the silent

ground calmly keeping

all her secrets.

I keep walking

onto the new-plowed soil,

the moonlight refracted by

millions of dew-mist prisms.

Coming to the old oak standing

in our field God knows

how long, I kneel

and lay my head

against that ancient bark.

My heart longs

to say something meaningful,

to find words

that will bear witness

to the soul’s awareness

that it is not alone

in this stumbling journey.

I look into the moonlit sky

and know that everything

has already been said.

Enough

Three Word Wednesday, prompt words affair, expectation, free. Mixed feelings about this one.

Enough

I heard my share

of sermons, serving

time on straight-backed

pews, begrudging each

moment lost

                  to eternity.

My elders sat willingly

in expectation

of heavenly reward, glad

to leave all worldly affairs,

glad to rest weary

bones if only for

a moment.

They meant well.

I see that now, now

that my own bones

need rest, now that

I hope beyond all hope

to be free 

in the divine.

But we will never

decipher the mystery, try

as we might. Will we?

All we have from him

we already know,

written bold. Do

not kill, do

not steal, do

unto others.

We stumble over what

we do not have: the

in-between-the-lines,

shrouded, incomprehensible,

written in sand, faint

markings that lead us

to belief or despair. I believe

it is enough to want

to believe. It is enough.

Mountain Music

For Three Word Wednesday, prompt words are beat, pressure, and substance. Somewhat fragmented, but headed the right direction, I think.

Mountain Music

The music, freed

from wood and string

by work-worn fingers,

followed the rising moon

up over the hills,

beat and melody

borrowed from ancient times.

I always loved the

slower tunes, sung

in mournful yearning

for lost love

or Christ’s return,

pure feeling unconstrained

by marketability,

the pressure to succeed

reaching no further than

the neighbor’s heart.

Even now, so many years

gone and the substance

of life irrevocably changed,

I go out to see

the rising moon,

remembering

calloused hands

and The Savior is a-callin’.

The Worsening

For Three Word Wednesday, prompt words persuasive, loud, riches. Felt like rhyming this week.

The Worsening

Black shapes against the sky
Hover, descend.
They do not make a cry
But with the blackness blend
And raise a solid wall
That will not shake or fall.

In circular silence
I try to find a door
That isn’t there. Bent
Numb fingers explore
Until persuasive despair
Calmly buzzes in my ear.

Will these dead bones live?
To sing again? I recall
Some melody through the sieve
Of my memory, small
Spent riches of sound
A dirge for the burial ground.

Yet I am not alone—
Child-like belief makes
A chink in the dark stone.
The loud creak of hell’s gates,
Startling as I spring
Free of the worsening.

Handfuls

This is pretty late for a Three Word Wednesday post, but I've been sick this week (really, I've been off-and-on sick since Thanksgiving), so I'm thinking through a haze of generic Nyquil. Anyway, here you go, such as it is. I think I can tighten it up later. Three words were abrasive, loss, handful.

Handfuls

Abrasive days have ground
me into the dust, yet somehow
sharp edges remain.

If God would explain
this toiling path, supposed divine
plan to make heaven mine—

I’ve no ready answers. I can
only guess, or stiffly stand
and shake defiant fists, or make

peace with my lot, take
whatever comes, gain or loss,
as handfuls of grace.