Judson Mitcham: Before Prayer

(Judson Mitcham)

She curled up next to me on the Trailways,
clutching her cigarettes and change.
The light framed her face, while the bus
idled under a streetlight in Ringgold,
till it groaned on into the night,
headed south down the two lane.

I think of her often, this woman
who appeared in the aisle like a nightmare
somewhere in Tennessee, bits of weed
in wild hair matted on one side.
She lurched through the vacant bus
toward the one seat where, by accident,
she could touch someone.

When the light left her face, it came,
this ache I have felt all my life.
Whatever is within us, it is not enough.

                   --Judson Mitcham

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.

                                                                 

Tu Fu: Standing Alone

Empty skies. And beyond, one hawk.
Between river banks, two white gulls
Drift and flutter. Fit for an easy kill,
To and fro, they follow contentment.

Dew shrouds grasses. Spiderwebs are still
Not gathered in. The purpose driving
Heaven become human now, I stand where
Uncounted sorrows begin beginning alone.

          --Tu Fu, trans. David Hinton

Walt Whitman: Thought (Of persons arrived at high positions)

(Walt Whitman: May 31, 1819-March 26, 1892)

Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth,
   scholarships, and the like;
(To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from
   them, except as it results to their bodies and souls,
So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked,
And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks
   himself or herself,
And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of
   the rotten excrement of maggots,
And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the
   true realities of life, and go toward false realities,
And often to me they are alive after what custom has served
   them, but nothing more,
And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked
   sonnambules walking the dusk.)

                          --Walt Whitman

William Wordsworth: The Strength of Love

There is a comfort in the strength of love;
'Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would break the heart.

     --William Wordsworth, from "Michael"

Walt Whitman: Thought (Of Equality)

(Credit: Ohio Wesleyan U., Bayley Collection)

Thought

Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others
     the same chances and rights as myself--
     as if it were not indispensable to my own
     rights that others possess the same.

                        --Walt Whitman

Stephen Crane: War Is Kind XXI

XXI

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
"A sense of obligation."

--Stephen Crane, from War Is Kind

Amy Fleury: When at Last I Join

(Amy Fleury)

A few weeks ago I read a poem in Ted Kooser's column. I liked the poem so much I looked up the poet, Amy Fleury, and bought her latest book, Sympathetic Magic. Every single poem is incredibly good. Seriously. I don't remember the last time I read a collection of poetry that didn't have even one weak poem. Here is one of my favorites:

When at Last I Join

When at last I join the democracy of dirt,
            a tussock earthed over and grass healed,
I'll gladly conspire in my own diminishment.

            Let a pink peony bloom from my chest
and may it be visited by a charm of bees,
            who will then carry the talcum of pollen

and nectar of clover to the grove where they hive.
            Let the honey they make be broken
from comb, and release from its golden hold,

            onto some animal tongue, my soul.

                                 --Amy Fleury

If I Could Have Any Wish

There would be no blazing colors,

     no deafening fireworks,

no boisterous milling crowds

     of pleasure-seekers.

Only you and me

     in a darkened room.

Only the electric touch

     of your body and mine.

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Congrats to Abhra Pal on the occassion of his first dVerse hosting! Abhra, using the joyous Hindu festival of Holi as inspiration, invites us to consider the combination of color and love. Contrarian that I am, I went colorless. Kind of. 

Walt Whitman: The Most Spiritual Poems

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they
    are to be the most spiritual poems,
And I will make the poems
    of my body and of mortality,
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems
    of my soul and of immmortality.

              --Walt Whitman,
                    from "Starting from Paumanok"

Galway Kinnell: The Olive Wood Fire

The Olive Wood Fire

When Fergus woke crying at night

I would carry him from his crib

to the rocking chair and sit holding him

before the fire of thousand-year-old olive wood.

Sometimes, for reasons I never knew

and he has forgotten, even after his bottle the big tears

would keep on rolling down his big cheeks

—the left cheek always more brilliant than the right—

and we would sit, some nights for hours, rocking

in the light eking itself out of the ancient wood,

and hold each other against the darkness,

his close behind and far away in the future,

mine I imagined all around.

One such time, fallen half-asleep myself,

I thought I heard a scream

—a flier crying out in horror

as he dropped fire on he didn’t know what or whom,

or else a child thus set aflame—

and sat up alert. The olive wood fire

had burned low. In my arms lay Fergus,

fast asleep, left cheek glowing, God.

                           --Galway Kinnell

Maurice Manning: A Contemplation of the Celestial World

(Image from The Poetry Foundation)

A Contemplation of the Celestial World

Whoever had the thought to render bear fat
and burn it in a lamp was touched a bit,
or bored, or left alone to ponder light
too long in some dank cabin: bear fat pops
and stinks and brings no cheer to our condition.
My brother Squire would burn such lamps to read
the Scriptures: eyelids smudged, his head immersed
in smoke; his Bible, like a gutted beast,
spread open to Leviticus; his lips:
for prayer. Then I would go outside to muse
upon the many things which need no light,
the chiefest being tears and copulation,
then others, like remembering glad days
or moments which occur without regard
for stars or lamps—my thought: what matters most
is borne of darkness then makes its own pure light.

              --Maurice Manning

Robert Hass: New Year's Morning

(Image Credit: Chronicle/Chris Stewart)

   New Year’s morning—

  everything is in blossom!

     I feel about average.

   -- Robert Hass, from 

       "After the Gentle Poet 

        Kobayashi Issa"

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

Wendell Berry: Landscape

(Fishing Alone. Wu Zhen, from here)

Landscape

Winding out of the hills,
the small stream enters the river.
It began coming down
long before these trees arrived.
In his boat the fisherman waits
like the hills along the stream
for what will be brought to him
and what will be taken away.

After the painting by Wu Chen

--Wendell Berry, from An Eastward Look

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

Robert Bly: Watering the Horse

(Image Credit: Nic McPhee)

Watering the Horse

How strange to think of giving up all ambition!
Suddenly I see with such clear eyes
The white flake of snow
That has just fallen in the horse's mane!
                              --Robert Bly

Galway Kinnell: Blackberry Eating

(Image credit: Richard Brown)

Blackberry Eating

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks  very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched or broughamed,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
into the silent, startled, icy black language
of blackberry eating in late September.

--Galway Kinnell

Chris Green: Christmas Tree Lots

(Glade jul, Viggo Johansen, 1891)

I was in the middle of writing a poem about Christmas tree lots, and I happened to come across this one by Chris Green. I'll lay mine to the side for a while, since this is much better than my attempt.

Christmas Tree Lots

Christmas trees lined like war refugees,
a fallen army made to stand in their greens.
Cut down at the foot, on their last leg,

they pull themselves up, arms raised.
We drop them like wood;
tied, they are driven through the streets,

dragged through the door, cornered
in a room, given a single blanket,
only water to drink, surrounded by joy.

Forced to wear a gaudy gold star,
to surrender their pride,
they do their best to look alive.

            --Chris Green.
               Source: Poetry (December 2001).