Contemporary Haiku

Sunrise:
I forgot my side
of the argument
                         George Swede


On the bus
the teenager pulls out a mirror
to adjust her pout
                            George Swede


At dawn      remembering her bad grammar
                                                                      George Swede


evening prayer
      her finger slowly examines
      the remaining breast
                                       Jean Jorgenson


campfire extinguished,
the woman washing dishes
in a pan of stars
                         Raymond Roseliep


without a thought
the neighbor's yard
turns green
                  William Higginson

Now you know the worst

To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust

Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzhak Rabin

Now you know the worst

we humans have to know

about ourselves, and I am sorry,

for I know that you will be afraid.

To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know
there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.
But remember
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine
though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.
You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage of love,
you may walk in light. It will be
the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.

Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir (Counterpoint, 1998)

In Praise of the Great Bull Walrus

I wouldn't like to be one

of the walrus people

for the rest of my life

but I wish I could spend

one sunny afternoon

lying on the rocks with them.

I suspect it would be similar

to drinking beer in a tavern

that caters to longshoremen

and won't admit women.

We'd exchange no

cosmic secrets. I'd merely say

"How yuh doin' you big old walrus?"

and the nearest of

the walrus people

would answer,

"Me? I'm doin' great.

How yuh doin' yourself,

you big old human being, you?"

How good it is to share

the earth with such creatures

and how unthinkable it would have been

to have missed all this

by not being born:

a happy thought, that,

for not being born is

the only tragedy

that we can imagine

but never fear.

Alden Nowlan, Between Tears and Laughter: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books Ltd,  2004) 

Custody

Every other weekend they go to their mother's.
Some Tuesdays or Wednesdays they spend the night.
She takes them for two weeks in the summer.
We divvy up the holidays. Otherwise
they live here with me. We agreed to this
after months of court-appointed enmity
during most of which we behaved like children.
In the end, I was 'awarded custody' -
a legalese to make it sound like winning -
pancakes and carpools and the dead of nights
with nightmares or earaches or wet bedlinen.
Their mother got what's called her visitation rights -
a kind of catch-up-ball she plays with gifts
and fast-food dinners-out and talk of trips
to Disneyworld in the sparkling future.
They were ten, nine, six, and four when it happened.
I played their ages in the Lotto for awhile.
I never won. They were, of course, the prize.
They were, likewise, the ones, when we were through
with all that hateful paperwork and ballyhoo,
who seemed like prisoners of care and keeping
and settled into their perplexed routines
like criminals or parties to a grief --
accomplices in love and sundering.


Thomas Lynch, Grimalkin and other poems (Jonathan Cape 1994)

spring song

the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet smell
of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air
and the world is turning
in the body of Jesus
and the future is possible

Lucille Clifton, The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA Editions, 1987)

When dawn stands still with wonder

When dawn stands still with wonder
when birds jubilate in the trees
when buds hurry into blossoms
and grass starts wearing green
I always know that Easter wants to come again.

But deeper yet and richer still
When Jesus, imprisoned in me,
asks me to roll away the stone
that locks him in
then Easter wants to come again.

So let it come
It's one day past rising time
and Resurrection is the wildest news
that's ever touched
this crazy, mixed up world.
It says, yes!
when everything else says, no!
It says, up!
when everything else says, down!
It says, live!
when everything else says, die!

Easter's standing at your door again,
so don't you see that stone has got to go?
that stone of fear
of selfishness and pride
of greed and blindness
and all the other stones we use
to keep Jesus in the tomb.

So here's to rolling stones away
to give our Lord the chance He needs
to rise and touch
a troubled, lonely world.
Some call it Resurrection.
It's wild with wonder,
It's beautiful and real
Intent on throwing life around
it touches and it heals.

Yes, Easter, you can come
An angel of life I'll be.
I'll roll the stone away
and set you free.

Macrina Wiederkehr, Seasons of Your Heart, (HarperCollinsPublishers, 1991)

The Place Where We Are Right

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

Yehuda Amichat, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichat, trans. by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell,  (Univ. of California Press, 1986, 1996, 2013)

Jesus Dies on the Cross

The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,
We watch him as he labors to draw breath.
He takes our breath away to give it back,
Return it to its birth through his slow death.
We hear him struggle, breathing through the pain,
Who once breathed out his spirit upon the deep,
Who formed us when he mixed the dust with rain
And drew us into consciousness from sleep.
His spirit and his life he breathes in all,
Mantles his world in his one atmosphere,
And now he comes to breathe beneath the pall
Of our pollutions, draw our injured air
To cleanse it and renew. His final breath
Breathes and bears us through the gates of death.

Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (Canterbury Press Norwich, 2012)

Maundy Thursday

Here is the source of every sacrament,
The all-transforming presence of the Lord,
Replenishing our every element,
Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine,
The air delights to bear His spirit's speech,
The fire dances where the candles shine,
The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here he shows the full extent of love,
To us whose love is always incomplete,
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray him, though it is the night,
He meets us here and loves us into light.

Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (Canterbury Press Norwich, 2012)

The Lincoln Relics (extract)

His innocence was to trust

the better angels of our nature,

even when the Union cracked

and furious blood

ran north and south

along the lines of pillage.

Secession grieved him

like the falling out of brothers.

After Appomattox he laid

the white flower of forgiving

on Lee's crisp sword.

What was there left for him to do?

When the curtain rose

on Our American Cousin
he leaned forward in his chair
toward the last absurdity,
that other laughable country,
for which he was ready with his ransom  --
a five-dollar Confederate note
in mint condition, and nine
newspaper accolades
neatly folded in his wallet.
It was time for him now
to try on his gold-rimmed spectacles,
the pair with the sliding temples
mended with a loop of string,
while the demon of the absolute,
who had been skulking in the wings,
leaped into focus,
waving a smoking pistol.

Stanley Kunitz, Passing Through: Poems New and Selected  (W. W. Norton & Co, 1995)

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need any more of that sound.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water-fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume Two (Beacon Press, 2005)

The Evil Days (for Holy Week)

When, in that final week,

He was entering Jerusalem

They thundered Hosannas,

And greeted Him with branches.

Now the days are ominous and grim,

Hearts are no longer stirred by love,

Eyebrows are knit in contempt.

And now the epilogue, the end.

With all their leaden weight

The heavens laid on the courtyards.

Pharisees looked for proof against Him,

Yet wheedled Him like foxes.

And the dark forces of the Temple

Gave Him to rogues for judgment,

And as fervently as they praised

They cursed Him now.

The rabble from the neighborhood

Was peering through the gates,

They jostled in wait for the outcome,

And bustled about, back and forth.

And a whisper crept round there,

As did rumors from every side.

He recalled the flight to Egypt

And His childhood, but now as in a dream.

He recalled the majestic slope

In the desert, and the heights

From which Satan had tempted Him

With all the kingdoms of the world.

And the wedding feast at Cana,

The guests amazed by miracle.

And the sea on which, in a fog,

He'd walked to the boat as on dry land.

And the gathering of poor in a hovel,

And His going down to a cellar with a candle

Which suddenly, in fright, went out

As the resurrected man was standing up. . . .

Boris Pasternak, trans. from Russian by Nina Kossman     

Now You Need Me

When the rains come
you remember
our old closeness
humping along
in the wet.
You grope the dark
where I hang
morosely
by my crooked neck.
You pull off my cover
shake me till my
ribs jiggle
and a moth flies out.
Your hand reaches under
my black skirt
and up one leg
thin as a cane
until I open wide
with a rusty squawk
hovering above you
like a dark and loving
raven, said the old
umbrella, her night
full of holes.

Virginia Hamilton Adair, Ants On the Melon: A Collection of Poems (Random House, 1996)

A Rainy Morning

A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.

Ted Kooser, Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004)

The Laughing Child

When she looked down from the kitchen window
into the backyard and the brown wicker
baby carriage in which she had tucked me
three months old to lie out in the fresh air
of my first January the carriage
was shaking she said and went on shaking
and she saw me lying there laughing
she told me about it later it was
something that reassured her in a life
in which she had lost everyone she loved
before I was born and she had just begun
to believe that she might be able to
keep me as I lay there in the winter
laughing it was what she was thinking of
later when she told me that I had been
a happy child and she must have kept that
through the gray cloud of all her days and now
out of the horn of dreams of my own life
I wake again into the laughing child

W. S. Merwin, Garden Time (Copper Canyon, 2016)

Here

Here I am in the garden laughing

an old woman with sagging breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last     a woman
in the old style      sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt       a grandchild sliding
on      off my lap      a pleasant
summer perspiration

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth      I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa      ask him
to sit beside me for a minute      I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips

Grace Paley, Begin Again: Collected Poems (2000)
   

On Slow Learning

If you have ever owned
a tortoise, you already know
how terribly difficult
paper training can be
for some pets.

Even if you get so far
as to instill in your tortoise
the value of achieving the paper,
there remains one obstacle --
your tortoise's intrinsic sloth.

Even a well-intentioned tortoise
may find himself, in his journeys,
to be painfully far from the mark.

Failing, your tortoise may shy away
for weeks within his shell, utterly
ashamed, or looking up with tiny,
wet eyes might offer an honest shrug.
Forgive him.

Scott Cairns, The Theology of Doubt (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1985)

A Contribution to Statistics

Out of a hundred people

those who always know better

-- fifty-two

doubting every step

-- nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand

if it doesn't take too long

-- as high as forty-nine,

always good because they can't be otherwise 

-- four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy

-- eighteen, 

suffering illusions

induced by fleeting youth

-- sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly

-- forty and four,

living in constant fear

of someone or something

-- seventy-seven,

capable of happiness

-- twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds

-- half at least,

cruel

when forced by circumstances

-- better not to know

even ballpark figures, 

wise after the fact

-- just a couple more

than wise before it,

taking only things from life

-- thirty

(I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain,

no flashlight in the dark

-- eighty-three

sooner or later,

righteous

-- thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous

and understanding

-- three,

worthy of compassion

-- ninety-nine,

mortal

-- a hundred out of a hundred.

Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.

Wislawa Szymborski, Poems: New and Collected, trans by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh 

(Mariner Books, 2000)

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Jellaludin Rumi, trans. by Coleman Barks

What Teachers Make (excerpts)

He says the problem with teachers is
What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life
was to become a teacher?
He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true
what they say about teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests
that it's also true what they about lawyers.
Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite conversation.

I mean, you're a teacher, Taylor..
Be honest. What do you make?

And I wish he hadn't done that -- asked me to be honest --
because, you see, I have this policy about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math
and hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you've got this, 
then you follow this,
and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, then give them this.
Here, let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
Teachers make a **** difference! Now what about you?

Taylor Mali, Teaching with Fire, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner (Jossey Bass, 2014)