The Way It Is

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen. People get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.


William Stafford, The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems (1999)

Weather

My father would lift me
to the ceiling in his big hands
and ask, How's the weather up there?
And it was good, the weather
of being in his hands, his breath
of scotch and cigarettes, his face
smiling from the world below.
O Daddy, was the lullaby I sang
back down to him as he stood on earth,
my great, white-shirted father, home
from work, his gold wristwatch
and wedding band gleaming
as he held me above him,
for as long as he could,
before his strength failed
down there in the world I find myself
standing in tonight, my little boy
looking down from his flight
below the ceiling, cradled in my hands,
his eyes wide and already staring
into the distance beyond the man
asking him again and again,
How's the weather up there?

George Bilgere, Imperial (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014)

When Giving Is All We Have

                                   One river gives
                                   Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it --

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and over again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand-to-hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have and I gave you
What I had to give -- together, we made

 Something greater from the difference.

Alberto Rios, A Small Story about the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 2015)

from "Discordants"

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved, --
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember you always, --
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

Conrad Aiken, Poetry, September, 1915

Haiku by Basho

      A cicada shell;
it sang itself
      utterly away


      Midnight frost --
I'd borrow
      the scarecrow's shirt


      A bee
staggers out
      of the peony


      Year after year
on the monkey's face
      a monkey face


      My summer robes --
there are still some lice
      I haven't caught


      The dragonfly
can't quite land
      on that blade of grass

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) was not only the most famous Japanese poet of his time; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku. His poetry is internationally renowned, and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites.

Puberty -- With Capital Letters

There went being a kid. There went
Barbie dolls, baby dolls, kitchen sets, play-
doh, crayons, make-believe (well, maybe not
make-believe). But there went innocent, child -
like, there went one piece bathing suits. In came
adolescence, even though I'd had my period
since I was 10. In came self-consciousness,
waiting for breasts. In came attitude, and "Why
can't I?" "You said!" "I hate you" under my breath.
In came diaries with hidden messages and dares
I always took. In came kissing and not kissing,
and doing it, and not doing it, and rounding bases,
and not rounding bases, and rounding bases having
nothing at all to do with baseball, and sometimes wishing
you could just play baseball instead.

In came. Rebellion. Cliches. Are you kidding? Drinking.
Do-overs. Cheer-leading Uniforms. Regret. Pure Bliss.
Uncovering. Not feeling good enough. Cockiness. Joy.
In came wild cards. Short skirts. Cocktails. 15. Funnels.
Mid-riff baring. Belly-button rings. Challenges. Being
challenging. The ultimate change. The ultimate fast-forward.
In came growing up.

Ellen Hagan, copyright by author

from "The Cure at Troy"

Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991)

Untitled

In the place in the brain that handles names --
Hannibal, Hannaleah, Atlee Hammacher --
the names are beginning to disappear, slowly.
Kissinger is still there, with Joyce Brothers and Idi Amin,
but my friends' relatives' names pop in and out
along with my sister-in-law's maiden name,
my sixth grade teacher,
my first boss.
Some of my lovers' last names are gone,
last time I checked all the first names were still there,
but no dates.
Fellows I went on dates with are also gone.
The room in the brain that keeps the names is airy,
breezy, the wind wanders through
ruffling the papers stacked on ancient card tables.
Use rocks, they say,
so I am looking for rocks to weight them down.
So nice to find you here, I know you --
perhaps I was once in love with you.

I have an idea:
we will be like Brando and Schneider,
we will do it without touching, without names.

Sharon Olson, The Long Night of Flying (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2006)

The Gift

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I'd thought I'd die from.

I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy's palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife's right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore going deep for my heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

Li-Young Lee, Rose (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1986)

Ornithography

A light snow last night,
and now the earth falls open to a fresh page.

A high wind is breaking up the clouds.
Children wait for the yellow bus in a huddle,

and under the feeder, some birds
are busy writing short stories,

poems, and letters to their mothers.
A crow is working on an editorial.

That chickadee is etching a list,
and a robin walks back and forth

composing the opening to her autobiography.
All so prolific this morning,

these expressive little creatures,
and each with an alphabet of only two letters.

A far cry from me watching
in silence behind a window wondering

what just frightened them into flight --
a dog's bark, a hawk overhead?

or had they simply finished
saying whatever it was they had to say?

Billy Collins, Ballistics (Random House, 2008)

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver, Dream Work (Grove/Atlantic, 1986)

Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale

I'm thinking of a fairy tale,
Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.

I'm thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.

I'm thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.

Jane Yolen, Such a Pretty Face (Meisha-Merlin Publishing, Inc, 2000)

I Married You

I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
under your shirt,
by your naïve ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity --
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen.
How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.

Linda Pastan, Queen of a Rainy Country (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006)

Bondage Love

Houdini's audiences loved him.

They were poor people, illiterates:
hod carriers, icemen, washerwomen,
undernourished kids.

They understood what it meant
to have your hands manacled,
your feet tied,
to be put in a straightjacket
then in a box
and sunk.
They knew what it was like to have no way out.

It was the way the world made love to them.

So he showed them, without a word,
that one could have no way out,
not a single, possible way out,

and get out.

John J. Bruegaletta, Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2019)

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
     How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
      sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift to the world
      than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
      for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
      new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
      reading or hearing this, keep it for life --

What can anyone give you greater than now,
      starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford, The Way It Is (Graywolf Press, 1998)

High School Boyfriend

You are hometown.
You are all my favorite places
the summer I grew up.
Every once in a while
I write you
in my head
to ask how Vietnam
and a big name college
came between us.
We tried to stay in touch
through the long distance,
the hum and fleck of phone calls.

It was inevitable
that I should return
to the small prairie town
and find you
pumping gas, driving a truck, measuring lumber,
and we would exchange
weather-talk,
never able to break through words
and time to say simply:
"Are you as happy
as I wanted you to be?"

And still I am stirred
by musky cigarette smoke
on a man's brown suede jacket.
Never having admitted the tenderness
of your hands, I feel them now
through my skin.
Parking on breezy nights,
in cars, floating passageways,
we are tongue and tongue like warm cucumbers.
I would walk backwards
along far country roads
through late evenings cool as moving water,
heavy as red beer,
to climb into that August.

In the dark lovers' lanes
you touched my face
and found me here.

Margaret Hasse, Stars Above, Stars Below (Nodin Press, 2018)

Swan

Did you too see it, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air --
an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
a shrill dark music -- like the rain pelting the trees,
like a waterfall
knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds --
a white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light
of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (Beacon Press, 2010)