This Is What I Wanted to Sign Off With

You know what I'm
like when I'm sick: I'd sooner
curse than cry. And people don't often
know what they're saying in the end.
Or I could die in my sleep.

So I'll say it now. Here it is.
Don't pay any attention
if I don't get it right
when it's for real. Blame that
on terror and pain
or the stuff they're shooting
in my veins. This is what I wanted to
sign off with. Bend
closer, listen, I love you.

Alden Nowan, Do Not Go Gentle: Poems for Funerals (Bloodaxe, 2003)

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything

and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something,

and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,

an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,

but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders,

ministers, not messiahs. 

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero

Life Is Fine

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might have sunk and died.

    But it was    Cold in that water!    It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might have jumped and died.

    But it was    High up there!    It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love --
But for livin' I was born.

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry --
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.  

    Life is fine!    Fine as wine!    Life is Fine!

Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994)

Seven in the Woods

Am I as old as I am?
Maybe not. Time is a mystery
that can tip us upside down.
Yesterday I was seven in the woods,
a bandage covering my blind eye,
in a bedroll Mother made me
so I could sleep out in the woods
far from people. A garter snake glided by
without noticing me. A chickadee
landed on my bare toe, so light
she wasn't believable. The night
had been long and the treetops
thick with a trillion stars. Who
was I, half blind on the forest floor
who was I at age seven? Sixty-eight
years later I can still inhabit that boy's
body without thinking of the time between.
It is the burden of life to be many ages
without seeing the end of time.

Jim Harrison, Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2019)

from A Wreath for Emmett Till

Emmett's name still catches in my throat,
like syllables waylaid in a stutter's mouth.
A fourteen-year old stutter, in the South
to visit relatives, and to be taught
the family's ways. His mother had finally bought
that White Sox cap; she'd made him swear an oath
to be careful around white folks. She'd told him the
      truth
of many a Mississippi antecdote:
Some white folks have blind souls. In his suitcase
she'd packed dungarees, T-shirts, underwear,
and comic books. She'd given him a note
for the conductor, waved to his chubby face,
wondered if he'd remember to brush his hair.
Her only child. A body left to bloat.

Marilyn Nelson, Faster than Light: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2011, (LSU Press, 2012)

Enough

I do not
Read the newspaper
Any more
I read novels
And magazines
Recipes
And poems
I read clouds
And sunsets
Shadows
And snowflakes
I read bird prints
And tide-lines on the shore
The bark of trees
The patterns of pine needles
On the forest floor
I read peoples' faces
And hands
Their body language
And their eyes.

I do not listen
To newscasts
Any more
I listen to the wind
Swirling through the grasses
The waves as they come and go
Along the beach
I listen to the honking of geese
The quarreling of starlings
The cooing of mourning doves
I listen to the joyful sound of laughter
And the silent sound of tears
I listen to the sweetness
Of voices singing together
And the comforting sound
Of many hearts
Beating as one
For me
This is enough

Joanna Zarkadas, yourdailypoem.com, January 22, 2020

The Good News

The good news
they do not print.
The good news
we do print.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
that the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the fierce winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available,
hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wonderous smile,
singing the song of eternity.
Listen. You have ears to hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow,
of preoccupation,
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it.

Thich Nant Hanh, The Engaged Buddhist Reader, ed. by Arnold Kotner (Parallax Press, 1996)

Lamb of God

Here is the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world.
                                          John 1:29

We are burning down our house.
We are murdering our young.
We hate with pious practice.

Nations corrode nations. Leaders collude with evil.
Corruption, violence, and the Bullying State prevail.
The Emperor polishes his tin crown.

Our children will not have it as easy as we did.
Our knees are not what they used to be.
It is not unreasonable to despair.

And here in this mess you take our sin. You take it
away. You take it into yourself where it dissolves
in the acid bath of your grace and becomes

by your strange alchemy hope,
not because we are not culpable
but because we are not separate from you,

because you die into us into us so gently,
occupy our awful, beautiful lives so fully,
that we are you,

beloved,
broken,
and holy.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, January 14, 2020

The More Things Change

In a musty attic box I found
letters of my family in the War --
from places like Bull Run and Gettysburg
and places seldom mentioned in the books.

They said Jeb Stuart had praised some of them,
who served a cause and often gave their lives
not knowing how to tell the history
they made, except a private's point of view
set down in a simple line or two:

"We have about half enough to eat,
green beef and flour, but very little salt.
Our company left Savannah heading north,
there was a hundred twenty-five of us,
but since then many of my friends have died
so now there's only thirty-six to fight.
I tell you, Mother, I am well
but am not satisfied."

Jimmy Carter, Always a Reckoning and Other Poems (Crown Publishers, 1995)

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being a
woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.

Tess Gallagher, Moon Crossing Bridge (Graywolf Press, 1992)

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, The Complete Poems of Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1916)

Noon Lunch

Unless hot lunch at school
was serving something special
like corn chowder
and baking powder biscuits
or creamed chipped beef
potatoes and brownies
I went home
to what my
mother made
like most town kids

Jack walked the furthest
almost to the river
to his unpainted house
by the railroad tracks
We all knew nobody was there
his mom at the tavern already
He always came back
just in time for the bell.

Peggy Trojan, Local News: Poetry about Small Towns (MWPH Books, 2019)

If This Is Not a Place

If this is not a place where tears are understood,
Then where shall I go to cry?
And if this is not a place where my spirit can take wings,
Then where shall I go to fly?

I don't need another place for trying to impress you
With just how good and virtuous I am.
No, no, no, I don't need another place
For always being on top of things.
Everybody knows it's a sham, it's a sham.

I don't need another place for always wearing smiles,
Even when it's not the way I feel.
I don't need another place to mouth the same old platitudes;
Everybody knows that it's not real.

So if this is not a place where my questions can be asked,
Then where shall I go to seek?
And if this is not a place where my heart-cry can be heard,
Where, tell me where, shall I go to speak?

So if this is not a place where tears are understood,
Where shall I go, where shall I go to fly?

Ken Medema, Word Music, LLC, 1977

Progress Does Not Always Come Easy

As a legislator in my state
I drew up my first law to say
that citizens could never vote again
after they had passed away.

My fellow members faced the troubling issue
bravely, locked in hard debate
on whether, after someone's death had come,
three years should be adequate

to let the family, recollecting him,
determine how a loved one may
have cast a vote if he had only lived
to see the later voting day.

My own neighbors warned me I had gone
too far in changing what we had always done.
I lost the next campaign, and failed to carry
a single precinct with a cemetery.

Jimmy Carter, Always a Reckoning and Other Poems, (Crown Publishers, 1995)

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me; and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1992) 

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Emily Dickinson

Lesson

It was 1963 or 4, summer,
and my father was driving our family
from Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick.
We'd been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew

Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual.
Dark lay hanging from trees the way moss did,
and when it moaned light against the windows
that night, my father pulled off the road to sleep.

Noises
that usually woke me from rest afraid of monsters
kept my father awake that night, too,
and I lay in the quiet watching him listen, learning
that he might not be able always to protect us

from everything and the creatures besides;
perhaps not even from the fury suddenly loud
through my body about his trip from Texas
to settle us home before he would go away

to a place no place in the world
he named Viet Nam. A boy needs a father
with him, I kept thinking, fixed against noise
from the dark.

Forrest Hamer, Call & Response (Alice James Books, 1995)

The Girl with the Pearl Earring

What was she thinking, sitting there?
Her blue and gold scarf hanging
Down her back, that pearl earring, those
Those bright red lips drawn slightly apart.

Was it a worried look on her face? A look
Of a servant girl about to be found out
By her mistress wearing THAT earring. Those
Deep brown pleading eyes looking at Vermeer

With affection waiting and wanting to be loved.
How many times had she sat there posing for
Him to paint that beautiful face whilst the
Mistress of the house was away?

And what did his wife think on first viewing
The painting? Was she pleased, jealous,
upset, angry? And what happened to the girl?
There is more to a painting than what you see.

David Wood, no other attribution could be found.
Enjoy Vermeer's painting 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' here

Grandchild

You lean your small body
closer into mine.
Your shyness
morphs into animation
as you tell me
of the snow sculpture
you made
an icy chair, you say,
sit-able
but not lean-backable.

This facility with words
delights me.
I want to pull you
on to my lap
put my arms around you
hold you close.
But we talk on
of planets, dinosaurs
where the ladybugs go in the winter
before you kiss me on the cheek
and stomp away in the snow
to find your friends
leaving me with a small
hole in my heart.

I join the grown-ups
in the backyard
where the talk there is of
weight loss and joint replacement
a newly acquired cough
the best wine for the money
and
teeing off.

Nanci Lee Woody, yourpoemdaily.com