The Minister

 

  I mastered pastoral theology, the Greek of the Apostles, and all the difficult subjects in a minister’s curriculum.

          I was as learned as any in this country when the Bishop ordained me.

          And I went to preside over Mount Moriah, largest flock in the Conference.

          I preached the Word as I felt it, I visited the sick and dying and comforted the afflicted in spirit.

          I loved my work because I loved my God.

          But I lost my charge to Sam Jenkins, who has not been to school four years in his life.

          I lost my charge because I could not make my congregation shout.  

          And my dollar money was small, very small.

          Sam Jenkins can tear a Bible to tatters and his congregation destroys the pews with their shouting and stamping.

          Sam Jenkins leads in the gift of raising dollar money.

          Such is religion.

Fenton Johnson, public domain, published as Poem-of-the-Day, April 7, 2019 by Academy of American Poets

Skinny-Dipping on Sifnos

 

Above the azure inlet of the sea,
the path was steep, carved out between
the thistles, thorns and wind-blown rock.

He left her at the top to find a sheltered place
they wouldn’t be seen descending to the shore.
She waited, fully clothed there,
till, looking down, she saw his gleaming skin
and upturned face above the churning deep,
as if he’d changed from man to seal
and loved this transformation.

She shed her clothes and picked her way
as far down as she could on tender feet—
then took a leap of faith, exchanging rock
for empty air, a rush of cold and bubbles
in her hair. Her toes touched seaweed
as she swam toward her selkie mate.

Two naked, slippery people,
seventy and sixty-five,
feeling so alive and filled with joy,
treading water side by side in the extra-salty,
turquoise blue Aegean Sea, rich in iodine,
with the power to heal
all kinds of wounds.

They tasted salt and kissed,
two shipwrecked sailors
who’d managed to survive.

Barbara Quick, The Light on Sifnos (Blue Light Press, 2021)

The Vacation

 

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

Wendell Berry, Heron and Egret Society, dallasegrets.org

The Magnificent Frigatebird

They’re bullies and the way they feed is gross,

forcing the smaller fishers to disgorge

their catch in flight, then swooping down to snatch

it for themselves. Along the beach they court

in gangs, frenetically, lacking the charm

of strolling balladeers. Absurdly they

all clack their curious bills and flap their wings,

fluttering for the females overhead,

and then fly off with them to strange lagoons.

Honeymoons there are brief because the males,

like feathery Casanovas, soon decamp,

eager for more romance, stranding their mates,

who contemplate the need to rest alone

in what magnificence the marsh affords.

George Green, Bright Wings, Billy Collins, editor (Columbia University Press, 2010) 

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems – Volume Two (Beacon Press, 2007) 

Pinup

 

The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense
that you cannot make out the calendar of pinup
drawings on the wall above a bench of tools.
Your ears are ringing with the sound of
the mechanic hammering on your exhaust pipe,
and as you look closer you notice that this month's
is not the one pushing the lawn mower, wearing
a straw hat and very short blue shorts,
her shirt tied in a knot just below her breasts.
Nor is it the one in the admiral's cap, bending
forward, resting her hands on a wharf piling,
glancing over the tiny anchors on her shoulders.
No, this is March, the month of great winds,
so appropriately it is the one walking her dog
along a city sidewalk on a very blustery day.
One hand is busy keeping her hat down on her head
and the other is grasping the little dog's leash,
so of course there is no hand left to push down
her dress which is billowing up around her waist
exposing her long stockinged legs and yes the secret
apparatus of her garter belt. Needless to say,
in the confusion of wind and excited dog
the leash has wrapped itself around her ankles
several times giving her a rather bridled
and helpless appearance which is added to
by the impossibly high heels she is teetering on.
You would like to come to her rescue,
gather up the little dog in your arms,
untangle the leash, lead her to safety,
and receive her bottomless gratitude, but
the mechanic is calling you over to look
at something under your car. It seems that he has
run into a problem and the job is going
to cost more than he had said and take
much longer than he had thought.
Well, it can't be helped, you hear yourself say
as you return to your place by the workbench,
knowing that as soon as the hammering resumes
you will slowly lift the bottom of the calendar
just enough to reveal a glimpse of what
the future holds in store: ah,
the red polka dot umbrella of April and her
upturned palm extended coyly into the rain.

Billy Collins, internetpoem.com, accessed on May 15, 2021

Democracy

 

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Langston Hughes, internetpoem.com, accessed May 15, 2021

A Prayer for Every Day

Let me breathe only grace today, only
that which slows, steadies,
softens, sparks

only that which permits
and pardons and points
to the blossoms inside the broken,
the poetry inside the pain, the nourishing
newness inside the now

Let me breathe only grace
today, only that which invites
me to speak my very own
language for as long as I have breath,
only that which hums:

You can.
You will.

Let me breathe only grace

today, only that which notices the tired
and says, lie back, Love—rest
for as long as you need to. It's not
about how much you do
but how full you are.

And, my God, how beautiful you are when you are full.

Julia Fehrenbacher, poemhunter.com, August 20. 2018 

Calling

When you heard that voice and
knew finally it called for you
and what it was saying–where
were you?  Were you in the shower,
wet and soapy, or chopping cabbage
late for dinner? Were you planting radish
seeds or seeking one lost sock?  Maybe
wiping handprints off a window
or coaxing words into a sentence.
Or coming upon a hyacinth or one last No.
Where were you when you heard that ancient
voice, and did Yes get born right then
and did you weep? Had it called you since
before you even were, and when you
knew that, did your joy escape all holding?
Where were you when you heard that
calling voice, and how, in that moment,
did you mark it? How, ever after,
are you changed?

Tell us, please, all you can about that voice.
Teach us how to listen, how to hear.

Teach us all you can of saying Yes.

Nancy Shaffer, uuwestport.org 

How Would You Live Then?

 

What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks
     flew in circles around your head? What if
the mockingbird came into the house with you and
     became your advisor? What if
the bees filled your walls with honey and all
     you needed to do was ask them and they would fill
the bowl? What if the brook slid downhill just
     past your bedroom window so you could listen
to its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What if
     the stars began to shout their names, or to run
this way and that way above the clouds? What if
     you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves
began to rustle, and a bird cheerfully sang
     from its painted branches? What if you suddenly saw
that the silver of water was brighter than the silver 
     of money? What if you finally saw
that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day
     and every day – who knows how, but they do it – were
more precious, more meaningful than gold?

Mary Oliver, Blue Iris (Beacon Press, 2004)

Emily and I

Together in her drafty attic
we write our letters to the world.
Her lamp sputters, the light poor.

In the frame of her window the sun’s last
spreads over Amherst’s houses.

She let me in when I bragged I was nobody
and now sends me downstairs
to scrounge more paper –
envelopes, she insists – envelopes.

I creep down the creaky stairs.
Try to silence the swinging kitchen door.

Everyone’s out but her pipe-smoking father
who won’t spend a penny on paper.
He doesn’t see my hand lift the wooden box
where he tosses the trash.

I sift out all the envelopes.
Take them up to Emily
and our fevered unfolding begins.

How she cringes when I make the tiniest tear.
This part takes time – the careful unhinging,
the smoothing.

She hands me a pen, an ink pot.
We go to work.

What I’ll remember most
is her shadow on the wall –
her hand, and the pen large, swift,

and her hair — not pulled tight,
but down, free — almost, I would say,
wild.

Pamela Porter, Likely Stories (Ronsdale Press, 2019) 

Marilyn Monroe

 

drives herself to the reservation. Tired and cold,
she asks the Indian women for help.
Marilyn cannot explain what she needs
but the Indian women notice the needle tracks
on her arms and lead her to the sweat lodge
where every woman, young and old, disrobes
and leaves her clothes behind
when she enters the dark of the lodge.
Marilyn's prayers may or may not be answered here
but they are kept sacred by Indian women.
Cold water is splashed on hot rocks
and steam fills the lodge. There is no place like this.
At first, Marilyn is self-conscious, aware
of her body and face, the tremendous heat, her thirst,
and the brown bodies circled around her.
But the Indian women do not stare. It is dark
inside the lodge. The hot rocks glow red
and the songs begin. Marilyn has never heard
these songs before, but she soon sings along.
Marilyn is not an Indian, Marilyn will never be an Indian
but the Indian women sing about her courage.
The Indian women sing for her health.
The Indian women sing for Marilyn.
Finally, she is no more naked than anyone else.

Sherman Alexie, The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press, 1996)

Going to Walden

It isn’t very far as highways lie. 

I might be back by nightfall, having seen

The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.

Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.

They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:

How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

 

Many have gone, and think me half a fool

To miss a day away in the cool country.

Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,

Going to Walden is not so easy a thing

As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult

Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

Mary Oliver, The River Styx, Ohio and Other Poems (Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1972)

Forgotten Planet

I ask my daughter to name the planets.

"Venus ...Mars ...and Plunis!" she says.

When I was six or seven my father

woke me in the middle of the night.

We went down to the playground and lay

on our backs on the concrete looking up

for the meteors the tv said would shower.

 

I don't remember any meteors. I remember

my back pressed to the planet Earth,

my father's bulk like gravity next to me,

the occasional rumble from his throat,

the apartment buildings dark-windowed,

the sky close enough to poke with my finger.

 

Now, knowledge erodes wonder.

The niggling voice reminds me that the sun

does shine on the dark side of the moon.

My daughter's ignorance is my bliss.

Through her eyes I spy like a voyeur.

 

I travel in a rocket ship to the planet Plunis.

On Plunis I no longer long for the past.

On Plunis there are actual surprises.

On Plunis I am happy.

Doug Dorph, Too Too Much Flesh (Box Turtle Press, 2000) 

Mammogram

 

"They're benign," the radiologist says,
pointing to specks on the x-ray
that look like dust motes
stopped cold in their dance.
His words take my spine like flame.
I suddenly love
the radiologist, the nurse, my paper gown,
the vapid print on the dressing room wall.
I pull on my radiant clothes.
I step out into the Hanging Gardens, the Taj Mahal,
the Niagara Falls of the parking lot.

Jo McDougall, In the Home of the Famous Dead (University of Arkansas Press, 2004)

The Swan

 

Did you too see it, drifting, 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, The Paris Review #124 Fall 1992